Selling Sex In Advertising

What are we selling again?

Are we selling products or selling sex? Ads have changed throughout the years to make products sexier. Marketing reps make everything about sex. What happened to just selling the liquor for its taste, smell, or social drinking? Advertisers have changed all the suggestive selling ideas from innocent fun to what the brain sees as a normal nowadays, by ads revolving around sexuality. The consumer realize that if you flaunt a half-naked woman in a picture, that the majority will consider to drink that type of liquor hoping to have some of the various effects that they see portrayed in the advertisement will occur for them. Promotional campaigns have changed the way we perceive women on a daily basis. Women are seen as

sex objects and stereotyped at all costs. Female ae beautiful on the inside, however the only beauty elaborated on is the outside and only then if you have all the right curves in all the right places will you get noticed. We live in a society that our children see all of the ads at such a young age that they do not even see a problem. They grow to understand that sex is advertising. SKYY VODKA, a top shelf liquor known for its great taste, has to put a sexy, half naked female as the main focus point of this ad to sell a bottle of liquor. Jean Kilbourne, an influential scholar on gender stereotypes in advertising, discussed a point in her documentary Killing Ys Softly 4 that “we live in an environment that surrounds us with unhealthy images and constantly sacrifices our health and our sense of well-being for the sake of profit” (Kilbourne). The stereotype of women only being noticed for sex appeal is expected to increase sales in advertising with this ad for SKYY VODKA.
The background is a very bright blue sky with white puffy clouds down halfway on the sky making it look like they are touching the ocean water. A female is laying in a lounge chair on the beach. The setting is an alluring ocean view.
The body type of the female is a blonde haired girl with her hair pulled back as though she had just laid out after a swim. She is a tan thin girl with flawless skin. She is wearing a string topped bikini which barely covers her large, perky, unreal breasts. She has silver color fingernails which match the rim of her glasses which she is raising from atop of her eyes to her forehead to try and look above her. She is also wearing a silver ring on the same hand that she is lifting. Take notice that this is her right hand and that her left hand is laying down to her side where we cannot see if she is married or not. Her face looks to be a very solemn look. She is centered on the bottom of the page with a male figure standing over top of her with his thighs closely to her head so that she would be removing her sunglasses to look straight up at him. We can tell he is a white male from his hands in the photo even though we do not see is face because the only part of him we can see is mid-section of his stomach area and below. In one of his hands he is holding 2 martini glasses crossed at the base of the glasses and in the other hand he has the full size bottle of the SKYY VODKA and this glass is a dark blue bottle. The vodka logo SKYY in large font centered near the top of the bottle. The work VODKA is underneath of this centered as well to the bottle but in a large thin font. The gentleman is showing his power over her by standing over her. He is a business man, probably successful and we gather that from him wearing a dark navy blue suit jacket and suit pants in the middle of a sunny day out on the beach. The bottom button of his dress jacket is unbuttoned giving the feeling that he is in a relaxed situation. He is straddled standing up over top of the female who is laying down. You are able to see the ocean and sky in the background between his legs. If you also take notice in this advertisement photo that there are many triangles in this photo. There is a triangle shape between his legs looking into the ocean, the martini glasses, left and right triangle on each side of the mans’ body to the side of the photo, and even her face is in a triangular shape as well. Also take notice that there are many shades of blue in this photo such as his suite, the bottle, the sky, reflection of the sky in her sunglasses, the bikini she is wearing, and the ocean water as well. These are all subconscious ideas that go into our brain when we see this without even paying that much attention to it to analyze it.
The manner in which is standing over her is aggressive and shows him being a dominant factor. She is the helpless female being towered over and only wearing a small bikini to cover her body.
This ad has a few different elements of stereotype included. Even though this ad is very sexual it also has gentle areas. The ocean is in a calm state, the sky is very peaceful, and she is relaxing before the man decides to straddle her. We see a highly elevated appeal of the ideal female beauty. A voluptuous, perfect bodied female is the focal point of the ad. Publicizing sex appeal to be a normal day on the beach with no having to report for work. With a tall romantic stranger appearing with only the ability to see is mid-section and below. A fully dressed male figure on the beach in the middle of the day fully clothed and overly dressed straddling a woman is giving the signal of the helpless female syndrome. He is standing in a firm stance. The male standing in the picture sporting a long sleeved jacket and long pants with barely showing no skin on a sunny day at the beach with the female wearing close to nothing with a string bikini top and bottom if sex sells why are the both not equally dressed or should I say why are they not both barely dressed equally? The reason is because women are depicted sexually for selling products than men.
The advertising world has evolved over the last 50 years with many changes to adjust to common day and I do not think it is for the better well-being of people in interest.

Advertising has shifted to a negative outcome. I can relate to the tactics to keep up with modern advertising. Sex appeal unfortunately is what sells products. Representatives seize the moments to be the best in the marketing world to have the leading edge over competitors. The affects that young girls cannot shake off these days are that women are to be an ideal sex object have everyone lust after them. Girls are taught early to visualize and to obtain the best body necessary to be a perfect idolized sex figure even though this figure is not all that perfect and really does not exist much either. Most ideal bodies we see are made by computer imaging to change, sculpt, or repair to make in the eyes of the buyers, the flawless perception of female beauty. I feel as though women need to be treated equal in advertising. I am not saying since we are going to put a half-naked woman on the beach that we need to put a half-naked man with her. I am saying that the advertising world needs to take a step back and see how this affects the world today. This is way bigger that just advertising it branches off to many different areas to broad to get into on this

paper.