Will M. sent in these spots, by Rethinking Autism, designed to counter misinformation about autism:
Sex sells, I guess. Or, as we’ve discussed before, women’s sexual objectivity and men’s sexual subjectivity sells.
Also see these controversial faux-ransom notesaimed at drawing awareness to autism and other cognitive conditions.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
That’s the refrain anyway.
But whose sex is sold? And to who? If it was simply that sex sold, we’d see men and women equally sexually objectified in popular culture. Instead, we see, primarily, women sold to (presumably heterosexual) men. So what are we selling, exactly, if not “sex” We’re selling men’s sexual subjectivity and women as a sex object. That is, the idea that men’s desires are centrally important and meaningful, and women’s are not (because women are the object to men’s subjectivity).
That women’s object status and men’s subjectivity is sold to women in women’s magazines (for example, Cosmo and Glamour always feature scantily clad women on the cover) in no way undermines the idea that men’s sexual subjectivity is being sold. It’s just that it’s being sold to all of us.
For example, if this ad was selling Tango with sex, they’d both end up naked in the fourth frame, no?
The new ad spots for M&Ms also illustrate this nicely. m&ms have been anthropomorphized in advertising for some time. There is only one female m&m and she is, by no accident, the green M&M. If you remember from elementary school, green is for horny. That, also, is no accident.
So male M&Ms come in multiple colors, flavors, shapes, and personalities, but female M&Ms are just sex objects.
In the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue this year, M&Ms went with the theme (found here):
The ad campaign extended beyond Sports Illustrated:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDoJNymbU1Q[/youtube]
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubChW7SLhKE[/youtube]
To sum, if it was simply “sex sells,” we’d see an even pattern of sexualization. But we don’t. More often than not, it is women who are sexualized. What is being sold, really, isn’t sex, but the legitimation and indulgence of (supposedly heterosexual) men’s sexual desires.
Kirsti M. alerted us to an M&M advertising campaign in Australia, where you could vote for your favorite color. All but one of the M&Ms are depicted as males (again, the female is Miss Green).
Here is a screenshot of the page for Red, a satirical take on a Marxist revolutionary:
Some highlights from the text:
Favorite quotes: “The revolution is now!”
Favorite books: “100 Steps to World Domination”
Weight: “Perfect for my shell”
A poster:
Here is a screenshot of the page for Miss Green (notice the others aren’t Mr. Blue or Mr. Red; only the female M&M has a title):
Highlights from the text:
Miss Green, working the polls.
About me: I may have a pretty hard shell, but I assure you I’m sweet on the inside.
Favorite quotes: “When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad I’m better.”
Favorite books: “How to Work the Polls”
Interests: Right now I’m focusing all my attention on the top position.
Campaign policy: All beaches to be nude beaches.
Age: Let’s just say I’m experienced.
A poster:
So again we see the sexualization of the female M&M (she’s “experienced,” focusing on the “top position,” she’s “working the polls” while wrapping her go-go-boot-clad legs around a tree in the manner of a stripper on a stripper pole, her arms and legs are much longer and thinner than the other M&Ms’ are).
In this vintage ad (1970s?), it is clear that it is his “plans” for her that are being appealed to:
NEW! These ads for hearing aids are apparently aimed at men only:
Other great examples include these posts with ads promoting organ donation, an air conditioning technical school, selling pasta, vegetarianism, aviation, cars, war, travel, dentistry, food, more food, houses, and mortgages. (To see the reverse dynamic, click here and here.)
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Welcome to Sociological Images. The images in this post correspond to an article in the anthology Images That Injure.
Figure 1: Advertisement for Tango Dance Lessons
Figure 2: Advertisement for Cabana Cachaça Rum
Figure 3: Advertisement for St. Pauli Girl Beer
Figure 4: Commercial for m&m’s:
Figure 5: Advertisement for m&m’s:
Figure 6: Advertisement for m&m’s:
Figure 7: Commercial for ampm Convenience Stores
Figure 8: Commercial for ampm Convenience Stores
Figure 9: Advertisement for Redtape Shoes:
Figure 10: Commercial for Mayflower Moving Company
Figure 11: Commercial for Moosehead Light Beer
Figure 12: Advertisement for Slim Fast
Figures 13, 14, and 15: Advertisements for Itambé® Fit Light Yogurt
Figure 16: Advertisement for Skyy Vodka from Maxim and Cosmopolitan Magazines
Figure 17: Couple from King of Queens
Figure 18: Couple from According to Jim
Figure 19: Couple from The Simpsons
Figure 20: The Character Richard Fish from All McBeal
Figure 21: The Character Ling Woo from Ally McBeal
Figure 22: The Character John Cage from Ally McBeal
Figure 23: The Character Nell Porter from Ally McBeal
Figure 24: Advertisement for Dolce & Gabbana
Figure 25: Advertisement for Unforgivable Woman Perfume
Figure 26: Advertisement for Isaia Napoli Clothing
Figure 27: Advertisement for Campari
Figure 28: Advertisement for Fashion Designer Brian Atwood
Figure 29: Advertisement for Fashion Designer Brian Atwood
Figure 30: Advertisement for Fashion Designer Brian Atwood
Figure 31: Advertisement for Lanvin
Figure 32: Advertisement for Missoni
Figure 33: Advertisement for Patrick Cox
Figure 34: Advertisement for Voodoo pantyhose
Figure 35: Advertisement for Dolce & Gabbana
This is the second part in a series about how girls and women can navigate a culture that treats them like sex objects (see also, part One). Cross-posted at Ms. and Caroline Heldman’s Blog.
The “sex wars” of the 1980s pitted radical feminists, who claimed that female sexual objectification is dehumanizing, against feminists concerned about legal and social efforts to control and repress female sexuality. Over a decade of research now shows that radical feminists were right to be highly concerned.
Getting back to the “sex wars” and how radical feminists were right, women who grow up in a culture with widespread sexual objectification tend to view themselves as objects of desire for others. This internalized sexual objectification has been linked to problems with mental health (e.g., clinical depression, “habitual body monitoring”), eating disorders, body shame, self-worth and life satisfaction, cognitive functioning, motor functioning, sexual dysfunction, access to leadership, and political efficacy. Women of all ethnicities internalize objectification, as do men to a lesser extent.
Beyond the internal effects, sexually objectified women are dehumanized by others and seen as less competent and worthy of empathy by both men and women. Furthermore, exposure to images of sexually objectified women causes male viewers to be more tolerant of sexual harassment and rape myths. Add to this the countless hours that most girls/women spend primping and competing with one another to garner heterosexual male attention, and the erasure of middle-aged and elderly women who have little value in a society that places women’s primary value on their sexualized bodies.
Theorists have also contributed to understanding the harm of objectification culture by pointing out the difference between sexy and sexual. If one thinks of the subject/object dichotomy that dominates thinking in Western culture, subjects act and objects are acted upon. Subjects are sexual, while objects are sexy.
Pop culture sells women and girls a hurtful lie: that their value lies in how sexy they appear to others, and they learn at a very young age that their sexuality is for others. At the same time, being sexual, is stigmatized in women but encouraged in men. We learn that men want and women want-to-be-wanted. The yard stick for women’s value (sexiness) automatically puts them in a subordinate societal position, regardless of how well they measure up. Perfectly sexy women are perfectly subordinate.
The documentary Miss Representation has received considerable mainstream attention, one indicator that many are now recognizing the damaging effects of female sexual objectification.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gkIiV6konY]
To sum up, widespread sexual objectification in U.S. popular culture creates a toxic environment for girls and women. The following posts in this series provide ideas for navigating new objectification culture in personally and politically meaningful ways.
Course Guide for
SEXUALITY AND SOCIETY
(last updated 01/2012)
Developed by Amanda M. Jungels
Georgia State University
Integrating/Interrogating Biological and Social Views of Sexuality
Challenging Evolutionary Perspectives on Sex/Sexuality
Social Construction of (Biological) Sex
Social Construction: Changing Views on Sexuality
Sexuality and Social Categories
Social Construction of Gender
Transgender/Third Gender/Gender Queer
Social Construction of Sexual Orientation
Learning about Sex/Sex Education
Sex Education
Abstinence vs. Comprehensive Sex Ed
Sexual Practices
The Sexual Body
The Female Body
Menstruation
Presenting the Female Body as Unclean: Removing Body Hair
Presenting the Female Body as Unclean: Douching
Bodily Modification and Female Genital Cutting
Social Construction of the Male Body/Male Sexuality
Presenting the Penis as a Dangerous Weapon
Representing Sex
Sexualization of Children’s Products
Sex in the Media
Ejaculation and Phallic Imagery
Sex and Violence
Objectification
Infantilization of Women
Forced/Coerced Sex
Sexual Script
Rape Culture
Use of Alcohol as a Tool for Coercive Sex
Sexual Assault Prevention Campaigns
Commercial Sex
Pornography
Contemporary Views on Prostitution
Historical Perspectives on Prostitution
Sex Trafficking
Other Forms of Sex Work
Social Control of Sex Work
Reproduction/Abortion
Reproduction
Abortion
Sterilization
Contemporary GLBT Issues
Gay Rights Movement
GLBT Parenting
Same-Sex Marriage
GLBT-Related Legislation
For the last week of December, we’re re-posting some of our favorite posts from 2011.
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You often hear that everything is sexualized nowadays, and not just women but men too. In the September 2011 issue of Sexuality & Culture, we examine this idea in an analysis of Rolling Stone magazine covers. Specifically, we wanted to know if men and women are equally sexualized, and if they have become either more frequently or more intensely sexualized over time. To do this, we analyzed every cover from the first issue of Rolling Stone in November 1967 through 2009, minus a few (such as those that featured cartoons rather than people, etc.). You can read more about our methods in the article here.
In order to analyze these 1000+ images of men and women, we developed a “scale of sexualization.” This scale was composed of 11 different variables to measure different aspects of sexualization. For instance, a cover model was given “points” for being sexualized if their lips were parted, if they were scantily clad (more points if they were naked), if the text describing them used explicitly sexual language, or if they were lying down on a bed or otherwise posed in a sexually suggestive way. Images could score anywhere from 0 points (and 176 did) to 23 points (though 20 was our highest score).
Once all of the images on all 43 years of Rolling Stone were scored, we divided the images into three groups: those images that were generally not sexualized, those images that were sexualized, and those images that were so sexualized that we dubbed them “hypersexualized.”
The graph below shows our findings:
Looking first at images of men (represented by dotted lines), we see that the majority of them– from 89% in the 1960s to 83% in the 2000s — were nonsexualized. Men are sometimes shown in a sexualized manner (about 15% in the 2000s), but they are rarely hypersexualized (just 2% in the 2000s). In fact, only 2% of the images of men across the entire dataset — all 43 years — are hypersexualized.
But, again, the vast majority of men — some 83% in recent years — were not sexualized at all. So, if you were to pick up a copy of Rolling Stone in the 2000s, you would most likely see men portrayed in a non-sexualized manner, such as in these images:
In contrast, women, especially recently, are almost always sexualized to some degree. In fact, by the 2000s, 61% of women were hypersexualized, and another 22% were sexualized. This means that, in the 2000s, women were 3 1/2 times more likely to be hypersexualized than nonsexualized, and nearly five times more likely to be sexualized to any degree (sexualized or hypersexualized) than nonsexualized.
