"Publicity persuades us of such a transformation by showing us people who have apparently been transformed and are, as a result, enviable, " the goal of any advertisement is to make us feel that buy using this product we, too, will be envied. Advertisements prey upon the common desire to be superior to our neighbor. Popular culture is saturated with advertisements. Advertisements have been filtered into every aspect of our everyday lives. Art has been replaced by advertisements attempting to appeal as artistic merit while capitalizing on the subject's willingness to accept ads as a present reality in our private and public lives. For as long as advertising has existed, but to varying degrees, Sex and sexuality have been common advertising techniques.
[...] Society permits the ads to objectify the sexual aspect of the body, and permits the body to be explicitly depicted, in nakedness. Advertisements will, therefore, proceed to find the boundary of what is considered shocking and what is acceptable. Even ads which are never run because they are ruled too offensive in sexual content, gain mass media attention on those very grounds. News stories cover, as news, ads which cannot be shown in public mediums and that company still receives the publicity, just by pushing the envelope farther. [...]
[...] Primarily, the brand is praying upon the visceral reaction of the viewer; the product is of secondary concern. Baker notes in his chapter on the body that women are more commonly objectified by advertisements because their body carries a weightier presence. In this theory, each person's social presence holds a promise. For woman, her “presence expresses her own attitude to herself,[2]” whereas a man's presence promises something in the other, something that he can offer. A woman's presence is, therefore, more seductive because it is more secretive. [...]
[...] The photographer's expertise could be showcased by a picture of a landscape; instead, he or she has chosen to use the body of this woman because the models nakedness is far more intriguing.[4] No viewer of this advertisement would believe that it was selling the woman's body, the audience understands that it is not the physical which is being sold, but the physical is an effective tool to promote the message. The message in this case is to look beyond the body, to inquire. [...]
[...] The directed audience is assumed to accept the body as part of the art. Because, the photographer is selling his or her service as the product, it is important to promote that service and depict the best representation of the photographers' ability. There is, of course, a more subtle insinuation that can be derived from the ad. Kilbourne is careful to note that there is an active element to these ads, a negative message that woman only derive value from their body's ability to sell a product or service. [...]
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