Sex sells.

But when is the act of selling a product based on sexual appeal and desires go too far as to insult a particular gender?

This news article is particularly interesting because of the article itself and also the various examples of sex appeal-based advertising further down the article.

What I want to try to do in this blog post is to separate what is so different between the marketing techniques used by the pizza place and the sex based-advertising we see everyday, including the ones included below the article.

First, the big question here will be exclusivity.

The pizza place ultimately couldn’t justify its discrimination in giving away its free products to only females who show their assets, but not males. This act in itself is almost a pure form of gender discrimination and quite clearly, no rational person would find that accetable.

However, are mainstream sex based-advertising really that much more inclusive?
By promoting their products exclusively to the male gender, is it not just one step away from almost exclusively selling your product to the male gender?

Second question is society’s perspective.

The pizza place act drew wide criticism because it almost literally and directly say to females “you pay for the pizza with your breasts”, which likens them to prostitutes. Exchanging sex for money.

While mainstream media is more subliminal about their message, we can still see how it basically does the same thing as the pizza place.
First, they sell products not on its quality, but on sex-appeal of females.
Then, people buy the products, not on its quality, but on the sex-appeal of the advertising.

Do you see what people actually buy now?

Yes, they are buying the ‘sex’ sold by the females in the advertisements, not the products.

While I agree that there are many sides to this argument, unfortunately a blog post of around 300 words cannot accommodate everything. Feel free to comment or reblog this to further the discussion, thanks.

Wilfred.