{"id":57502,"date":"2013-12-12T08:00:44","date_gmt":"2013-12-12T13:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=57502"},"modified":"2014-06-09T20:43:30","modified_gmt":"2014-06-10T01:43:30","slug":"hunkvertising-is-the-rise-of-mens-sexual-objectification-equality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/12\/12\/hunkvertising-is-the-rise-of-mens-sexual-objectification-equality\/","title":{"rendered":"Does the Rise of Men’s Sexual Objectification = Equality?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently David Gianatasio at AdWeek wrote an analysis of the sudden rise in the sexual objectification of men<\/a> in advertising. \u00a0It seems to have been spurred by the wild popularity of the Old Spice character\u00a0introduced in 2010, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like<\/a>. \u00a0Gianatasio calls it “hunkvertising.” \u00a0Indeed, rippling abdominal muscles suddenly seem to be everywhere.<\/p>\n

\"5\"\"3\"<\/a>\"Screenshot_3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Gianatasio interviewed me for the piece and I had two thoughts. \u00a0First, because the ads are so tongue-in-cheek, they didn’t seem to be acknowledging and validating women’s sexual desire, so much as mocking it. \u00a0“It’s funny to us to think of women being lustful,” I told Gianatasio, “because we don’t really take women’s sexuality very seriously.” \u00a0In this way,\u00a0the joke\u00a0affirms\u00a0<\/i>the gender order because the humor depends on us knowing that we don’t\u00a0really <\/i>objectify men this way and we don’t\u00a0really\u00a0<\/i>believe that women are the way we imagine men to be.<\/p>\n

Second, objectifying men alongside women certainly isn’t progress. \u00a0There’s the old critique that, if it is<\/em> equality, it’s not the kind we want. \u00a0But, more importantly, the forces behind this so-called equality have nothing to do with justice. \u00a0Gianatasio generously gave me the last word:<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t call it equality \u2014 I\u2019d call it marketing, and maybe capitalism. Market forces under capitalism exploit whatever fertile ground is available. Justice and sexual equality aren\u2019t driving increasing rates of male objectification \u2014 money is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently David Gianatasio at AdWeek wrote an analysis of the sudden rise in the sexual objectification of men in advertising. \u00a0It seems to have been spurred by the wild popularity of the Old Spice character\u00a0introduced in 2010, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. \u00a0Gianatasio calls it “hunkvertising.” \u00a0Indeed, rippling abdominal muscles suddenly seem to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":60172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,279,55,2103,2087,2093,23703,120],"class_list":["post-57502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-objectification","tag-gender","tag-gender-bodies","tag-gender-masculinity","tag-gender-objectification","tag-marketing","tag-sex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/12\/Screenshot-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57502"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62916,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57502\/revisions\/62916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}