media images featuring gratuitous "hot chicks": C/D?

::ducks::

it does bother me. i can't pretend that it doesn't. i mean, if i seriously cared, i'd make a serious effort to avoid all products with sexist advertising campaigns from the swedish bikini team to yorkie chocolates. maybe i should... but the products involved are so obviously not pitched at me that i wouldn't consider purchasing them to boycott them anyway.

and i'm just as guilty. ok, i mean, there aren't naked julian casablancas all over the media... i don't know that i respond, though. i will stop and look at ads that feature incredibly pretty boys. but i can't remember the last time that i bought something because of them (unless it was a datsuns album).

men of the board, please explain to us. does this shit ACTUALLY work? (ok, we don't have a good sample population here, but surely some of the boys here have to have neanderthal mates who DO respond to bikini team style adverts or something...)

no, but it's funny.
my moto is "SELL ME THE LIFESTYLE! I NEEEED IT!!"

Ummm, well, yes and no. Yes if their aim was to make me look at the adverts, no if their aim was to make me buy their stuff. If that qualifies me as a neanderthal, well, I'll take that kicking - from my point of view, the day I stop looking=the day I DIE - but I would also die if I caught myself buying something just 'cause I liked the look of the woman in the advert.

The thing that gets me is that they fill women's magazines with exactly the same sort of brainless (albeit superficially gorgeous) females as they stick in the men's ones. Although probably marginally less top-heavy. It would irk me no end if magazines aimed at me were chock full of "this is what you should look like" pictures. (This is why I have never bought "Men's Health"). Discuss, or not, as the case may be.

it's just really odd and i don't get it.

Oh, sorry it wasn't Lynx but the AXE EFFECT deodorant spray I was thinking of.

Isn't that your problem though? If you don't want to be a "sporty blokey competitive fastcar granitejaw sixpack biceped sexmonkey"
I can't see why you would feel inadequate about it. And if you do want to be one, I feel sorry for you.

anonymous I never said anything about 'wants' - how do you think they are determined/chosen? That's what this whole thing is about, isn't it?

I look more at a guy's face though.

i mean, when it comes down to it, i'd much much MUCH rather look at malnourished, skinny, drug-addled dirty dronerock boy physiques than yer typical muscleman. but most of the male models i've known have actually been far more on the lean and wiry side, rather than the fabio side. so this is what i tend to think of as beefcake, rather than fabios or musclemen.

modern suits were DESIGNED in the victorian age in order to HIDE defects of physique, rather than accentuate musculature. when suits were first invented, muscular physique was a sure sign that you were a manual laborour, and hence working class. suits were designed to make men look wider, fatter and more leisurely.

i lost all interest in the datsuns when i found out that they were really health-obsessed sports nuts. and then the NME killed it this week by publishing photos of them WASHING and COMBING THEIR HAIR. gah! what are they trying to DO TO ME?!?!? i guess it was just as well. i could never like an NME band.

i agree. body-obsessed males are fucking boring. as are hair-obsessed boys, unfortunately. the only boys i really find interesting are the ones obsessed with playing guitar or making art...

Maybe part of the reason that there are so many women in women's mags is the whole idea that "You should buy this product for YOU, just YOU, as an INDEPENDANT WOMAN..." and putting a guy in the ads wouldn't be a smooth move there... But I don't care. Bring on the hot guys! I want to see them in all sorts of womens' products ads!

Let's see... when are men used in ads geared towards women? Hmm... there seem to be quite a few household/ female functions product ads that make men seem really stupid. Like, stupid husbands! What do they know about dish detergent? And stupid boyfriends, what do they know about my time of the month??? But those guys are rarely cute. Just dumb looking.

ok, discuss...

http://www.thestrokes.com/photos/11c/11c2.jpg

feminism is BORING!!! didn't you learn anything from that thread over on ILM?

My problem with the "dumbing down of men" commercials isn't the dumbing down itself, it's the reaction the advertisers are trying to coax out of women -- like we're supposed to be so overjoyed at having an image (a domestically incompetent male) that we can identify with.

