The use of sexuality has become overtly pervasive in our society. Even ads that are targeted for the younger generation are starting to be plagued with sexual connotations.
I found this Lego ad particularly disturbing. Especially since Lego is a Danish company that sells children’s toys that consists mainly of plastic building blocks and bricks. In this ad, the first thing you notice is the emphasis on this woman’s chest. Her cleavage is censured and perhaps too graphic to show. The seductive look on her face with her gaze directed at the male suggests that she wants to lure the man onto the bed. Her hand is placed on the bed implicating that she’s not going anywhere. This male’s hand is placed strategically near his hip, insinuating that he’s about to drop trou but hesitates as he looks at the woman on the bed with admiration.
Now this is a Lego ad. Why is Lego, a children’s toy company promoting this kind of ad in the first place? Kids shouldn’t watch too much TV, that’s why. This ad has nothing to do with the promotion of Legos. Just a clear and provocative message to children and adults, whatever you watch on TV, just don’t watch too much of what’s going on this ad.
When we think of diapers, we associate them with infants and toddlers. I happened to stumble upon a diaper ad that just happens to sell diapers in a very unconventional way. What I found especially convoluted about this South Korean diaper ad promoting Good Nites pull-ups was a toddler with a glistening chest of body oil selling more than just diapers. The look in the male toddler’s eyes is quite provocative with him holding a rope around his torso. I think the main purpose of the ad was to show customers how great the diapers on the toddler looked and that this is how your toddler can look with them on too. Although this ad serves as a parody of the David Beckham Armani underwear ad on the right, it has potential child molesters and pedophiles thinking something else.
Although the media is known to promote their ads with young, svelte and sexy looking women, a new wave of curvier women has started to embrace the ads in many glossy magazines. A classic example of this is Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty and Self-Esteem Fund, which features a wide diversity of realistic and fuller voluptuous looking women posing in their underwear who deviate from the mainstream Victoria’s Secret model body type.
In recent years magazines such as Seventeen and Glamour have begun to feature full-figured models in their spreads. The popular teenage magazine, Seventeen has even featured the “curvy” winner of America’s Top Model, Whitney Thompson on their cover. To help developing girls enhance their self-esteems, Seventeen has even launched a self-esteem campaign similar to that of Dove’s Self-Esteem Fund, called the Seventeen Body Peace Project to help young developing girls feel proud of their bodies, no matter what their shape or size.
In the future, more ads should feature more realistic looking woman, so that there will be more appreciation for fuller-looking women which will allow many people to gradually change their unrealistic views about women needing to looking stick skinny in order to be deemed attractive. Curvier women can just be as appealing as skinner women if not more so.
Picture Sources:
- Lego Ad
- Toddler in Diaper & David Beckham in Armani
- Dove Beauty Ad
- Victoria Secret Models in Body by Victoria Underwear
- Whitney Thompson, winner of America's Next Top Model
- Full-figured Women in Glamour
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