Search results for sex sells

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

Last year in a post about the truism “sex sells,” I asked:

But whose sex is sold?  And to who?

“If it was simply that sex sold,” I continued…

…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”?

I argued that what was really being sold was men’s (presumably heterosexual) sexual subjectivity, the experience of being a person in the world who was presented with images that were for his titillation. Women do not live in the world this way. They are not exposed everyday to images that legitimize their lust; instead, the images teach women that they are the object of that lust.

In light of this, Sociologist Beth Eck did a series of interviews attempting to tap into what it felt like for men and women to look at male and female nudes.  Her findings were pretty fascinating.

First, she asked men and women to look at naked images of women, including this one of Cindy Crawford:

Women viewing images of female nudes almost inevitably compared themselves to the figure and felt inadequate.   Said one women:

…the portrayal of these thin models and I just get depressed… I’m very hard on myself, wanting to be that way.

Women ended up feeling bad whether the model conformed to conventional norms of attractiveness or not.  When looking at a heavy set woman, they often responded like this:

I am disgusted by it because she is fat, but I’m also… I need to lose about 10 pounds.

I don’t necessarily find her body that attractive… Her stomach looks like mine.

Men, in contrast, clearly felt pandered to as holders of a heterosexual male gaze.  They knew that the image was for them and offered praise (for a job well done) or criticism (for failure to live up to their expectations).  About Crawford they said:

Personally I think she is attractive.

I like that.

Both men and women, then, knew exactly how to respond to female nudes: women had internalized their object status and men had internalized their subject status.

Eck then showed them male nudes, including this one of Sylvester Stallone:

Interestingly, both men and women felt uncomfortable looking at male nudes.

Men responded by either expressing extreme disinterest, re-asserting their heterosexuality, or both.  They did not compare themselves to the male nudes (like women did with female nudes), except to say that they were both male and, therefore, there was “nothing to see.”  Meanwhile, because men have been trained to be a lustful sexual subject, seeing male nudity tended to raise the specter of homosexuality.  They couldn’t see the bodies as anything but sexual objects for them to gaze upon.

In contrast, the specter of homosexuality didn’t arise for women because they weren’t used to being positioned as lustful.  Eck explains:

When women view the seductive pose of the female nude, they do not believe she is ‘coming on to’ them.  They know she is there to arouse men.  Thus, they do not have to work at rejecting an unwanted advance.  It is not for them.

Many women also did not feel lustful when looking at male nudes and those that did often experienced lust mixed with guilt or shame.  Eck suggest that this may be, in part, a reaction to taking on the active, consuming, masculine role, something they’re not supposed to do.

Summarizing responses to the male nudes, she writes:

Men, over and over again, reject the seductive advance [of a male nude].  While some women welcome the advance, most feel a combination of shame, guilt, or repulsion in interacting with the image…

This is what it means to live in a world in which desire is structured by a gendered sexual subject/object binary.  It’s not just “out there,” it’s “in us” too.

Source: Eck, Beth. 2003. Men are Much Harder: Gendered Viewing of Nude Images.  Gender & Society 17, 5: 691-710.

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.

PARTY!

Please join us for the first ever Sociological Images party! We’d love to see all of you–sociologists and non-sociologists alike–in San Francisco on Sunday, August 9th at 6pm at Johnny Foley’s Irish House.   We want to meet you and we think it’d be super cool for you to meet each other, too.

FROM THE ARCHIVES:

Sociological Images was born in July of 2007.  In honor of our birthday, we point you to our very first post ever:  Faith Hill re-touched for the cover of Redbook.

One year later, we published a fascinating example of the white man’s burden.  This time, however, it’s a white woman’s burden in the form of a Pampers commercial.  It’s something; you should check it out.

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

We added a third PostSecret postcard where someone confesses thoughts about race, while explaining that they are not racist.  Ponder them here.

Our post about an Icelandic cartoon that portrayed Barack Obama as a cannibal now includes an image of the comic book graphic novel Barack the Barbarian, thanks to sender-inner Lindsay.

Phil Howard had some updated graphs on concentration of organic brands, so we updated our post on who sells organics.

To our post featuring ads that portray men as animals, we added an advertising campaign by Jim Beam that suggests men are “stags” (has there ever been a word with more meanings?).

In another food-related update, Amanda C. and Dmitriy T.M. both sent us material that we added to our post about sexualizing food.

Natalie sent us links to some images of kids’ t-shirts with sexual slogans, which we added to our existing post on the topic.

At the suggestion of Glenn R., we added ads for Caramba Tequila to our not-so-subliminal sex and ejaculation imagery posts.  We also added an image to the latter post sent in by Jeff G. and a commercial for Creme d’Or ice cream Jay L. brought to our attention. The commercial is a doozy.

We added some very scandalous ads for hearing aids to our “sex sells” post.

Rachel McC. J., from Deeply Problematic, sent us another example of efforts to protect women by telling women to protect themselves instead of targeting badly behaving men.  We added it to our previous post telling women to stop men from sexually harassing them in the subway.