I think we can talk about feminism and cute boys simultaneously as they are not exclusive (at least not to me).

http://www.thestrokes.com/photos/1t/1t16.jpg

I suspect that a fair number of men discover that (despite protests to the contrary) quite a few women really do want (or think they want) someone with those traits, and quietly resent their absence.

(Fortunately, not every woman does by a longshot, just as not every man wants a waif-thin madonna-whore etc.)

Is the guy on the left Catherine Keener's fraternal twin?

(sorry, i'm dumb)

Also there are loads of houseworky ads with men where the message is "so simple, even a man can do it!" - there used to be the flipside of this in DIY and car ads, but they can't get away with them any more.

I note that everyone here is saying that they are not lured by sexy women in ads/on covers. Obviously not everyone is affected the same, and I'm not suggesting anyone here is lying or deluded, but these tactics do work. I remember there being a debate in a photography mag my ex-wife bought, where there were complaints on grounds of sexism that every cover had a pouting young woman. The final word was from the editor, saying that the times they had tried putting great photographs on the cover of any other subject, sales plummetted. And advertising doesn't all go on instinct - there is a colossal amount of study and analysis of what works, and that's why we keep seeing the women in bikinis. It's supporting a sexist society, certainly, but it's there because we have that sexist society. It's a touch cycle to break free of, which is why progress has been so slow over the decades.

http://birds.cornell.edu/BOW/TUTI/images/mcqtuftedtitmouse.gif

And as far as I can see, chicks dig gay-acting gay guys, only with slight resentment at their being unavailable.

i know the advertisements you speak of, maria, many of them were done by alfons mucha, and they're absolutely amazing. advertisement as art. literally.

Probably they fear that gay guys dig gay-acting straight guys.
:^p

fuck, i think the strokes are cute girls, DAMN YOU KATE!! ;-)

that guy doesnt look like catherine keener

the images of women though, feel like outright hatred. they say to me "its your job to be here and look pretty and act dumb otherwise either stop existing or deal with humiliation". i can sympathise with men if they feel degraded by their objectification, but i wouldn't feel as strongly about it because, me being a female, it wouldn't be as personal to me.

anyway i prefer real life people to two dimensional figures on a screen/poster etc. cos real people are wayyy sexiii.

Obv. this won't work with di.

The most blatant example of this I've ever seen was a big billboard at the supermarket that had a gratuitious picture of Chocolate Mud Cake and then the name of the in-supermarket banking service. What a classic!

I love the Lynx ad where the chiX0r borrows her boyfs deodorant and other chiX0rs get hot over her all day and then she goes home and gets angry at boyf.

This ad almost made me buy Lynx but I sniffed it at the supermarket and it's fucking horrible!

It's interesting that you say this: the messages I get from images of men in advertising and the media seem pretty analogous -- "it's your job to be strong and handsome and aggressive and wealthy and powerful, otherwise either go away or acknowledge your inferiority" -- but "hatred" isn't really the word that comes to mind. It just seems like the same problem that pervades a great deal of Western culture -- a warped attitude towards power, and a tendency towards identification with the aggressor and devaluation of the "weak". For me, it isn't so much about objectification as it is about those things, and about the (seemingly hardwired) tendency in contemporary advertising to seek to undermine human contentment at every possible turn.

I don't generally feel embarrassed by images of naked women in advertising -- the naked ones being quite scarce in the States, for the most part -- but I do at times feel patronized by them, depending on the context. I think that the reason they're effective has a lot to do with the fact that the adolescence of most boys is characterized by chronic sexual frustration, which sets a template of unfulfilled desire through which many men can be consciously or unconsciously manipulated. So I think that, while the use of the images does indeed have strong sexist overtones, their resonance with viewers depends more on loneliness and unfulfillment than on sexism. But that's just my take on it.

It's then intensified by the fact that it is everywhere and, while not unquestioned, isn't restricted either.

