HOW SEX IN ADVERTISEMENTS AFFECT OUR SOCIETY

The Children of Today
With the constant bombardment of sex throughout our life, advertisements have influence several generations of people and inflated their expectations of sex. They and have increased the presence of sex in every aspect of our lives because sex affects our minds and play a role in shaping social change. Sexy commercials are not just on televisions anymore, they are also very available in print media, billboards and even on the internet. Today, multiple televisions are available almost in all homes and internet is available in approximately 69% of American homes (White Fence, 2007). Women in the advertisements are made to seem easily accessible to anybody. Mostly, they are portrayed as a commodity or worse, a trophy that can easily be won just by buying the products that are being advertised.
One 2009 campaign for the design house Dolce and Gabbana drew much attention to its 30-second clip commercial because it had three male models in several stages of undress making love to one female model. This ad was interpreted by many viewers including me as gang rape because the female model looked drunk. What will an ad like this tell kids? According to a recent survey, American children and adolescents spend 22 to 28 hours per week viewing television, more than any other activity except sleeping (The Kaiser Family Foundation). With this high rate, it seems television is a major part of so many kids’ life. When I asked my friend’s fourteen (14) year-old cousin about what he thought of the ad, he said that the ad is telling him that he can have sex with whomever and whenever he wants if he wears the watch that was advertised. Even though I wanted to ask further questions, I didn’t because I was afraid to ask if he would coarse or force his partner to have sex with him. If this is a message a fourteen-year-old got in a 30-second ad, how about the even racier ads that are floating out there? As Pope John Paul II stated in May 2004, the media, including television and commercials, can wreck great harm on the family when it offers inadequate or even distorted vision of life, of the family itself and of religion and morality. This is a warning that parents should rise and protest against the explicit use of sex in advertisements.