Advertising in print publication uses images to sell its products. One type of image that is most attractive to the eye is that of sexuality. Images of women that prominently display their sexuality - either through revealing clothing and poses or through suggestive composition - are prevalent. A study of all of the display advertising in one college newspaper over the course of one semester was conducted. Many of the ones that exemplify this phenomenon of sexuality-depicting images will be examined here. In this examination we find that these advertisements include symbolic, iconic, and indexical signs in order to represent social values that the viewer will find attractive. The comparison of masculinity and femininity as dominant and oppressed social classes will also be examined.
       It is relatively clear why advertisers use sexuality so extensively in their advertisements. In order for an advertiser to target a consumer group, it "must be: (1) identifiable, (2) accessible, (3) measurable, and (4) profitable" (Clark, p. 143). Males who are attracted to sexy females are easily identifiable and accessible in any popular general gathering. In that they are identifiable and accessible, they can be measured for quantity. The archetypal beer commercials - and other products as well - that show scantily clad women to attract men indicates that the bottom line works in favor of advertisers targeting heterosexual males.
        Further, as technological capabilities have improved over the last century, media and advertisers have been able to create and broadcast an increasingly huge number of images. This creates clutter in the minds of the audience and makes any particular advertisement image less likely to have an impact on the audience's behavior. In short, the competition among images attempting to sell things has become fierce. And, "Sexuality provides a resource that can be used to get attention and communicate easily" (Jhally, p. 82). This creates a problem. Advertisers, in order to create images that will cut through the clutter that has arisen, put forth images that emphasize ideals and possibilities rather than realities. The advertisements created, therefore, include images of people behaving "not the way that men and women actually behave but the ways in which we think men and women behave" (Jhally, p. 81). Thus, women are consistently depicted as oriented towards being sexual, scantily clad (and glad to be so), passive, and present for the enjoyment of men.
       When women and men are seen as opposing social classes it is traditionally true that men are of the dominant class and women of the other, or oppressed, class. "The cultural artifacts produced within a given mode of production are seen as reflecting the interests of the dominant class," (White, p. 137) and this certainly appears to be the case in these print advertisements. The women in some of these advertisements are shown in ways that are ridiculous, humiliating, and uncomfortable - but always in ways that could be predicted to be attractive to men.
       In order to better understand the effect of these advertisements, we should look at the 5 advertisements chosen from this year's volume of The Eagle, a college newspaper created by American University in Washington, D.C. An examination of these ads with the use of semiotics should be helpful in understanding their effects since semiotics takes signs to be the smallest unit of meaning in images and studies these signs to see how meaning is created.(Seiter, p. 17-19)
       Advertisement A was purchased by Strike Bethesda, a bowling alley that emphasizes fun over serious bowling. It shows the back of a woman's legs from the thighs down. She is about to roll a bowling ball down the lanes but is wearing high heels and has a stance that would not at all be conducive to bowling. Most remarkably, her underwear is strung between her knees, inferring her nakedness above. (1 The Eagle)
       To look at this or any advertisement using semiotics the difference between signifier and signified must be understood. All signs are said to have these two parts, the former being the image that we see, the latter being the actual concept it represents. (Seiter, p. 18) In this case then, this newsprint, black and white image is the signifier while a woman standing naked in a bowling alley trying to bowl with high heels on is the signified.
