Femininity & Advertising- Sex in Media

This week in class, we talked about how sex is present in the media.  Our class discussions seemed to focus on how women are taken advantage of, and misrepresented in advertisements.  When we brought in advertisements from magazines, almost every one that was posted on the board was of a woman.  While I do agree that women are misrepresented, and taken advantage of by men in advertisements, I would like to point out that this happens to men in advertisements, too.

       

I will start with this example of an advertisement that I came across about Axe Body Spray.

In this advertisement, these women work as airport security.  They are clearly attracted to this young man, so they abuse their power, and set the detectors off.  Each time that the detector goes off, he is forced to remove an article of clothing.  This continues until he is naked.  If something like this were to happen in real life, these women would be fired from their jobs, and arrested. 

Since Axe Body Spray is geared toward men, I am confused as to why they would even want to show a man being humiliated by women in public in an advertisement.  In this case, it appears that the company did not realize that they were not targeting their proper audience.  This advertisement seems to want women to buy their product for their boyfriends, but it was quite a stretch.  

I will end this blog entry with a picture of a male model form Ambercrombie and Fitch.

 http://www.abercrombie.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Casting?catalogId=10901&storeId=10051&langId=-1
This company is known for setting false images with their models.  In this particular picture the model is shirtless, has a muscular body, and is wet.  This Ambercrombie is implying that men should be very muscular in order to fit in, or else no one will like them.  I, personally, have a problem with this.  This makes nonathletic men feel self-conscious about their bodies and appearance.

It does not seem as if advertisements will ever stop promoting sex.  The people producing the advertisements will continue to push the limits.  I think that if people would do something about it, instead of just complaining about it, then maybe it might stop.