Assignment Ten
'Sex sells' - How and why? Give specific examples of current advertisements to illustrate your answer.
Guidance
For general guidance see the
guidelines for writing essays and reports.
What Key Features Do I Look For?
- Familiarity with relevant texts
- Evidence - the stronger the better
- Argument - coherent and balanced
- Theoretical discussion - relation to relevant theories
- Understanding of relevant concepts
- Reflexivity - reflections on methodology
- Examples - insightfully analysed
- Style - readability and effective presentation
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Please remember to avoid footnotes and to include an
alphabetical list of 'References' which have been cited in the text
(not a Bibliography of anything you have read for the essay). This list should include
author's names, date, book titles (in italics), place of publication and publisher.
Within the text always cite author's surname, date and page number. Double-space your
text and number your pages. For more detailed notes on writing essays in this
department, click
here.
For examples of essays by UWA students click
here.
Advice for this particular assignment:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this assignment is likely to be selected by around half of the class.
When this happens the competition becomes very fierce and you may be less likely to achieve a
high grade or more likely to underachieve if you don't regard the task as requiring deep analysis and effective,
well-informed and well-illustrated argument. With such a big class and such a popular topic any obviously relevant
local resources are likely to have been acquired by other students early on. You are strongly advised to buy the most
relevant books well in advance; if you haven't got access to them it would be wiser to choose another option. Bear in
mind a little psychology: with so many essays on the same theme to read, a marker can get easily bored so it's up to
you to ensure that you grab the reader's attention from the outset and impress them with the quality of your work.
Do not get sidetracked into
discussions of 'effects' on self-esteem. Don't ignore gay magazines as one source
- especially
Gay Times and Attitude. The issue of 'who is looking
at whom' (and how) is worth exploring - see
my notes on 'The Gaze'.
Do not slip into a naive gender essentialism (do not equate sex and gender). This is not a matter of 'political
correctness' so it won't help to replace all references to 'sex' with references to 'gender'.
If you mean 'male/female' or
'men/women' then say 'sex'; if you mean 'masculine/feminine'/'masculinity/femininity' then say 'gender'. For instance,
if you are talking about how advertisers target males and females then you may refer to the sexes. If you are talking about
how certain traits tend to be associated with masculinity and femininity (such as dominant notions of
masculinity as 'active' and of femininity as 'passive') then you should refer to 'gender stereotypes'.
Consult the relevant
Powerpoint slides for the lectures touching on issues of gender. Back up all claims about gender with whatever relevant
academic studies you can locate. While acknowledging the widespread recognition of gender stereotypes in
ads and in culture generally, do not appear to blindly endorse gender stereotypes.
Note also that this is an assignment for which the
inclusion of relevant pictorial illustrations is important. Ads should, wherever possible, be dated and sourced
(e.g. in which magazine(s) did the ads appear?).
If you discuss commercials, submit a CD containing those discussed (keep a copy because CDs are retained).
It is also advantageous to include a
'shot-by-shot summary' for each commercial in an Appendix. If you include print ads, these should be scanned and
inserted as Figures within the text or in an Appendix. In the case of commercials, selected stills should also
appear in the main text as Figures; these should then be explicitly referred to and discussed within the text.
In the case of print ads, you are strongly advised to included cropped details from the ad in order to help you
to make particular points of comparison.
For guidance on capturing stills, click here.