       This particular advertisement uses two types of signs: symbolic and indexical. Symbolic signs include signified objects that signify something else. (Seiter, p. 20) "Symbolic signs may be invested with so much feeling that the conventionality of the connection between the signifier (for example, a cloth patterned in red, white and blue) and the signified (United States of America) is no longer easy to grasp" (Seiter, p. 20). This may be the case with this Strike Bethesda advertisement as it seems to blatantly signify sex, a basic human drive, while selling bowling.
       Indexical signs are also used here. Indexical signs "involve an existential link between the signifier and the signified: the sign relies on their co-presence at some point in time" (Seiter, p. 22). The indexical connection being attempted here by the advertisers is that bowling means sex, or sexual promiscuity. The image attempts to promise the audience, especially male viewers, that if the go to Strike Bethesda to go bowling it will be like a sexual or arousing experience.
       Advertisement B was bought by The Bikini Shop, a small boutique specializing in fashionable swim wear. The advertisement includes a lot of text, but also has a picture of a smiling woman modeling a bikini. The picture itself has a "$5 off coupon" over part of it. This ad uses indexical signs to associate the bikinis with small expense and also the bikinis with spring break. The image of the woman in a bikini also acts as a symbolic sign, providing men with an image of the company they could be in by shopping there and women with an image of how they could appear after shopping there. (2 The Eagle)
        Advertisement C was bought by Allied Advertising, a promotional advertising agency promoting the movie Super Troopers. The image shows the back of a female police officer from the waist down. She is standing with her legs spread open and there are several male police officers who are all upside down, shown from their chests or shoulders up. They all appear to be looking interestedly at the female officer and one of their heads is shown from between her spread legs. (3 The Eagle)
        Symbolic signs are used here to show the femininity of the character with their back to the viewer - feminine footwear and feminine style pants indicate the gender. Further, the back turned and open legs could symbolize both the lack of seriousness and abundant sexuality of this character. The most striking sign here, however, is iconic. An iconic sign is one "in which the signifier structurally resembles its signified" (Seiter, p. 21). Here, the male officer whose head is between the female officer's legs is wearing a tie that projects from his neck into the joining of the women's legs - a blatant icon for the penis and male penetration.
       Advertisement D was bought by Council Travel, a travel agency that focuses on college students as their target audience. Unlike the Bikini Shop advertisement, this one has very little text and a more prominent photographic image. We see a beautiful woman dressed in a revealing bathing suit lounging in a tropical setting on a hammock with a large, masculine mascot. (3 The Eagle)
       The mascot, vaguely resembling a trojan mardi gras mask, is both an iconic and symbolic sign for masculinity. Iconically it resembles a large, male character. Symbolically, it represents not only a male character, but one that is handsome, dashing, and charming. The association of this woman relaxing in the arms of masculinity is also an indexical sign indicating the association of such a pleasurable situation and the services of Council Travel.
       Advertisement E was bought by The Clinic For Laser Hair Removal, a medical doctor's office specializing in the medical removal of hair for cosmetic purposes. This advertisement also has relatively little text. It instead focuses on the photograph of a strikingly thin woman in a revealing bikini lying on her back on the beach. (4 The Eagle)
       This advertisement has all three kinds of signs. Iconically, the woman's pose resembles one of sexual submissiveness. Indexically, the woman's sexuality and attractiveness is meant to associate, for women, the ability to gain this appearance through the services of the Clinic, and for men, the ability to gain access to such sights and experiences. Further, it associates for both sexes the Clinic with not only sexuality but also the pleasure of tropical settings such as the one pictured. The symbolic signs are similar to these in that the woman's pose seems to signify sexual submission or pleasure as each would be desired by each sex.
        When all of these advertisements are taken as a whole, we can see the symbolic, indexical, and even iconic signs that would indicate to men, and all of society, that the predominant character trait of women is sexuality. The prevalence of such signs is remarkable. 

       If only one or two advertisers used this strategy, then the image-system would not  have the           present distorted features. The problem is that the vast majority tend to  do so. The  
       iconography of the culture, perhaps more than any previous society,  seems to be obsessed
       with sexuality (Jhally, p. 82).

In just this small study of one print publication we find blatant uses of sexuality to sell and represent gender for companies as diverse as bowling, swimwear, movies, travel, and medical hair removal. This seems to be a product of the increased prevalence of sexual "interpellation." "Interpellation is the way in which a subject is hailed by the text, it is the method by which ideological discourses constitute subjects and draw them into the text/subject relationship" (Bobo, p. 58). This concept of hailing is comparable to the process of hailing a taxi cab. (Bobo, p. 58). If taxi cabs are compared to the audience, we imagine the world as a busy street with lots of traffic. Some of the traffic is made up of vehicles that are not taxi cabs and is therefore not part of our target audience. But, then there is the percentage that is taxi cabs and the advertiser is trying to induce one to stop. The advertiser will try different strategies to get the taxi driver's attention such as sticking their arm up, whistling, or stepping towards traffic. But, as they do this the advertiser must compete with other things: street signs blocking from view their waving arm, street noise drowning out their whistle,  and the fact that some cabs are already occupied by other people. Just as a person hailing the cab does the best they can to get a cab driver's attention and convince them to stop, so the advertiser pulls out all the bells and whistles to get the attention of its audience. This being said, it is easy to believe that a woman in a bikini or that is wearing her underwear around her knees could get a free ride as a hitchhiker, much less a cab, so it is easy to understand why sexy images can keep our attention in print advertising.
        Interpellation, however, is not so simple as hailing a taxi cab. It is reasonable to assume that everyone in a city will know what it means when you stand on the curb with your hand in the air because this requires only a very rudimentary "cultural competency." "A cultural competency is the repertoire of discursive strategies, the range of knowledge, that a viewer brings to" ( Bobo, p. 58) the cultural product. The experiences, background, and knowledge of any given person is likely to affect how they perceive an image. But, the complexity of an image will also effect how widely people's perceptions differ. For instance, a photograph of George W. Bush will be understood by the vast majority of people to depict the President of the United States of America. A photograph of O.J. Simpson, however could be understood by different people as a murderer, a victim of racism, or a former football star. The latter image is much more obscure than the former.
        With this in mind, it becomes more clear why advertisers rely so heavily on sexuality to sell: human beings naturally come to understand sex and sexuality, as well as many of the images that represent it. It is as nearly a universally understood set of images as we have.
       The dominance of such images in advertising indicates a masculine hegemony. "Hegemony describes the general predominance of particular class, political, and ideological interests" (White, p. 139). This does not mean that only masculine tastes and sensibilities are represented in advertising. It simply means that these masculine tastes and sensibilities are accepted as the most prevalent and most important ones. These masculine ways of thinking become accepted as common sense and are accepted as a simple matter of course. (White, p. 139) This hegemony is reinforced by false consciousness in which, "The ruling class promulgates systems of ideas and beliefs to promote its own interests that are mistakenly adopted by oppressed or subservient classes as their own" (White, p. 137). In this way, women may decide, based on Advertisement A, that Strike Bethesda is a fun place to go even though the advertisement depicts and symbolizes the humiliation and ineptness of women. These women would be endorsing the advertisement by attending Strike Bethesda, causing two likely side effects: the advertisement will continue appearing and the dominant class - men - will believe that the women subscribe to the values expressed by the advertisement. "As such, advertising is not simple manipulation, but what ad-maker Tony Schwartz calls 'partipulation,' with the audience participating in its own manipulation" (Jhally, p. 80).
        This partipulation can be seen more clearly by looking again at The Eagle. The five advertisements shown here all cost at least $120 per insertion and were each part of a campaign that cost the advertiser between $500 and $1,300. None of these advertisements appeared in The Eagle less than three times this academic year. But, we can look at another one, Advertisement F, which was bought by Washington Chiropractic. This ad is similar to the Bikini Shop ad except that instead of showing a scantily clad woman, it shows a middle-aged balding man. Although Advertisement F is of comparable size to the ads it ran at a greatly reduced price and was still pulled from the paper for lack of response. The advertisements with sexy women were generating interest, but this one of similar size and quality, but without sexual women, generated none.
       Some scholars say that this is all due to a commodity image-system which provides

       a particular vision of the world - a particular mode of self-validation that is  integrally   
       connected with what one has rather than what one is - a distinction often  referred to as one  
       between 'having' and 'being,' with the latter being defined  through the former.
      (Jhally, p. 80)

Thus, we can be whatever we can buy. The commodity image-system tells us that we can live the luxurious, upper-class life if we could just buy a new SUV or some similarly categorized status symbol. This system is one of propaganda, in that every ad says it is better to buy and own rather than to not buy and be without. (Jhally, p. 80) The system leads you to believe  that you can be anything, even if it were formerly impossible, if you have the signs and symbols that represent what it is you want to be.

       Some commentators have even described advertising as part of a new religious  system in  
       which people construct their identities through the commodity form, and  in which     
       commodities are part of a supernatural magical world where anything is  possible with the 
       purchase of a product. (Jhally, p. 80)

