Uses of sex appeals in prime-time television commercials

Sex Roles: A Journal of Research,  March, 1998  by Carolyn A. Lin

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

Focusing on body shape, women were more likely to be shown as fit, while men are more likely to appear as full-figured or chunky. Men were also more likely to be fully clothed, relative to their female counterparts.

Table IIb indicates that these commercials generally were not overloaded with sex appeals, as fewer than 8% of the models engaged in any sexually-oriented conduct. There were no significant gender differences in terms of physical innuendo, verbal innuendo or physical contact shown by the models.

As only 18% of all models were rated "very sexy" and 12% as "definite sex objects" (see Table IIc), these primetime commercials also were not prone to illustrate models in a predominantly sexually appealing manner. Females were, however, more likely to appear as "very attractive", while males appeared more often as "not attractive". Similarly, women were more likely to appear as sex objects, relative to men.

DISCUSSION

This study set out to examine the manner in which American prime-time network television commercials employ sex appeals involving male as well as female models. The findings point to areas of convergence as well as divergence with the literature. While sex appeals remain an important element in the advertiser's arsenal, they account for a small fraction of commercial appeals. This finding indicates a drastic departure from ads seen on a youthoriented channel such as MTV (Signorielli et al., 1994) or a popular gender-oriented magazine. Nevertheless, the percentage of less than fullydressed models went up from 7% a decade ago (Reid, Salmon & Soley, 1986) to about 12% in this study (see Table IIb), although different research methods and samples may have contributed to this discrepancy.

Those values, as portrayed in television commercials, seem to depict women as being liberated and embracing their sexuality in order to express themselves rather than to please men. In other words, the sexual tension between men and women is played out as a two-way - though perhaps not yet even-handed - game. For instance, commercials featuring physical sexual innuendo had a similar amount of flirting initiated by both genders (see Table IIb). In particular, female models were slightly more likely to engage in verbal sexual references than their male counterparts.

Even so, no more than 8% of these commercials feature at least one type of sexually-oriented behavior in this study (see Table IIb). Yet 11% of general interest magazine ads and at least 25% of men and women's magazine ads contained sexual content a decade ago (Soley & Kurzbard, 1986). Specifically, as the ratio of verbal-to-visual sexual references for magazine ads was 6% versus 79% for Soley and Kurzbard, that ratio is 1% versus 7.2% for the present sample (see Table IIc). With regard to actual physical contact, while 32% of the magazine ads involved sexual activity other than intercourse, that figure was 7.9% for this sample (see Table IIb). Apparently, magazine ads generally contain more sexual references than television commercials, to the extent that comparisons can be made between studies across media. As little sex appeal content research has been published since the 1980s - addressing either magazine ads or television commercials - present study findings should help update current trends. Although sexy television commercials today may not predominate, the way sex appeals are portrayed for both genders may nevertheless reflect America's contemporary social and cultural values.