Tricia V. sent us another example of resistance to advertising that objectifies women.  In this one, from Haiti, someone scrawled “Women’s bodies are not merchandise” across a full-sized billboard.

The Huffington Post featured a slide show of billboards in New York called “Sex in the Sky.”  Kiera S. thought it would make a good addition to our “What Warrants a Slide Show” post.  We agreed.

We added a Volkswagen ad to our post on vintage advertising suggesting that women are horrible (horrible!) drivers.  See it here.

We added a vintage ad marketing Zippo lighters to “modern mothers” to our post featuring ads in which babies tell their moms to smoke Marlboros.

Before the “obesity epidemic,” kids were just chubby.  We added two additional material to our post featuring vintage ads selling clothes for “chubby” kids, one of them sent in by Holly M.

Women LOVE to clean!  We added a vintage ad to a previous post about the joy of women’s work.

We recently posted about a business called the Occasional Wife.  A blogger at The Grand Narrative pointed us to several companies along the theme of Hire-A-Hubby.  We added them to our original post on the social construction of “wife.”

We updated a post on gendered marketing of products with images of pink and blue scooters for the mobility impaired and a cordless screwdriver marketed to women by including a manicure set. Turns out it wasn’t very popular.

NEWS!

In addition to friending us on Facebook, you can now follow us on Twitter!

FROM THE ARCHIVES:

April last year:  This fascinating Italian anti-immigrant poster suggests that, if immigration to Italy is allowed, immigrants will persecute the native Italians like U.S. colonizers did American Indians.  It’s a pretty amazing tactic.

NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS (bottom of post may not be safe for work!):

Total Drek revised an xkcd cartoon on the difference between causation and correlation.  So we added it to our original post.

Sex sells ‘n stuff:

Sarah Haskins makes fun of euphemistic references to female genitalia.  We added her video to our post on our efforts to avoid using the real terms.  

Related to discomfort with women’s genitalia, Taylor D. sent in a link to even more vintage ads for Lysol as a douche, which we added to this post.

We added a vintage ad to our sex sells post.  This one tells men that if they don’t buy Firestone tires, they won’t get laid.  Women?  Well I guess they don’t drive.  

Also in sex sells, we updated our post on the sexualization of food, this time with a Max Factor ad and a not-to-be-missed Hardee’s commercial featuring Padma Lakshmi having quite the sensual experience with a bacon burger (scroll all the way to the bottom). 

We also added another image to our post with examples of sex as “scoring.”

Now to sperm: We added three more images affirming the idea that we were all once a mighty sperm (eggs, apparently, just add nutrition, if that) to this post on the weird ways in which sperm are socially constructed.  In one of them, a condom ad suggests that one condom could have prevented the holocaust by dressing a sperm up as Hitler.  Another example dates back to the beginning of the idea in 1694.

On race and ethnicity:

We added material to two posts in our series on how and why people of color are included in ads aimed at white people.  First, we added a set of photographs taken by Joshua B. at Office Max to our post showing how people of color are often portrayed as being more, eh em, colorful.  Second, we added an image to our post on how people of color are literally background or arranged so that the focal point (visually or through action) is the white person or people in the ad.

We added images of sculptures that comically/stereotypically (depending on your point of view) represent European countries to this post about stereotyping nationalities. The installation was supposedly by 27 different artists, but it turns out to be a hoax; all of them were created by a single Czech artist.

Also in ethnic stereotypes, we added a cartoon from Life magazine suggesting that monkeys are insulted by being given Irish names.  We added it to our collection of anti-Irish sentiment from the 1800s.

And visit this post to see our newest example of using the notion of the “savage” to sell in the 1950s.

Miguel sent us an image of a “White” Obama, which we added to our post that asks “What do Black and White look like, anyway?”

Philip D. sent us a set of Crown Royal ads that reportedly target a “general” and a specifically African American audience, respectively, which we added to our post about marketing products to different groups. 

On gender: 

Elizabeth M. sent us a link to fashion designer Nina Ricci’s new line of shoes.  They’re high high HIGH heels!  We added it to some other real hobblers here. 

Women cannot be counted on to hold it together in the face of low calorie sweets… or at least that’s what another commercial tells us. 

Ben O. sent us a link to a company that makes pink protective gear for female construction workers.  We added it to our post featuring pink handcuffs for cops.  

There’s now another image up from the Evan Williams bourbon “The Longer You Wait” ad campaign. 

Keely W. sent in a link to the new Fling candy bar, just for girls.  We added it to our post on gendered candy marketing.

The Daily Show spoofed the obsession with Michelle Obama’s clothes.  Andrea G. sent in the link and we added it to our collection of examples of this obsession.  We also added a picture of the cover of a new book: Michelle Style: Celebrating the First Lady of Fashion.

We added a picture of a sink that looks like a woman’s lower half to our post about urinals shaped like women’s bodies. 

And, finally, does a month go by where we don’t update our BOOBS! post?  Rarely.  This time, though, we’ve got something special: Jezebel offered us a photo essay of a boob shaped milk cartoon, from fridge to trashcan.  Visit our updated post here (scroll to the bottom) and enjoy this teaser: