Sex sells or Sex kills?

I pulled up behind a Cadillac

We were waiting for the light

(…)

Oh, and the gas leaks

And the oil spills

And sex sells everything

Sex kills

This song by the legendary Johnny Mitchell, written during the riots in Los Angeles and published in 1994, talks about the misuse of natural resources, and consumerism and sends a clear message in a world that uses sexuality and sexist messages packed in a seemingly fun, attractive content in order to make a profit because – sex sells.

Advertising has great power and a kind of responsibility. It calls for action, sometimes imitation, it stays in the consciousness of consumers, and it can (often unintentionally) dictate and cause patterns of behavior in society.

Today, although people have higher expectations from the brand, knowing that it can bring the accumulated mass of positive feelings that further on lead to changes in society, the sexist advertising, and gender-stereotypical marketing are still present, and the image of women in the media space can not completely step out of the so-called "male gaze" (male perspective).

In a world where historical mistakes are tirelessly repeated, there are still bright examples that should not be forgotten but should be highlighted and serve as a guide.

In the middle of the last century, in the promotional material, women were mostly portrayed as mothers, wives, housewives, or body figures whose parts were observed individually, not as a whole: her face is either hidden or flawless, with a big smile, she wears an apron or she has nothing on, she serves her man or serves him as a sexualized object. The woman was the perfect model for all the products!

In addition to the sexualization of the female body, the problem is also contributed by the questionable gender-stereotypical marketing in which a rule is mostly – pink for girls, and blue for boys. There are unique positive examples of brands (or individuals) that avoided problematic content that sells well and managed to refine their name by connecting it with strong messages.

The well-known "We can do it!" poster by J. Howard Miller, which dates back to 1943 and was designed for the company Westhouse Electric, served as a motivational message to employees. Only later, this illustration becomes one of the symbols of feminism.

In 1981, the Lego company advocated the abolition of gender stereotypes and had the message "What it is is beautiful". The poster shows a red-haired girl, dressed "atypically" for girls. The goal of this campaign is to stop generalization and accept diversity.

The "Rube Goldberg" advertisement for "Toys for Future Engineers" from 2014 shows that it is time to stop planting dolls and teapots to girls and limiting their interests and future choices, and instead, we should try to encourage them to be bold and strive for equality.

GoldieBlox & Rube Goldberg

I am sure that there are still a handful of such bright examples.

What is evident today is that, despite efforts to reduce sexism, sexualization and gender, but also gender stereotyping, many companies fail in this intention, which can often go wrong.

Many companies today profit by forcing messages like this, and they sometimes make a mistake, such as Laguna's recent promotion of Karma Brown's book, which called on people to write their "recipe for the perfect woman" and then read the book to see that such perfection does not exist, and that a woman's qualities still cannot be reduced to grams of certain qualities extracted from her grandmother's recipe book.

The recent Extreme Intimo campaign tried to send a "body positive" message, but it had the opposite effect, because it has a limited number of sizes in its range and thus says: women's curves are beautiful, but only up to XL.

In the end, in addition to all the ways in which these topics are used in marketing and in general, the question arises whether the time has come for the famous motto "sex sells" to change its context? Sex is no longer and should not be a taboo topic, nor should it be problematic as such.

The sex used so far that sells everything is at the same time sex that kills – it kills the real picture, the beauty of diversity and authenticity, naturalness. Sex that sells, sells stereotypes, objectifies the female body, and thus generally slows down society, instead of educating, not mystifying, not tabooing, but positively provoking and finally normalizing a woman and her body.

Author: Irena Parezanović, Junior Copywriter

Sources:

Does sex sell? An in-depth look at sex in advertising

Seksizam u reklamama – ogledalo rodnih stereotipa i mizoginije

17 marketing campaigns with a positive message for women