So, in the last decade, if you were to pick up a copy of Rolling Stone that featured a woman on its cover, you would most likely see her portrayed in a sexualized manner, since fully 83% of women were either sexualized or hypersexualized in the 2000s. Here are a few examples of hypersexualized images:
In our article, we argue that the dramatic increase in hypersexualized images of women — along with the corresponding decline in nonsexualized images of them — indicates a decisive narrowing or homogenization of media representations of women. In Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, journalist Ariel Levy (2005:5) describes this trend in this way: “A tawdry, tarty, cartoonlike version of female sexuality has become so ubiquitous, it no longer seems particular. What we once regarded as a kind of sexual expression,” Levy writes, “we now view as sexuality” (emphases in original). In this article, we offer empirical evidence for this claim.
So what explains this trend towards women’s hypersexualization? We don’t think it’s just the idea that “sex sells.” If that were true, we’d see many more images of women on Rolling Stone’s covers (only 30% of covers feature images of women) and we’d also see more sexualized and hypersexualized images of men. We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Mary Nell Trautner and Erin Hatton are Assistant Professors of Sociology at SUNY Buffalo. Trautner is the author of many articles on the relationship between law, culture, organizational practices, and social inequality (and has written a fantastic Soc Images Course Guide for Sociology of Gender courses). Hatton, a sociologist of work, is the author of The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America.
Eight readers — Christine B., Hermes, Yvette, Hope H., Tyler D., Pris S., John G., and Dmitrity T.M. — alerted us to a photo spread in the December issue of French Vogue. The series of photographs is another piece of evidence of the adultification of young girls, an adultification that looks suspiciously like child porn, given the sexualization of adult women. New York Magazine reports that the girls are 6 years old. Don’t miss the lipstick, high heels, and disinterested pouts.
The thing is: the adultification/sexualization of young girls is paralleled by a infantilization of adult women. This adds up to a conflation of women and children which serves to uphold prejudice against adult women and the exploitation of girls.
More at Gawker.
For more on the infantilization of adult women, see our posts on lady spanking, Glee, this collection of examples, a vintage example, and the Halloween edition.
For more on the adultification/sexualization of young girls, see our posts on sexually suggestive teen brands, adultifying children of color, “trucker girl” baby booties, “future trophy wife” kids’ tee, House of Dereón’s girls’ collection, “is modesty making a comeback?“, more sexualized clothes and toys, sexist kids’ tees, a trifecta of sexualizing girls, a zebra-striped string bikini for infants, a nipple tassle t-shirt, even more icky kids’ t-shirts, “are you tighter than a 5th grader?” t-shirt, the totally gross “I’m tight like spandex” girls’ t-shirt, a Halloween costume post, and girls in the World of Dance tour.
And, yes, it happens to boys too. For examples of the sexualization of young boys, see our posts on Lil’ Wayne’s virginity loss, the depiction of a 13-year-old boy having a relationship with his teacher, the sexy marketing of both Jaden Smith and Justin Bieber, with a follow up here.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Please accept this newest edition of violence is sexy, courtesy of Lisa R. The promo below, designed to advertise two shows about female murderers (Deadly Women and Wicked Attraction), sexualizes murder. The narration goes:
In the heat of summer, temperatures rise, passions erupt, and sometimes, things… turn… deadly.
They “erupt.” Get it? Get it!?
The thing is, these are stories about real women who actually murdered people. Lisa writes:
…the crimes they’re talking about on these shows are not all sex-related, and I’m just going to go out on a limb and say none of them are sexy, either. The only reason I can even fathom for a promo like this is just the notion that women are sex personified, like the green M&M. Even committing horrible, gruesome murders can’t change that.
In other words, if women are involved, best to sexify. If a man murders a man, it’s just violence. But if a man murders a woman or a woman murders a man, it’s sexy, sexy violence. If a woman murders a woman, will the murder be sexualized? I bet it would.
This calls into question the idea that we sexualize violence against women because we find pleasure in harming her. Instead, maybe we sexualize violence against women simply because we sexualize women.
Also in random, bizarre things sold with sex, see our post on using sex to sell the most unlikely things.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
