Search results for sex in advertising

The ad below is the first-ever British TV commercial advertising abortion services family planning options, including abortion.  It is being shown late at night and says:

If you’re late for your period, you could be pregnant. If you’re pregnant and not sure what to do, Marie Stopes International can help.

I don’t remember ever seeing such a commercial. Condoms, birth control pills, pregnancy tests, herpes medication, HPV vaccines, tampons, Viagra, and sex, sex, sex, YES. Abortion, NEVER. Salon seems to claim that it’s the first of its kind anywhere.

Have you ever seen such a thing where you live? What do you imagine are the politics around the airing of a commercial advertising abortion services?

Via Feministing.

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.

Tom Megginson of Change Marketing and Kandirra sent us a stunning example of the objectification of women in advertising. It’s a commercial for Rosgosstrakh, the largest insurance company in Russia, advertising their car insurance. How do they do so? By painting pictures of vehicles on (headless) women’s breasts and showing various hands fondling/smushing/jiggling them.

Reader lizardbreath pointed out that showing breasts on TV wouldn’t be as shocking in a lot of cultures as it would be in the U.S., which I think is a valid point. What makes it seem objectifying to both of us isn’t just the breasts themselves, but the headless women (so you have disembodied breasts). I also noticed that at one point a woman pushes the (also disembodied) male hands away, which implies she’s being groped when she doesn’t want to be.
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NEWS:

I’ll be in New Orleans until June 23 and the big Island of Hawaii from the 23rd to the 1st.  It’s always fun to meet readers, so if you’re nearby please send us an email (socimages@thesocietypages.org) and we’ll have coffee or drinks!

A Louis Vuitton advertising campaign that we critiqued has been determined by the U.K. Advertising Standards Agency to be a violation of truth in advertising.  Check it out.  Thanks to Anjan G. and Katrin for pointing it out.

This is your monthly reminder!  You can follow us on Twitter or friend us on Facebook where we update with a featured post everyday.

NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS (Look for what’s NEW! May ’10):

Cara McC. sent along another example of a commercial separating normal from abnormal… this time it’s “normal” skin.  We added it to our post on hair.  On the same theme, Renée Y. took a photo of bike helmets in women’s and… um… helmet.  We also added more examples to our post on gendering default icons, this time bike traffic lights in Amsterdam.

We added breast cancer-themed grape tomatoes — yes, you read right — to our post on surprising things themed as such.  Sent in by Renée Y.

M.I.A.’s  “Born Free” video shows red-headed, freckled male adolescents being rounded up as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign. We added it to our post on gingerism.

Orangina has a drink with grenadine in it called “Indien” that features an orange wearing a feathered headdress. We added it to our earlier post on the use of feathered headdresses and other elements of some American Indian cultures.

We updated our post on the CNN experiment on children’s attitudes toward skin color with a segment of a parent reacting to her child’s preferences. Thanks to Abeer K., Dimitriy T.M., and Alex P. for sending in the one we missed!

Ang B. snapped a photo of an advertisement for men’s and women’s haircuts with the phrase “Fuck your Gender Binary” written across it.  We added it to our post featuring small acts of resistance against gendered and objectifying advertising.

Andi S. sent a photo of Spanx for men, designed to shape his upper body.  We added it to our post on the push-up panty for the penis.  Relatedly, Michelle R. sent us another example of how the diet/nutrition industry markets products differently to men and women.

We added two videos of the “men are like this, but women are like that, hahaha!” variety to one of our posts on gender stereotypes.  Also, in case you haven’t had enough of pointlessly gendered products, we added an example of a gendered “find” game and another example of gendered earplugs to our post on the topic.  On the other hand, doggie poop bags are unisex. Good to know.

In case you’re looking for some polite, submissive women, we added an online ad for “beautiful Russian ladies” to our post about a website that sells the submissive Asian stereotype to (mostly) non-Asian men.

We updated our post on a child’s zebra-striped string bikini with a bikini pulled from shelves in the U.K. The bikini, meant for young girls, included a padded bra.

We updated our post on envisioning how highways would affect the city of the future with an exhibit from the 1939 World’s Fair that pointed out that benefits of being able to avoid slums.  Also on the topic of highways, we added an image sent in by Jayna T. to our post on teens, the elderly, and driver safety.

Penny R. and p.j. sent in a link to the American Able project. A description from the artist’s website:

‘American Able’ intends to, through spoof, reveal the ways in which women with disabilities are invisibilized in advertising and mass media. I chose American Apparel not just for their notable style, but also for their claims that many of their models are just ‘every day’ women… Women with disabilities go unrepresented…in most of popular culture. Rarely, if ever, are women with disabilities portrayed in anything other than an asexual manner, for ‘disabled’ bodies are largely perceived as ‘undesirable’…

Too often, the pervasive influence of imagery in mass media goes unexamined, consumed en masse by the public. However, this imagery has real, oppressive effects on people who are continuously ‘othered’ by society. The model, Jes Sachse, and I intend to reveal these stories by placing her in a position where women with disabilities are typically excluded.

The goal is admirable. Individuals with disabilities are routinely ignored in pop culture, and if depicted, they are often either mocked or are devoid of sexuality (notable examples being the documentary Murderball and the depiction of a character in a wheelchair on the TV show Friday Night Lights, though both focus solely on men with disabilities who generally have relationships with women who do not).

That said, it brings up the eternal question regarding artistic endeavors, particularly those aimed at undermining prejudices: does it work? The idea here is to show a woman with disabilities in sexualized contexts and use humor to counter popular conceptions of those with disabilities as asexual (and parody American Apparel in the process). As with any use of parody/irony/etc., it poses a dilemma. Will viewers get it? Will they grasp the intent and look at the images through that lens? Will it lead some people to question why they might find these photos shocking, why a woman with a disability shown in sexual situations would be surprising, or the reason for any discomfort they might feel when looking at them?

Or will people respond by ridiculing Jes, or even feeling disgusted? Will they look further into those feelings and why they might have them? Will it change anything?

And how do you decide if it’s worth it? If half of viewers engage in some introspection and examining of their own prejudices, and half don’t, is that a sufficient trade-off? If 90% of people ridiculed the images and it reinforced their belief that bodies of those with disabilities are undesirable, but 10% would think about how women with disabilities are de-sexualized, or that American Apparel presents a very narrow range of body types as “normal,” everyday women, would you feel that you had accomplished something significant? Is it the artist’s responsibility to care?

Similar questions have been posed about photos of individuals from Appalachia: do they humanize people often depicted as backward “hillbillies,” or do they actually reinforce perceptions that everyone living in the area is poor and rural?

How do you negotiate the use of art to make social statements (whether questioning prejudices, pointing out inequalities, or humanizing stigmatized groups), considering that once you put something out in the public domain, you have little control over how people interpret it and whether they take from it the opposite message you intended, perhaps even ridiculing your subjects as a result of your project?

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

NEWS:

Lisa was quoted in an Associated Press article that, much to her chagrin, rather uncritically celebrated the recent rash of untouched photos released by celebrities.  You can read it here and compare it to her unfiltered thoughts about it at her own post.

We added a new example of an assignment drawing on Sociological Images that instructors can use.  This one asks students to think critically about the whole project and is, thus, very interesting.  See #7 of our Sample Assignments.

This is your monthly reminder!  You can follow us on Twitter or friend us on Facebook where we update with a featured post every day.  We are, by the way, having lots of fun watching reactions to our posts on Facebook.  Thanks to all of you who have friended us and contribute to the conversations and the “like”!

NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS (Look for what’s NEW! Apr. ’10):

Neat, Cute, Ew, and Cool

In a comments thread a Reader, ckilgore, linked to her grandma’s cabinet fridge from the ’50s.  We added it, along with another example of an ad, to our vintage ad for the same.

We added a picture of pair-bonded female albatrosses to our (adorable) post on gay animals.

Tom M. sent in a billboard for Penthouse features a very suggestive… eye.  We added it to our post featuring ads with not-at-all-subtle visual sexual innuendo (NSFW).

I added an image of the Korean peninsula at night, linked in a comments thread by Brendon, to our post comparing the a map of the lights of the world at night and population density.

Race-Related Updates

We added a representation of “users” from WordPress that represented people as coming in different skin colors to our post featuring default avatars.

Jessica S. and Lucia M.M. sent in links to companies selling pretend teepees.  We added it to our post on American Indian-themed toys for kids.

Skada sent in another example in which white people are just people but black people are b-l-a-c-k, this time on Netflix.

Gender-Related Updates

We added lollipops, identical deodorants, and disposable cameras to our post on pointlessly gendered products.  We also added a new “girl talk” version of Jenga to our post on gendered versions of classic board games.  The first two were found by Sunlight Snow and the latter by Kathe H.

