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NEWSLETTER
Sex Sells
10/3/2013
We all know the old adage that sex sells. You've all see the posters on the tube, billboards, the perfume adverts on the TV. There's a hot guy, sweat dripping down his forehead, and a sexy girl, with sweat dripping everywhere - and they're using their bodies to sell a product. It's saturated into our mainstream culture and is something that has many arguments for and against - feminist camps are even divided on the empowerment vs. abuse line that these sorts of things seem to tread.
This is further evident in the way that a lot of people are sold - through music for instance - or celebrity. You need only glance at Miley Cyrus' recent escapades to see that this young woman's public face has been sexualised in order to sell her product to a larger audience. There are men out there who wouldn't feel comfortable fantasising about her now that she's above age, with her Disney Club persona still intact. Now that she's a sexualised young woman - it's all fair game. No matter how you look at it, this is exploitative and corruptive, and just goes to demonstrate the warped way in which the mainstream media approaches the idea of sex and empowerment.
We can also look to the plethora of sex tapes that many celebrities have released throughout the years to see how again, the act of sex, is exploited in order to add worth to someone who is otherwise floundering. Do you really believe that Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian et al., didn't have creative control over these video releases? Kim's was so well edited it beggars belief that anyone out there could think otherwise. Once more, sex is thrown into the lions den of mainstream media to be torn apart ad tedium, just to wring every salacious drip it can.
But what of selling sex? By the standards of most countries, Great Britain included, this is something that is seen as morally reprehensible. Women and men who use their bodies in order to have a career and an income are treated transparently as 'prostitutes' and 'whores', whilst their rights to basic human nature are stripped away from them. They are outlawed and demonised by the government as well as the media, the same government and media that endorses pop-diva nip slips and state funded sex scandals. The amount of MPs having been caught with working girls (and guys!) is incredible, given the legal stance taken to the sale of sex.
So I wonder, what truly is the issue here? Why are some women happy to sell their bodies, and feel empowered to do so. Why are some men happy to pay for the experience, whilst others turn their noses up and launch into tirades about abuse? As far as I can see it, we are abused by the media outlets, pop culture sirens and amoral MPs which manipulate our thoughts on the matter, causing us to misunderstand our sexual identities, which in turn cause a climate of guilt and shame around something which ought to be as natural as breathing air. This is something that has classically been done throughout history by religions which determine how our sexuality must be perceived and determined, and now it seems as though our secular society is happy to spin the web further.
The real fact of the matter is that our individual preferences are just that - individual. To construe meaning through advertising, or enforce law over sexual acts is a heinous disregard for human nature and one that we should take a solid stance against!