I still have to remind myself that normal people have normal bodies and that magazine chiX0rs are very unusual. It is only my intellect that can believe that. My heart/mind/emotions still tell me that I should be trying to achieve the *ideal* and that the *ideal* is how we should all be under our clothes.

I love medical books because the photos in them are of real people - with blemished skin, saggy pot bellies, droopy tits, love-handles, body hair, wide waists, fat thighs and other ugly-bits. When I look at these photos I feel fucking gorgeous in comparison.

Some people are not afflicted with unrealistic ideals like I am.

Those images are supposed to be "aspirational," but for me at least they're so far removed from the possible that they make me either laugh or mope.

The last gratuitous hot-chiXoR advert that really shocked me - several years ago now - was in Q for some kind of fitted stereo cabinet and it had a woman in a bikini standing next to it with a caption along the lines of "This bird is almost as tasty as our pine-finished shelving" (OK it was a bit more sophisticated than that but I am pretty sure the word 'tasty' appeared.) The tone was sort of ruefully mischievous though - like 'hey lads, you know and we know that we cant really get away with this any more but wasnt it great when we could, eh?' And then as if by magic they could get away with it again!

(btw am I really the only person who thinks that character on the left up there looks like a frightened rabbit caught in the glare of oncoming headlights?)

that's all.

i was very lucky in that... at the school i went to, they started feminist indoctrination quite early on. right about the onset of puberty, they started "womens studys" courses which showed films like "killing us softly" which showed how images in advertising twist and subvert our body images. just because we were taught to be AWARE of it from an early age doesn't mean that it didn't still fuck us up... but i could look at the disproportionate bodies and the airbrushing and recognise it.

Thanks for reviving this part of the discussion -- I was gonna bring it up, but I didn't wanna be a brat.

semi-naked chix/chix in bikinis... is this ever not gratuitous? unless the product being advertised is a brand of swimware or maybe a holiday resort?

what would you refer to as gratuitous?

my personal bugbear is when i open guitar magazines, and there are photos of hot chicks posing legs akimbo on top of amplifiers. i don't know how to take that. because often, those will be the ONLY females in the magazine, in the ads, posing with equipment. what am i supposed to think? because, yes, i own some of that equipment, and sure, i have sat with my legs astride my cabinet, it's quite fun when you're pumping out some deep bass grooves. but i KNOW that is not the implication of the chick being there. so these images are subversive to me, even though not subversive in the implication.

Read my opening post.

...as decoration or suggestion.

It's my contention, for what it's worth, that this conflation is much less likely to have any power over someone who already feels secure and content with that aspect of their life. After all, one of the main purposes of advertising is to sell a product to people who aren't buying it already, and one of the most direct ways to do that is to get them to believe that purchasing the product will in some way bring them closer to their hopes and dreams. Advertising isn't particularly good at suggesting the kind of inner traits that one seeks in a partner, but it can provide a big enough barrage of images of people so that the average person is apt to find at least one that resonates with him/her -- a resonance which, at this point in our history, is likely to be at least slightly influenced by the images with which one was bombarded earlier in one's life.

Taking a cue from JBR, it'd be interesting to see that most men would be as responsive to a picture that actually showed a woman engaging with the product being advertised, as opposed to just standing there and looking pretty. On the other hand, one of the best-known sexual cues is sustained eye contact, and advertisers certainly know that too. It would be interesting, as well, to see whether that cue functions as effectively, in terms of connoting sexual availability and desire, if the person is doing something else at the same time. It's possible that, when compared with posed, inactive shots, still images of men "in action" -- at work, at play -- are more compelling to het/bi women than still images of women "in action" are to het/bi men; I guess that, too, might be worthwhile material for a future study.

I dunno. It kind of seems like any time that you have people in a an ad for a product, they're going to be there as decoration of some sort. I mean, the people aren't what's being sold, obviously. Personally, I have no problem with this. Pictures of pretty boys and girls, whether they make me want to run out and buy a product or not, are a good deal more fun to look at than said product all by itself.