Sex Advertising and how women are portrayed in perfume advertising.

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Introduction

Sex advertising refers to the use of sex appeal in trying to sell your products. Erotic imageries are more attractive to the eye and they get attention from us human beings, the images displayed are such as cheese cake, nudity or at times even beef cake (Taflinger, 1996). This mode of advertising began long ago where beautiful carvings of women bodies were made. Sex advertising relies on the foundation that individuals are very curious to know and find out more about sex hence making them watch advertisements that are sexually appealing (Garfield, 2000). Many business entrepreneurs are slowly adapting to this as a better way of advertising, the use of sex appeal in the advertisements of perfumes has begun recently and is taking the market by storm. Religious leaders consider this as laziness and insist that they are better ways of advertising that will not necessarily corrupt the morals of the public. Sex advertisements are mainly done by women raising several debates from the female gender as to why women are portrayed as sex objects and toys.

Although the use of sexual advertisement attracts immediate attention from the public, it is also demographically limited; this is because some countries like China and Tanzania in Africa are very strict on the content that is circulated through print media, especially magazines. Some of the companies using sexual appeal as the main means of their advertisement claim the products at times influence their users to be more sexually active than they were before. Some form of sexual advertising could also be a major cause to the backlash of the product especially those involving pictures of nude teenagers. Parents are vehemently opposing this. Calvin Klein in 1995 for example, displayed very indecent nude pictures of young teenagers dressed in their underwear and this was not received warmly by the child welfare associations and parents (Sischy and Ingrid, 2011).

Sex advertisement and culture

Hofstede, (1991) observed that different communities in the world have different culture, values and norms. Culture is a society’s way of doing things or simply a way of life of a particular society. A communities culture influences their way of thinking and this even reflects in there advertisements. China and the USA for example have two different cultures. China comes from the eastern culture while USA comes from the western culture. Apart from that USA is said to have a culture that is based on individualism while China has a culture where by they have total and maximum respect for women, their values such as fidelity and chastity. Hence the advertisements of China are more soft sell since they have less emotional appeal and the advertisements in the USA are more erotic due to the intense emotional appeal. Models in China rarely feature in run-way fashion where attention mainly focused on the body; they are mostly used to advertise cosmetics products where only their face is used. They are considered and viewed as very decent.

Effects of international media in the spread of sex advertisements.

Globalization has led to the interaction of several diverse cultures and has also boosted trade globally. The western culture, particularly the USA is regarded as the house and root of advertisement. These advertisements have since spread to the rest of the world. In their defense, proprietors and managers of mass media companies have often reiterated that they do not function as independent entities but they rely on the society’s needs before they create content. In the past, the press and media were always at loggerheads on various issues. The press served as the public watchdog as they probed mass media on their efficiency in disseminating information that was educative, culturally sensitive and educational. However, monopoly and capitalism have made the