
Up to thirty million people in the United States suffer from an eating disorder, which have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness (ANAD). This can be caused by what the media and advertisements are pushing at people. Every day we are exposed to three thousand advertising messages a day (Smith). Every time we open our phone, or turn on the TV, or open a magazine, we are constantly being bombarded with things saying that we should look a certain way, or weigh a certain amount, or dress a certain way. Because of this, forty seven percent of girls in fifth-twelfth grade said they wanted to lose weight because of magazine pictures and sixty nine percent said that the advertisements influenced their idea of a perfect body shape. But the most astonishing statistic to me is that forty two percent of girls in the first through third grades want to be thinner (ANAD). These girls are six to eight years old and are already saying that they want to lose weight because of the things they are being bombarded with every day. Now imagine what it's like for an adult who is being subjected to even more of these advertisements. 

How often do you see big companies using sexuality to attract attention to their product? Probably more than you realize considering that Go Daddy, Hardees, Fiat, AXE, Perrier, Old Spice, and many more all use this type of advertising (Cousin, 1) Personally, I believe that it is wrong to use sexuality in advertising just to sell more products because the companies that do this are treating women as objects and teaching the world to do so too. Too often I see commercials on the television that flash around women in an attempt to grab people's attention when they should be more focused on selling their product using creative ideas that better advertise their product because it would sell more products and be a better use of their time. There are serious problems with using sex appeal to sell a product as it causes unrealistic body expectations for women and creating an ad using sex appeal requires no talent or creativity.

Everyday women are seeing countless advertisements which show woman with barely have any clothes on, have "perfect" bodies (usually digitally altered to look the way they do), and acting in a provocative way. This leads women to think that they too should look the way these actors and models do; that they should act the way these actors and models do, and that doing both of these things is what is going to make people like them. When "companies who believe that it is okay to use women's bodies in a sexual way to make their brand cool, hip, and sexy" use this tactic, it makes women and girls have unrealistic ideas of what they should look like (Portia 2) Companies are making people think that they are not good enough, and that is not okay. Companies should further reinforce the fact that women are beautiful and don't need to look like the people on television to be so instead of reinforcing the opposite. Girls are being unfairly pushed to think that "'if these women look good wearing it, so will I.'" (Reichert 3).  By making women and girls think that they should look like the people on television, these companies are lowering their self-confidence and self-esteem.

Chloe is a woman in her thirties that had anorexia when she was a teenager. It all started when she tried dieting to lose weight to help her feel better about herself emotionally. But, the dieting soon became unhealthy and harmful. She started eating less and less. "She began dieting in the fall of her senior year of high school and was anorexic by graduation. She remembers losing around sixty pounds in only three or four months." Chloe says that "In essence, I think ... when you have an eating disorder, you kind of pause everything. Or you think you're pausing everything, but everything else is going on. What you're pausing is ... your development and your life." (Przybyl 32). Chloe paused her whole life in hopes of losing a little more weight, of being closer to what she saw as a perfect body. Every day more and more people are going through the same thing that Chloe went through when she was young, and it's because of the advertisements that they are being subjected to every day, thousands of times a day. 

According to Jean Kilbourne, it is very harmful that women are portrayed the way they are in advertisements today. "Babies at the age of six months can recognize corporate logos" and the way that these companies portray women is worse than ever (Kilbourne). Jean says that advertisements today on the internet, on TV, in magazines, and more make women look, literally, impossible. She also says that advertisements today do not directly cause, but very much normalize sexual violence. Lots of advertisements today portray women that have been beaten up, and the rest is left up to the imagination. These advertisements make it normal to commit sexual violence, and in a way, make it okay. 

Creating an advertisement that uses sexuality to make people buy the product requires no talent or creativity. The reason companies use this type of advertisement is to draw attention to their product in the hopes that more people will buy it. The models and actors in these advertisements are presented as objects and are unrealistic, degrading representations of women. Instead of using this tactic, companies should find a creative way to present their product that both draws attention and accurately represents the pros of their product. Doing so, in my opinion, would sell more products than simply showing some model act very provocatively in front of the camera and then flashing the name of their product at the end of the ad. 

The companies that exploit women in their advertisements do not take the problems they are creating seriously. A commenter from a large television company asked "'Am I the only one getting fed up with all the PCBS "politically correct bullsh*t" we're subjected to when there are real issues to be dealt with'" when confronted about a sexist remark on a product (Peters 164). By saying this, he is showing that he and his company do not care about the effect that they are having on their audience's lives. They are more concerned with selling a product than they are with ruining people's lives. This shows that the companies that use and allow these advertisements are not taking this issue seriously. These people do not realize how much they are effecting people's lives with these advertisements. They are lowering women's self esteem and making them feel like they are not enough and they see it as "politically correct bullsh*t." This quote from this company is a symbol of the whole industry.  Big companies today are too worried about making another dollar to fix the problems they are causing, and that's why this problem still persists year after year after year. 

The American Psychological Association (APA) recently released a study of over eight thousand, four hundred participants in which they studies whether or not sex helps with brand memory. They found that "as sexual content increases, memory of the brand, attitude towards the brand, and buying intentions of the brand's product decreased" (Lichtenfeld). This shows that sex, in fact, doesn't help sell the product, in fact it does the opposite. So, if using sexually explicit material in advertisements does not help the company sell, and is harmful to the people that are viewing the advertisements, then why is it still being used?

Companies that use sexuality in advertising are severely affecting women and girl's view of themselves and are taking the easy way out of making an advertisement that will actually work. The companies that use this sort of advertising should receive resistance. I challenge you to refrain from buying the products of companies that use sexuality as a "tactic" in advertising as long as they are doing so instead of saying that you disagree and then use their products anyway, this only reinforces their behavior. This will cause the companies to lose an abundance of money and maybe then they will understand that what they are doing is wrong and is a real problem, not just people being picky. 