We also added a “drama queen” sign for girls to our post on babies’ and kids’ items that reinforce the “girls as spoiled divas” stereotype.  Thanks to Coley for sending it in!

Alex N. sent in a Fruit Loops commercial that genders doctors and nurses (in the direction that you would expect) and we added it to a post on that topic.

We updated our post on scrapbooking sticker sets of words about boys and girls with wall decals for boys and girls. In case you didn’t know, boys like hip-hop derived terms, while girls like any and all abbreviations.

Lizz Q. sent us another example of an anatomical illustration that featured a man facing straight forward and a woman posing rather sexily.  We added it to our burgeoning collection.

We added another great example of hygiene products being marketed to men by arguing that it enhances, instead of detracts from, their manliness.  In this one, sent in by Lucia M.-M., truly manly body wash is contrasted with sissy manly body wash.

Sofia R. sent us another example of Twix commercials that depict men as immature idiots.

We added a third example of shirts being sold in “unisex” and “women’s,” sent in by Mindy J.

Dmitriy T.M., Beth W., Abby D., and Jillian Y. sent in links to a video game called RapeLay.  We added it to a previous post on rape-themed video games (TRIGGER WARNING).

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.

Tom C. sent us an ad for Google that does an excellent job of resisting the urge to make separate commercials aimed at men and women. In the ad below, a searcher seeks information on masculine-typed and feminine-typed activities, as well as more neutral ones. It leaves open the sex of the searcher. It’s a nice counterpart to the profoundly gendered advertising we see almost everywhere else… and evidence that it doesn’t have to be that way.

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For another example of non-gendered advertising, see this vintage Uniroyal tires ad.

In comparison, Hulu sometimes asks whether you want to see ads made “for her” or “for him,” Facebook wants to know what sex you are so as to better sell to you, and Best Buy will just assume you’re a dude,

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.

NEWS:

A new intern! We are proud to introduce a new Sociological Images intern, Lauren McGuire.  Lauren is a liberal arts graduate working as an assistant to a disability activist who blogs at The Deal with Disabilty.  She lives with four boys, one bathroom, and a dog in Pasadena, CA.  She is also an enthusiastic amateur in writing, blogging, sewing, photography, and general creative buffoonery.  Look for her first Guest Post soon.

An award!  I am so pleased to have been awarded the Early Career Award for Innovation in Teaching Sociology from the Pacific Sociological Association!  If any of you would like to celebrate with me, I will be at the PSA conference in Oakland, CA, on the evening of Friday, April 9th.  Email me at socimages@thesocietypages.org for details.

A new partnership!  We are so excited to have entered into a partial syndication agreement with Jezebel!  You may see some of our posts re-posted there, and vice versa.

SocImages in the news!  This month Gwen was quoted in Adweek (on children’s toys); Gwen and Lisa were both quoted in ABC News (on the pricing of black and white barbies); and Lisa was quoted in Women’s ENews (on the sex of traffic signals), interviewed on WEOL am 930 with Les Sekely, and her top ten favorite blogs were featured at blogs.com.

Social networking!  Don’t forget: you can follow us on Twitter or friend us on Facebook, where we update with a featured post everyday .

NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS (Look for what’s NEW! Mar. ’10):

To our post about laws and taxes forbidding yellow margarine, we added another fascinating vintage ad.

Caity sent us a video than an Australian bank created to try to explain why they were increasing interest rates. We added it to our post of a cartoon that explains the credit crisis.

Race

A nice example of the way that people of color are frequently chaperoned by a plurality of white people was sent in by Caitlan V.d.W.  I added it to my post on the topic, one of a series on how people of color are included in advertising aimed primarily at white people.

Previously we posted a popsicle sold in Spain with an Asian caricature on the package. Now we’ve added ice cream that came in a container shaped like a stereotypical Asian character, also sold in Spain.

Anina H. sent us a New York State Department of Health flier encouraging breast feeding that featured women of different races, but had the white woman modeling ideal motherhood.  We added it to our post on materials that include a diverse group of people, but somehow always manage to put the white person up front or on top.

Sarah G. found another example of black dolls being sold for less than white dolls, we added it to our post on the recent Walmart scandal.

We recently posted about the objectification and fetishization of Asian women on the dating website Classy Asian Ladies. Rachel K. sent us a t-shirt that illustrates this obsession with Japanese women, in particular, so we added it.