The advertisements shown here, and anecdotally observed elsewhere, indicate the emergence of a new system that is either replacing or joining the commodity image-system. This new phenomenon could be called the service commodity-system or the action commodity-system. I make this distinction because four of the five advertisements shown here in relation to sexuality are promoting what a person should do, not what they should buy. Strike Bethesda wants you to go bowling, Super Troopers wanted you to attend the movie, Council Travel wants you to travel with them, and the Clinic wants you to remove your hair. Certainly all of these places are still interested in attracting spending and even in selling their own image. But it is more specific than the commodity image-system in that it is focusing exclusively on what you should do. It is trying to convince you to take actions rather than to obtain objects.
        This is an important distinction. The point is still to make the audience believe that anything is possible - to show men and women as we imagine them and not as they really are - but it has a different approach and potentially different, more salient effects. The Clinic For Laser Hair Removal advertisement (Advertisement E), for instance, leads you to believe that if you are a man and you use this service you will be able to attract women like the one pictured; and if you are a woman it leads you to believe that to have the sex appeal of this woman you must use their service. This puts much more responsibility on the audience. Simply buying a product and owning it is no longer depicted as being able to make you what you want to be; you now have to do something. This complicates the idea of having and being to make it doing and being - a much less passive and more involved process.

        It is important to remember that the influence shaping these advertisements and its effects is masculine. "We live in a system of power that is male-supremacist. This means that society is organized on the assumption that men are superior to women and that women are inferior to men" (Dworkin, p. 237). Women, through their partipulation, contribute to the culture that allows them to be depicted as objects and sexual simplicities, but they are not the reigning elites. "It is the white male, heterosexual, able-bodied, youthful person who...is the human yardstick by which people within the United States still are measured and accordingly treated" (Folb, p. 123). The character traits listed here are what make up the dominant groups in our society. Each of the character traits has a dominated or nondominant group corresponding. "Nondominant groups include people of color, women, gays and lesbians, the physically challenged, and the aged poor, to name some of the most prominent" (Folb, p. 122).
        These dominant and nondominant statuses should not be confused with statistics for population or percentage. The dominant group may or may not be the largest group - and in the case of gender, it is not. But, the dominant group does "historically or traditionally have the most persistent and far reaching impact on culture, on what we think and say, on what we believe and do in our society" (Folb, p. 122). It is through power, therefore, not through numbers that the dominant group has its effect. It is because males, in political and economic considerations, have power over females that they are the dominant group and have made it possible for women and their sexuality to be misconstrued and warped. The nondominant, or oppressed, status of women is what leads  them to be subject to hypersexualization, such as that that occurs in these advertisements. "For women as a class, sex and reproduction are presumed to be the very essence of life" (Dworkin, p. 239). This is why a sexually provocative women can be used to sell such non-germane commodities as movies, medical hair removal, and bowling. But, because of it the public view of women is distorted to make them seem overly sexual. This warping of people's view could lead to a reality in which women's "fate unfolds in the opening of [their] thighs and the phallic penetration of [their] bodies and the introjection of sperm into [their] vaginas and the appropriation of [their] uteruses" (Dworkin, p. 239). 
        What is essentially happening is that a woman and her sexuality are becoming separate of one another. "This sexuality itself, it - as distinguished from an individual woman as a sentient being - it can be sold" (Dworkin, p. 239). This has two potentially awful effects. The first is that when that sexuality can be removed from the woman and sold we have things such as Advertisement A for Strike Bethesda which can actually depict a woman's sexuality without showing the woman. The thoughts, feelings, and beings of women themselves are then inevitably ignored. Women are then unlikely to be seen as important, productive members of society. After we have used her in Advertisement E to lie on a beach and sell her sexuality, it becomes increasingly difficult to take her seriously if she tries to write a book or teach a course or run for public office. By separating a woman from her sexuality, we may remove some of her credibility and public respect.
        The second negative effect of separating women and women's sexuality in advertising is that we, as both a society and as individuals, may begin doing this on some level in our lives to real, individual women. Whereas in the first negative effect I spoke of the possibility is that the intangible, representative woman as a less-than-fully-capable- being, here I speak of the possibility that the woman that we see on the street who has a specific first and last name will be believed to be a less-than-fully-capable-being. These two effects, though similar, are important to differentiate because of the philosophical and intangible ramifications of the one and the practical, every day ramifications of the other. We could, with the onslaught of both of these effects, come to lose respect for women in general and all women in specific.
        It should not be forgotten that this amount of respect of credibility is not some fixed line which we have or will have crossed. It is a gradual thing that has been happening in degrees and will continue - but the direction of those degrees and the size of their increments is what is at stake.
        The ability to effect the snowball effect of this warping of femininity and oversexualization of women is difficult because "masculinity, like Whiteness, 'does not appear to be a cultural/historical category at all, thus rendering invisible the privileged position from which (white) men in general are able to articulate their interests to the exclusion of the interests of women'" (Katz, p. 134). Since the culture of the United States does not popularly recognize masculinity as a group or class, it can certainly not be recognized as a dominant or oppressive group.
        To allow this distortions of femininity, however, is to allow "symbolic annihilation" to occur unchecked. Symbolic annihilation is the invisibility created by non-representation in the media. (Katz, p. 62) This is, however, muddled by the fact that "when groups or perspectives do attain visibility, the manner of that representation will itself reflect the biases and interests of those elites who define the public agenda," (Katz, p. 62) and these elite agenda setters are, of course, typically male. This shows that misrepresentation can be as dangerous as nonrepresentation.

