The Built-In Sexual Overtone

Reading Summary

The article emphasizes on how companies have and still use sex and gender as a marketing strategy. The article uses several examples such as a simple perfume to illustrate the dissatisfaction felt by men and women as they realize that the quality of their products are extremely stereotypical of their sex. However, the article also discusses the evolution of sex as a strategy by saying that it has changed to attempt a fair and unbiased portrayal of their audience. For example, the article explains how car companies have changed some of their old selling tactics from “mistress to wife”. They made a switch from trying to sell convertibles using women’s sexuality and the “mistress” adventure to selling a sedan car as “the wife” for its reliability and stability. The article further explains that the change has been seen in multiple other companies such as lingerie, female products and also male products because both men and women complained about the high and unrealistic expectations made by ads. Although, there has been a change, the reading says that there are still ads that enforce this unrealistic and stereotypical marketing strategy in their ads.

Outside Example

The reading made me think of one of my favorite shows, “The Bold Type” which is about a global women’s magazine which fights against stereotypical images of women and sometimes men and other genders too. In the last episode, one of the main topics was the fight for advertising a company that sells products for women’s pleasure. The seemingly appropriate ads of the company were not allowed to be posted on the walls of the subway because the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) saw them as inappropriate. Yet, the women of the magazine continued fighting for the right to put the ads because the MTA permitted the use of erectile dysfunction ads which illustrated the image of a corn shaped as a penis to be in the walls of the subway but not the women’s pleasure one which was clearly appropriate. Since the show typically references to real-life discrimination/sexism conflicts, I decided to look into the situation of the women’s pleasure ads and found out that it was a real issue. Not so long ago, in early 2019, the subway walls in New York City were plastered with ads featuring cactuses standing and slumping to advertise erectile dysfunction drugs from the company, Hims. After seeing the ads, the Dame company which is a company featuring products for women’s pleasure requested permission to add some of their ads to the subway walls as well. Yet, the decision of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to not allow the ads to be posted was not what was expected. Therefore, the Dame products decided to sue the MTA for stereotyping sexual pleasure as an activity just allowed for men. The NYTimes article that reported the situation described that women’s sexual wellness represents a large and growing market but companies trying to address it constantly face barriers that businesses aimed at the sexual wellness of men, do not.

Connection

The connection between the fight for women’s sexual wellness ads and the reading is pretty obvious. The reading talks about the use of stereotypical sexual interests to advertise products. In the reading, there is an example of the difference of the scent, strength and the ads of a perfume between men and women. In my example, there wasn’t even a chance for the ad featuring women’s pleasure to be posted because it was seen as “unnecessary” and “inappropriate”. This portrayal of sexual wellness and pleasure for women as being unnecessary is absurd and started because of the idea that women don’t pursue sexual satisfaction and that for them sex isn’t as important as it is for men because of their “pureness” and “delicacy.” All these stereotypes have been altered by our culture which tends to categorize women who are interested in sex as “slutty.” To add on, the reading exemplifies this by describing how men’s advertisements have used men’s sexual desires of “getting a hot woman” to advertise their products, such as cars, that have nothing to do with sexuality. Hence, when it comes to advertising for men’s sexual pleasure, it is automatically accepted by society whereas, women’s pleasure isn’t because apparently “women could never want that.” Yet, women have been fighting for the right to promote sexual wellness not only for pleasure but also to improve sexual health. This fight and change in advertising sexual health is very similar to how the reading stated that women fought for ads to promote respect towards their role as partners and to stop illustrating them as mistresses.