Martha sent us a commercial for MetroPCS that featured two Indian men with strong accents. We added it to our post on two ads that ran during Super Bowl 42 that featured characters with thick accents (Indian and Chinese).

We updated our post on contemporary blackface in the fashion world with a mini-movie by Karl Lagerfeld that includes White actors made up to appear Asian.

Sex

Christina W. sent us another great contribution to our post: selling the most unlikely things with sex!  It started with organ donation, but this addition involves cheese.

Dmitriy T.M. sent in a flyer for a techno party that is a great addition to our ejaculation imagery post. And Kristyn G. found an Australian commercial in which white liquid squirts all over Pamela Anderson and another woman. Thanks, D. and Kristyn!

We updated our post on reframing the abortion debate to associate abortion with genocide by adding a Polish billboard that claims Hitler introduced abortion to Poland. Might be mildly unsafe for work — there are images of bloody aborted fetuses.

Joe told us about the video game Mass Effect, which allows heterosexual or lesbian couplings but not gay male ones. We added a link of a scene where a female character does a sexy dance for a male character to our post about the video game Sexy Beach, which is about what you’d think it is. Probably NSFW.

To our post in which we asked whether a store display seemed to imply violence or consensual bondage we added a photo SOM took of a shoe store window display showing a woman’s bound feet.

Gender

Renée Y. and Corina sent us two more examples of breast cancer research fund raising that privileges saving boobs over saving women.

We added images of chocolate Easter bunnies and pink computer cables to our ever-growing post on pointlessly gendered products.

We added a commercial, sent in by Emma H., in which a man is humiliated because he loves ice dancing to our post of ads telling men that they better eschew femininity or else.

More mocking of the Disney princesses!  Courtesy of Kristyn G.

We added three more examples of beer advertising that compares beer to a “good woman.”  See both here and here.  Thanks to John for one of the examples!

We added another image, this one a photo of Reille Hunter from GQ, to our post featuring infantilized women.  Thanks to Jeff H. for the suggestion!

Katie P. sent us a pair of gendered onesies: one said “I’m Super” and the other, “Super Cute.”  Guess which one was pink.

Halley M. and Ryan both sent in additions to our recent post showing how anatomy is gendered.  One is another educational image and one is the image of humanity attached to the Pioneer spacecraft in case any extraterrestrials ran into it and wanted to know what we’re like. We added them to the original.

We  added a product called Shrinkx Hips, a product to “guide” your hips back to their “pre-pregnancy position,” to our post on the BeBand.

Mindy sent us a video she was shown at a couples retreat that demonstrates how men and women are so different! We added it to our post on medicalizing gendered marriage.

French Elle‘s April 2010 issue has a long feature dedicated to women with larger bodies. We added it to our post on some recent images from Glamour of women’s bodies that don’t fit the size-zero model ideal.

Katrin sent us a video about a marketing campaign for Lynx (the British version of Axe). The campaign, called LynxJet, presents sexy women as sexually-available airline stewardesses, eager to please. We added it to another post on Axe/Lynx products.

We updated our post on the sexualization of female employees in an Avis ad with an ad for Ansett Airlines that shows a female flight attendant in just a towel.

Martha sent us some images from the book Who Killed Amanda Palmer? in which Palmer is posed as though she’s been murdered. We added them to our post on images that show dead-looking women.

Ryan let us know about a video of Filipina activist Sass Rogando Sasot speaking to the United Nations about the need for more recognition of transgender rights. We added the video of her speech, “Reclaiming the Lucidity of Our Hearts,” to our post of a spoken-word performance about being transgendered.

We updated a post on the sexualization/adultification of children with some images from the clothing company Zara that have similar themes.

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.

Example One: Is it me, or do the bare buns in this ad seem just a little bit child-porny?  It’s a nice example of how our sensibilities change; these days there is a loud and ubiquitous discourse around children’s vulnerability to sexual exploitation.  A discourse that, I think, would make this ad inappropriate today.

Example Two: After decades of anti-smoking public health initiatives which included, along with health warnings, the association of smoking with bad breath, yellow teeth, and stinking clothes and hair, I somehow don’t think food would be marketed with a cigarette in its mouth (1950).

Example Three: This candy ad begins “Some tigers eat people.  I eat tigers.  His tail was 3 chocolates longer.”  Then, it continues, “P.S. I made a gun from the tube.”   Today, in most parts of the U.S., childhood innocence is no longer marketed with firearms.

Source: Vintage ads (here, here, and here) and Found in Mom’s Basement.

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.