Sex Sells - Design context essay by Sophie Bhullar

Sex Sells Lets talk about sex...ism, racism, homophibia! the discrimination in advertising!

SEx sells An essay exploring the minority communites that are either not or wrongly represented in the advertisment industry.

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For centuries

women, members of the BAME and LGBTQIA+ communities have not been the protagonists of their own narratives. Instead, men have constructed and enforced an ideology of the roles that each person should play in society.

It has only been in the past century that the narratives have slowly started to change (not without struggle and fight from the members of these groups). The advertisement industry has had a major influence on the development of our societal values and ideas of self-worth. Although some would say that that progress has been made, which is typically deemed as a positive consideration, when it comes to the advertisement industry there has been a lot of backlash to the dark and negative creative choices that have been made. One of the most notable occurrences in advertising is gender stereotyping, and because of this there is a large demographic and many communities that are neglected or alienated.

Beauty is subjective.

We all have our own version of what beauty is. Our upbringing and the things and people we are exposed to create a different perception for every individual. The masses being subjected to discriminatory rhetoric in beauty and the general human form, however, has been considerably damaging to the mental health of women, members of the BAME and LGBTQIA+ communities, children and men too.

The issue with people feeling as though they must live up to such beauty standards is that they are constantly changing. If you look through history, the ideal body type, hair style, fashion style and even technology have all dramatically changed as the social dynamics and shift. These changes have technological advances been so extreme that in a matter of decades, these standards have come to contradict themselves.

Advertisement

is based around, and plays on, the human psyche and the things that make us tick. The industry uses specific techniques to discreetly transfer knowledge from one person or people to another group of people in order to influence their habits and ideals. The aim of any advertisement has always been to grab our attention in order to get a strong return of mass interest and investments. Although this is ideal for the client (the person or company doing the selling), it has reinforced

and encouraged growth of the culture of body shaming, sexism, homophobia, racism and many other countless forms of discrimination. Beauty is subjective. We all have our own version of what beauty is.

In the beginning, the advertisement agencies were dominated by

heteronormative men and

produced work heavily revolving around the stereotypical roles that people were expected to play through societies eyes. These stereotypes still have a major effect in present day advertisement campaigns. An example would be in the 50s, women were put into boxes of being the dutiful

housewife only existing to serve their husbands and to look a certain way. This has been carried through generations until today, where women are hyper sexualised and still ridiculed or shamed for not living up to the unrealistic standards portrayed in the media. The women we see in adverts throughout history do not exist. They are there to satisfy someone else’s needs and desires, a figment of a male’s fantasy, an object.

Children,

who are still trying to figure out their place in the world, are incredibly susceptible to the images and messages that

Body Image enhancements Men have,

maybe unknowingly, created their own boxes too; they were expected to live up to their

own over exerted masculinity and to be the bread winners. In the present day, they too are over sexualised and given unrealistic standards that they feel they should live up to. In fact, the

modern era of advertisement does a poor job of representing the ‘average’ male. Campaigns, adverts and general mass media portray them as godly, chiselled, sculptures and are a disappointment if they fail to live up to this. The truth is that there is no average male, female or any other gender. Such a small amount of people should not have the power to choose what the average ideal person looks like.

have become a staple in popular culture. It is easier, and now so normalised, to manipulate your image into an ideal version of yourself with photoshop as they do in the media. To the point that it is often considered brave if you show your true, natural self. The realm between reality and what is on our screen has become lost. These digital enhancements have interfered with our ability to accept each other for who we are. This has led to a surge of demand for plastic surgery, quick weight loss diets and many other alterations. We have started to become what all these advertisements and campaigns tell us we should look like. What these agencies do is sell unattainable images that give us a distorted perception of ourselves and once they have created the anxiety of our distortions, they then sell us the fix for said distortion.

they are exposed to. This exposure is growing more and more dangerous with many children having access to some sort of digital device, it has caused generations of children to have early signs of mental health illnesses, body dysmorphia and disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. Kids are losing their innocence, with many wishing they could change the way that they are, and damaging ideals like gender stereotyping and lack of representation adding to this confusion. Teaching children that there are only 2 genders and boxing them up with assigned

roles, duties and even colours corresponding to whether you are a man or a woman, keeps inequality and out of date views circulating. A child is

impressionable and will try to do as they are told, so being surrounded by the media constantly telling you who you are or are not, and how you should or should not be, is unfair to those who aren’t even given a box to fit in.

A prime example

of how impressionable children are and how much they are taught to discriminate, was an experiment conducted in 1939. In this experiment conducted by Kenneth and Mamie Clark, two dolls – one black and one white – were presented to a group of children. They presented them to children of all races and asked them to pick which one they thought was more beautiful. Unsurprisingly, the doll that ‘won’ was the white doll. This experiment was then repeated 70 years later in 2009, and the results weren’t that different.

Internal racism stems

from systemic racism resulting from colonisation and has had a destructive effect on non-white people globally. The western world has infiltrated cultures and dehumanised people of colour, forcing the ideology that white (Caucasian) is superior. Colonisers have taken different versions of BAME cultural beauty ideals and claimed them as their own and as a result POC (people of colour) have resorted to whitewashing, plastic surgery, such as double eyelid surgery, changing natural hair types and colour, weight loss and countless other alterations to achieve a Eurocentric standard of beauty.Yet in the 21st century the natural features of a black woman, that was not acceptable in the past, has now become the latest beauty trend. So, whilst the Western world is still culturally appropriating, the BAME communities are still subjecting themselves to the Eurocentric standards.

The advertising industry has always

been biased towards heteronormativity. Campaign after campaign demonstrates the industries reluctance to accept that the LGBTQIA+ community deserves equal representation. It is not enough for campaigns to portray a heteronormative version of a gay couple, there needs to be more understanding of the experience and struggle that this community go through daily. In 1994 IKEA became one of the first ‘to depict a same-sex couple doing something together so

ordinary as buying a dining table’, normalising things that are deemed ‘not normal’ is important in the fight against discrimination and gender or body shaming. Separating men and women into boxes with roles may be how society has functioned in the past, however, a change in mindsets and societal views must occur especially if we want more than just white, heterosexual males to benefit from society and it’s endless marketing. Control over one’s should never be up for discussion by anyone other than that individual. The advertisement industry is one of the biggest

platforms that could promote global consciousness, acceptance and support of marginalised communities such as LGBTQIA+, BAME, women, those with disabilities, and countless other underrepresented groups.

But still, even in 2021, there is still so much reluctance to include these communities. Change is a risk and for many advertising agencies and their clients, that risk of losing sales and clients is not worth taking.

There should never be a price on a person’s human rights and identity but there is still a long way to go yet.

We are all born so beautiful The greatest tragedy is being convinced we are not -Rupi Kaur