Sexy Inc.

It is the eve of a new week in Family Studies 322, so I thought I'd better chime in on this lovely Sunday afternoon while the Sexy Inc. film is still relatively fresh in the tupperware container that is my mind.

Sexy Inc. stated the obvious to say the least - too bad it wasn't ripe with solutions. I'm not scolding this video; it is important to isolate these problems so that we (namely us budding apprentices of the teaching profession) are assuredly aware of what is happening in this great big world of ours.

The point is clear: our society has become ludicrously over-sexualized. Sexuality in the media has not so much oozed but cascaded into a shockingly young demographic. The film showcases this point and offers only the most subtle solution: don't buy in.

A simple formula in the creation of this problem is evident. This entire issue is money driven. (Insert company here) is not invested in the socio-political implications of their methods. (Company) wants to make money, and they are simply doing what they need to do to make money. It's just simple business. We are a sexually driven society who responds to sexualized ads, tv shows, music, everything!  As we continue to flock into The Gap (pardon my singling out of The Gap) to buy the t-shirt that the model on the poster wasn't even wearing, The Gap will continue to advertise with topless models.

In Sexy Inc. we see a group of (very) young children responding to a topless model in a newspaper advertisement by American Apparel. As an arts & craft project that most of us did NOT get to do in school, the kids color some clothes onto the model, and each of them mails their masterpiece back to American Apparel. I thought that was a very pro-active approach. A LOT of people would need to ignore a large business in order for that business to notice, and even then they may be at ends as to why this is happening. The colored model approach could hardly be more clear to he or she who opens that envelope at the headquarters of AA; how much more clear would it be if a few dozen of us did that? A few hundred? Thousand?

Corporations will continue to do whatever they deem necessary in the business of money-making. That leaves it up to we, the consumers, to decide just what that consists of. We must:
1. Think critically for ourselves.
2. Teach our children and students to do so as well.

Easy, right?

Gender Marketing (Cue at 5:45 through 7:45) 

This little clip is a good picture of how big of a difference there is between recognizing that this is a problem and actually doing anything about it. The parents aren't in much of a position to solve the problem, but they certainly understand how big of a problem it is when their daughter wants to conform. Digging a little deeper, we see that this isn't as simple as allowing or disallowing your children to do something. It is about raising them to be comfortable with who they are regardless of what everyone else is doing, wearing, saying, etc.


A friend of mine posted this video (below) on Facebook at about the same time that we had watched Sexy Inc. in class. I can picture myself being tortured or brainwashed by being forced to watch this video over and over. I watched a short 'making of' feature about it and it's far more constructed than I thought it was; however, this makes it more powerful for me because everything looks and sounds like what we experience in public and on TV every day!
Wonderfully enough, this is one ad in a series of a few by Dove products. I commend Dove for addressing this whole youth/beauty issue and literally, in a big way, putting their money where their mouth is.

Beauty Pressure