Future Questions and Challenges: Advertising Research in the Midst of Sex Noise

Abstract

The perspectives of this book stake out but a small, sturdy base camp from\nwhich to explore sexual appeals in advertising and marketing. As much as\none fifth of advertising uses such appeals (Lin, 1998; Reichert, Lambiase,\nMorgan, Carstarphen, & Zavoina, 1999; Walker, 2000)/ but sexualized persuasion in the Western landscape looms larger than that because it surrounds us in films, music videos, television programming, Web content,\nmagazine and book covers, and beyond. Among all this visual "sex noise/"\nthe most common metaphor for sex is a woman/s body, although men/s\nbodies are being commodified as well, as Barbara Stern reminds us in this\nvolume. These appeals to sexual impulses are nothing neWt of course; Aristotle discussed them to help speakers connect with particular audiences in\nThe Rhetoric. Young men, he said, "are prone to desires and inclined to do\nwhatever they desire. Of the desires of the body they are most inclined to\npursue that relating to sex, and they are powerless against this" (1991 translation/ p. 165). Aristotle/s ideas, of course, are deliberate stereotypes, but\nthat they hold true more than 2/300 years later is proof of their power.