        How, then, are we to avoid all of these negative effects of poor representations of women in advertising? The best way would be to have individuals - male or female - who are sufficiently educated about and sensitive to female issues and the shortcomings of the advertising environment create advertising of their own. As was discussed earlier, the problem is not that there is some gender misrepresentation, but that much of the advertising produced has these gender misrepresentations. Therefore, if we could increase the market percentage of proper gender representations that is broadcast we could help the problem. This, however, is difficult if practical. More importantly, it is not something that most individuals could contribute to.
There are then other options. "The most obvious form of resistance, but possibly the most difficult, would be to simply ignore the mass media, and refuse to be insulted and injured by their derogation and denial of one's identity and integrity as a member of a minority group" (Katz, p. 67). But, again it would be difficult if possible at all to avoid the mass media. And even if it were possible it would probably not be healthy - the ostrich who sticks her head in the sand does not actually avoid the oncoming trouble.
        Therefore, I would propose the following plan of actions for the minority group - women - and those male individuals who are sympathetic to the discrediting and unhealthy state of their treatment: Be insulted and injured by the derogation and denial of female identity and integrity - and shun the offending source.
        As with any profitable organization, advertisers do their business to make money. When Washington Chiropractic ran their advertisement with a bald man and got no response, they stopped that advertisement from running. If they advertise more in the future, they will undoubtedly try a different approach. Similarly, it would be expected that if nobody responded to Strike Bethesda's Advertisement A, they would pull the offending advertisement from circulation and that oversexualized image would not be visible to so many people.
        It is true that women and sympathetic men are not the target audience for that advertisement. The advertisement is aimed at men who enjoy and encourage the offensive degrodation to be avoided. But these men and these advertisers only make their mutual profit from that advertisement through positive response, and women do have some power there. If that advertisement ran and the following day lots of men showed up and no women, there would be no potential for the men to have the expectations that were created for them by the advertisement fulfilled, or even teased. If no women showed up to support that advertisement at all, business would be cut by perhaps 50% and men would quickly stop supporting it as well  -  as we know by the current success of that and other similar advertisements that they are striving for female company or attention. But, it is because of the partipulation of women that these advertisements and their influence survives. The goal then is to eradicate false consciousness so that the corresponding partipulation will be abolished in turn.

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WORKS CITED

Bobo, Jacqueline. "The Color Purple: Black Women as Cultural Readers." p. 52-60.

Clark, Danae. "Commodity Lesbianism." p. 142-151.

Dworkin, Andrea. "Pornography and Male Supremacy." p. 237-243.

Folb, Edith A. "Who's Got the Room at the Top? Issues of Dominance and  Nondominance in Intracultural Communication." p. 119-126.

Gross, Larry. "Out of the Mainstream: Sexual Minorities and the Mass Media." p. 61-69.

Katz, Jackson. "Advertising and the Construction of Violent White Masculinity."
p. 133-140.

1 The Eagle. (Washington, D.C.) February 14, 2002. p. 6.

2 The Eagle. (Washington, D.C.) February 21, 2002. p. 7.

3 The Eagle. (Washington, D.C.) February 14, 2002. p. 9.

4 The Eagle. (Washington, D.C.) April 8, 2002. p. 8.

5 The Eagle (Washington, D.C.) October 11, 2001. p. 6.

White, Mimi. "Ideological Analysis and Television." p. 134-171.
The Misrepresented Female Sexuality in Print Advertising
by Ryan Cofrancesco
I would have liked to get the advertisements discussed on this web page, but have not yet been able to get them in a useful format. I will continue trying, and if you are on my mailing list (get on it by signing the guestbook), I will let you know if I accomplish it.