In a society that believes in the adage, "sex sells", it is no wonder how food companies and advertisers are using sexualized images, particularly of women, to advertise their food and products. Society holds certain stereotypes of the ideal woman as skinny and often advertisers use this perception to advertise their products.
Thus, an image advertising food or any other product that portrays a woman as anything but skinny and beautiful would be frowned upon and sales would not be favorable. There are instances when women are portrayed as voracious about food. However, these images and advertisements only use a woman's supposed hunger for food as metaphorical of her sexual appetite (Bordo 110). Thus, the ideal woman is only used in advertisements depicting junk and other fattening foods for her sex appeal which is meant to attract consumers.
However, advertisements mostly allow males to be associated with greasy food and desserts. The male appetite for food is not as frowned upon as that of the female, although the males eating pleasure is also heavily depicted as a metaphor for sexual appetite. Some adverts are seen portraying a man in a wild, sensual state over rich, appetizing desserts with background jingles like, "You're my one and only, my creamy deluxe" and "Your brownies give me fever. Your cake gives me chills." – an advertisement for Betty Crocker Frosting and assorted mixes (Bordo, 111).
Commercials depict food as sexual objects and eating of particular advertised food is supposed to achieve sexual delight. Historians suggest that companies were likely to get more returns for the products advertised in a sexual way than products advertised otherwise. Sexual titillation in advertising demanded and held the attention of most consumers who were eager to be associated with the food. A woman eating a particular brand of chocolate or dessert or fast food would automatically be viewed as sexy and desirable (Parkin 184). Advertisements are created in a way that they encourage their viewers and readers to make a connection between food and a woman's appeal. These ads have become so intense that the line between food and women is blurred since both as portrayed as exotic desirables rather than who and what they are respectively. Women are portrayed naked or with the briefest of clothes eating juicy burgers that are sometimes dripping ketchup clearly suggesting that eating that brands burgers could enhance one's sex appeal.
Advertisers also have a culture of conflating women with animals or meat in particular. Women are more often than not portrayed as pieces of meat and commodities while meat products are depicted in a sexualized way and dressed in sexy clothing or morphed into beautiful, sexy pieces of meat. This practice has been referred to as anthropornography and relates to the association or connection of animal meat consumption to the sex industry. Anthropornography depicts animal meat body parts in sexual poses much like the ones a woman would make (Parkin, 190). Connecting meat products with women ensures that meat products are bought and are able to compete in a society filled with vegetarians and men and women who are so conscious about their body images that they would only consume food that allows them to fit into society.
The image of the sexualized pig was put out by a marketing firm in Thailand and came with the caption, "We think we might just have the thing to satisfy your lust for breast, thigh, and rump". Advertisers main aim is to sell to consumers and the general public, the notion that it is possible for them to purchase sex appeal. They also portray sex appeal as a necessity for success in life (Parkin 186). They send the message that if one does not have sex appeal, then they are nobody in society. Women as well as the men buy into this notion and scramble to be associated with the advertised food. A woman seen eating a bar of chocolate advertised in a sexy and sensual way would be viewed as sexy and a man would want to be associated with a sexy woman.
Another aspect of the sexualization of food in advertisements can be seen in how chocolate is portrayed and marketed in modern society. Chocolate has long been considered as an aphrodisiac with references and connections often being made between chocolate and lust. The old practice of men buying chocolate for women they courted or a box of chocolates being the best gift for valentine’s day. This practice was referred to as the commodification of romance or the romanticization of commodities (Nutter 199).
Chocolate has over the years been so womanified that it is considered as a woman identified product. Chocolate is advertised as all a woman needs and in other instances, it is portrayed as a source of self- fulfillment for a woman. Advertisers have gendered and eroticized chocolate in a way that in now appeals to women who seem satisfied and those with unfulfilled desires.
It is worth mentioning that advertisements way back in 1924 eroticized chocolate but in a different way to the modern trends. An advert was aired showing a housemaid holding out a box of Bonbon chocolates to a young man dressed in a suit. This advert was used metaphorically to show that women get satisfaction and fulfillment in life by serving the needs of men. Modern adverts, however, show that men can easily satisfy the longings of women by giving them a box of chocolates (Nutter 205). Over the years, chocolate advertisements have remained sexualized and gendered, such that it is not uncommon for a chocolate advert to depict a naked woman covered in chocolate or scantily dressed females holding boxes of chocolate in one hand and a piece of chocolate in their mouths as if offering chocolate consumers the forbidden fruit (Dusselier 20).
Advertisers also suggest to the public and society that women are prone to the use of sex appeal to attract, attain and maintain husbands. Women were seen to possess sexual powers that could be used to attract any man that they desired. In 1947, an ad for Campbell's soup that depicted a young man coming home to his wife cooking soup which she referred to as a life saver for the young married couples. The advert suggested that women were willing and able to anticipate their men's hunger for food and sex (Parkin, 186). These advertisements convinced women of the sensual and sexual magic that they possessed that could satisfy any man as well as get him to a position in which he could do anything she wanted even against his will.
Companies have been conditioning the minds of the masses for years now with their advertisements that are meant to persuade people into buying their products. Companies use their adverts to condition consumers from as early as the teenage years. A magazine had an advert that suggested to its female readers that catching the eye of a boy was one thing but keeping it was another. The advert suggested that boys loved to eat and the woman giving him the advertised food would be a sneaky and feline way of showing her care and concern. The advert was an affirmation of the rhetoric that a woman's fulfillment from sex and food is hinged on attracting and satisfying a man rather than self- satisfaction and fulfillment (Parkin 187).
Finally, companies do not only sexualize the advertisement of fast foods and other cooked and ready to eat foods. In the 60's and 70's, rice was advertised in an overly sexualized way. As usual, the sensual and sexual nature of a woman was used in the adverts. The creative cooking of rice was tied to a woman's sexual happiness. A study done during that time concluded that all foods were gendered with tea being considered as feminine, coffee as masculine, meat as masculine, and cake as the most feminine of foods. Rice was also considered feminine. This was a challenge to advertisers since the promotion of rice as a feminine food would result in women not buying it because they subordinated their desires for those of the men. Thus, women were more likely to buy food that they knew the men liked in order to satisfy them (Parkin, 188).
In conclusion, advertising in all forms of media is persuasive and has the capacity to shape and reflect contemporary culture. Advertisers are well aware of the influence the have on the masses psyche and they use it to influence them to purchase their products. Societies the world over largely sexualized and gendered with gender roles assigned to both men and women. Specifically, the women have been overly sexualized and are viewed as sex symbols. In an era in which sex sells and is a profitable industry, advertisers have resorted to conflating their products with the woman's sex appeal.
Works Cited
Bordo, S. Hunger as Ideology. The Consumer Society reader, 1993
Dussellier, Jane. “Bonbons, Lemon Drops, and Oh Henry! Bars: Candy, Consumer Culture, and the Construction of Gender, 1895 – 1920” in Kitchen Culture in America: Popular Representations of Food, Gender and Race, Sherrrie Inness, ed., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001
Nutter, Kathleen Banks. From Romance to PMS: Images of Women and Chocolate in the Twentieth Century America. State University of New York Press, 2008
Parkin, Katherine J. Food is Love: Food Advertising and Gender Roles in Modern America. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006