Some suggested reading
- Ableman, Paul (1982)
Anatomy of Nakedness. London: Orbis
- Adams, Carol J. (2000)
The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. New York: Continuum
- Adams, Carol J. (2003)
The Pornography of Meat. New York: Continuum
- Berger, John (1972)
Ways of Seeing. London: BBC/Penguin
- Berger, Joshua (2003)
XXX: The Power of Sex in Contemporary Design. Gloucester, MA: Rockport
- Betterton, Rosemary (Ed) (1987)
Looking On: Images of Femininity in the Visual Arts and Media. London: Pandora
- Campbell, Anne (Ed) (1989)
The Opposite Sex. Oxford: Andromeda
- Clark, Eric (1988)
The Wantmakers. London: Hodder & Stoughton
- Courtney, Alice E. & Thomas W. Whipple (1983)
Sex Stereotyping in Advertising. Lexington: MA: Lexington Books
- de Grazia, Victoria & Ellen Furlough (Eds) (1996)
The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press
- Diamond, Jared (1997)
Why is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality. London: Phoenix/Orion
- Fausto-Sterling, Anne (2000)
Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books
- Friedan, Betty (1963/1992)
The Feminine Mystique. London: Penguin
- Heller, Steven (Ed) (2000)
Sex Appeal: The Art of Allure in Graphic and Advertising Design. New York: Allworth Press
- Hershey, George L. (1996)
The Evolution of Allure: Sexual Selection From the Medici Venus to the Incredible Hulk. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
- Jones, Dylan (Ed) (1996)
Sex, Power and Travel: Ten Years of 'Arena'. London: Virgin
- Key, Wilson Bryan (1992)
Subliminal Ad-Ventures in Erotic Art. Boston, MA: Branden [a generator of controversy!]
- Kilbourne, Jean (1999)
Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel.
New York: Simon & Schuster
- Kleinhans, Chuck (1996): 'Studying Sexual Images'
[WWW document] URL
http://www.tcf.ua.edu/screensite/res/journals/jc/JC40-SpecialSection.html
- Lambiase, Jacqueline & Tom Reichert (2003) 'Promises, Promises: Exploring Erotic Rhetoric in Sexually Oriented Advertising'.
In Linda Scott and Rajeev Batra (Eds.)
Persuasive Imagery: A Consumer Perspective. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 247-66
- Low, Bobbi S. (2000)
Why Sex Matters. Princeton: Princeton University Press
- McRobbie, Angela (1996): 'More! New Sexualities in Girls' and Women's
Magazines'. In James Curran, David Morley & Valerie Walkerdine (Eds.):
Cultural Studies and Communications. London: Arnold, pp. 172-194
- Messaris, Paul (1997)
Visual Persuasion: The Role of Images in Advertising. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
- Millum, Trevor (1975)
Images of Woman: Advertising in Women's Magazines. London: Chatto & Windus
- Munday, Rod (2004)
'"Sex sells": How and why?' [WWW document] URL
http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/Modules/FM21920/rod_munday.html (student essay)
- Polhemus, Ted (Ed) (1978)
Social Aspects of the Human Body. Harmondsworth: Penguin
- Reichert, Tom (2005)
Sex in Consumer Culture: The Erotic Content of Media and Marketing. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
- Reichert, Tom & Jacqueline Lambiase (Eds) (2003)
Sex in Advertising: Perspectives on the Erotic Appeal. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
- Robinson, Julian (1988)
Body Packaging: A Guide to Human Sexual Display. Sydney: Watermark Press
- Rohlinger, Deana A. (2002) 'Eroticising men: Cultural influences on advertising and male objectification'
[WWW document] URL
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m2294/2002_Feb/90888979/p1/article.jhtml?term=participant+observation+audience+research
- Root, Jane (1984)
Pictures of Women. London: Pandora
- Saunders, Dave (1996)
Best Ads: Sex in Advertising. LondonL: Batsford
- Streitmatter, Rodger (2004)
Sex Sells: The Media's Journey from Repression to Obsession. Boulder, CO: Westview Press
- Suleiman, Susan Rubin (Ed) (1986)
The Female Body in Western Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
- Thorn, Mark (1990)
Taboo No More: The Phallus in Fact, Fantasy and Fiction. New York: Shapolsky
- Tucker, Lauren (2000)
'Talking Back to Calvin Klein: Youthful "Targets" Confront Their Commercial Image',
in Robin Anderson & Lance Strate (Eds)
Critical Studies in Media Commercialism.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 225-33
- Wernick, Andrew (1987): 'From Voyeur to Narcissist: Imaging Men in Contemporary
Advertising'. In Michael Kaufman (Ed):
Beyond Patriarchy: Essays by Men on Pleasure, Power and Change. Toronto: Oxford University Press, pp. 277-97
- Wood, Lisa (2003)
'"Sex sells": How and why?' [WWW document] URL
http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/Modules/FM21920/lisa_wood_2.html (student essay)
Note: Treat with extreme caution sources labelled with this symbol!
Relevant Weblinks
Key Module Links