The power of media is undoubted at present due to its strong impact on the public. No company producing goods or financial services currently neglects the possibilities which media offers to them. Still;, media remains the main the main persuasive medium which influences minds and tho7ughts of pre-adults. Even though companies have many ways to provide the promotion of their goods and services, advertising has been and will remain one of the most powerful tools which companies are using (Gauntlett 5). The success of the media product (film, advertisement, news story, etc.) is in many ways pre-destined by the media strategy.
In the modern era, using sex in media messages becomes one of the most popular practices for companies. They do no longer need to attract consumers with media based on competitive prices or higher quality than their competitors. Instead, they use sex as a peculiar magnet which is going to attract consumers to their stores year after year.
At the beginning of the 21st century, media does not desensitize pre-adult to sex and violence, because these two messages have the profound impact on cognitive thinking and personal beliefs of viewers. For instance, sexy commercials get fixed in the people’s minds and always have a major immediate effect on the consumer. Practice shows that advertisements can have both a major immediate effect and minor effects the influence of which on the potential customers will take a long time. The major immediate effect can occur in the case when the company has something new to say in the advertisement.
However, if the product which is being advertised is not new, does not bear many new functions, or failed customers in the past, the advertising strategy has to be chosen very carefully. In this case, application of sex in the advertisement is the best answer. It is the most efficient strategy. There is little hope the advertisement of the product will be met with much interest and involves any of the customers’ attention, unless the commercial has a beautiful model in it.
Especially this strategy works on the low-involvement product categories in which a customer does not care much which brand to buy- for example, oil, yogurt, juices and many other items. How can the producers make the consumers choose their brand of oil, if there are hundreds of other brands? Certainly, they can achieve that by making their commercial the most appealing to customers. Sex cannot fail them in such a case (Gauntlett 43).
Many pre-adults simply want something exciting on TV, while reading newspapers and magazines, or when driving by billboards every now and then. They get tired of ordinary media stories which do not have any interesting features in them. They do not pay any attention to dull advertisements in magazines. They would not pay attention to the billboard. Both boys and girls watch television for hours. They might also spend hours reading magazines. They do not react to an ordinary media messages after spending so much time doing routine work. However, for many of them media with some sex in it would be like a breath of fresh air.
Men “wake up” when they see a beautiful woman model in a commercial or in middle of a page in a magazine, and women “wake up” when they see an attractive man. They all get excited when they see a bunch of young people enjoying life (Image 2). Companies take advantage of that and constantly introduce different sexual objects into their advertisement. Sex manages to “wake” people up, and this feature has to be taken advantage of by marketing managers. It is true that body cannot be used as a commodity. There are many cases when women are exploited. Many people oppose to prostitution because it makes women sell their bodies.
They are also against making women into sex slaves and forcing them to service many clients a day. However, it is necessary to pay a little bit more attention to the analysis of sex in advertising as selling body as a commodity, because it is an entirely different problem (Greer, 87).
For many pre-adults, women and men taking part in sexy media messages become symbols of social life and behaviour patterns. However, they do nothing more than showing it. Besides, most of advertisements do not really show naked people- they rather give a hint so that consumers can look at them and imagine all the rest. Nudity does not attract attention as much as a hint on it. Therefore, advertisements which just give hints cannot be considered similar to prostitution.
It is a piece of art. We all admire beautiful paintings of Renoir. He painted naked women though. We look at them and think that the painter’s works are outstanding. We do not consider them obscene by any stretch of imagination. Of course, many media messages with sex in it are not as beautiful as Renoir’s paintings. However, many of them can also be regarded as a piece of art- peculiar kind of art. The body in such advertisements is not simply a commodity. Such advertisements show the beauty of body and make us desire it, because it is so beautiful (Gauntlett 88).
The research studies prove that sex education helps both children and community to destroy myths and false images of sexual practices and educate them about contraception and STDs. Sexual messages at media give children a possibility to choose between abstinence and sexual relations. Sex education becomes true primary prevention easily recognizable because it will name and speak explicitly to and about its outcome population of children. Denial of the importance of these differences is an expression of disrespect for the lives and sexuality of children. The most obvious benefit of such simple changes is that prevention will be more effective, because the outcome population will know it is being spoken to and about what. Such changes will also help correct two other important problems contributing to HIV transmission (Macdonald, 91).
At the beginning of the 21st century, media does not desensitize pre-adult to violence because it is impossible to prepare an individual to violent scenes and dehumanize a person. The focus on process rather than results is understandable. If educators tell children simply to put on condoms, educators can talk to all. But if they wish to talk about the complex psychosocial reasons men are not putting on condoms, the discussion will have to be very different for girls and boys.
In many media channels, the main slogan is that sex sells. Despite the media emphasize on sex in the collection and some disapproval from older people concerning that, the messages are a huge success among students. Yes, the modern media encouraged sex and free attitude to life. But that is the way of thinking of many young people nowadays. The media only made clothes which reflected this way of thinking, and achieved huge success during it. All of the young girl students zfd interested in what media has had to offer. No matter what height, colour, shape a girl is in, media had something sexy for her to offer (Somers and Surmann 17).
Sex in media is a very controversial issue because it is opposed by many people and welcome by others. I do not consider sex in advertising immoral because some of the commercials with sex in them are actually very entertaining and some of the advertisements in magazines are really beautiful. It is true that sometimes companies go too far and advertise their products with very provocative visuals.
However, I do not think that they cross the line in most cases because they all realize: the advertisement will be enjoyed by customers only when they add “just enough” sex into it. There should be not too much in order not to make the advertisement obscene, but not too little either in order to make the customer interested. In my opinion, the most efficient advertisements are those which have beautiful models in them with slight hints on sex. Customers will always buy products advertised with the help of such commercials. Obscene advertisements do not have a good influence on public; therefore, there is no sense to use them in marketing (Williams and Bonner 4).
In sum, sex in media is not immoral but it does not desensitize young girls and boys to sex and violence. As the research of media has shown, this medium is one of the leaders of “selling sex”. However, all of the media are extremely beautiful and there is no possibility to call them obscene. The most important issue which needs to be taken into consideration is that a “golden mean” has to be found between what is beautiful and what is obscene or provocative. More is at stake, however, than safer sex education alone: regulation poses a false set of connections that threaten the well-being of counter-normative sexualities.
In society, while such unproductive responses certainly reflect the feelings of some, an historical and psychological examination of sex education suggests that failures are very often not failures of primary prevention, but failures to accurately conceptualize the nature of primary prevention. Media cannot desensitize pre-adult to violence and sexual behavior because performs information and educational functions only, and cannot change or reshape emotions and feelings of pre0adults.
Works Cited
Gauntlett, D. Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction. Routledge; 1 edition, 2002.
Greer, Ch. Sex Crime and the Media: Sex Offending and the Press in a Divided Society. Willan Publishing (UK); illustrated edition edition, 2003.
Macdonald, Hon. David. Sex Stereotyping in the media: Images of Women. Quebec: Canadian Government Publishing Centre, 1979.
Somers, Ch. L., Surmann, A. T. Adolescents’ Preferences for Source of Sex Education. Child Study Journal, 34 (1) (2004): 47.
Williams, M. T., Bonner, L. Sex Education Attitudes and Outcomes among North American Women Adolescence 41 (162), (2006): 1-16.