Final - Pornography in Fashion Ads

Previous Study:

After reading Debra Merskin’s chapter in “Sex in Consumer Culture: The Erotic Content of Media and Marketing”, I studied the November 2007 issue of VOGUE magazine. I was shocked to find through content analyzing the various ways advertising has portrayed women pornographically. Merskin says, ““[i]n this chapter, I present an interdisciplinary analysis of pornographic themes in fashion advertising that draws upon film, communication, and fashion theories” (199). Debra Merskin studies and analyzes the portrayal of women in advertising.

Relevant literature:

Lambiase also contributed with theories about pornography in advertising in this semester's textbook. There is also many scholarly articles that use very similar methods of analyzing, but I found my abundance of information in Debra Merskin's chapter in SEX in Consumer Culture.

Corpus and Method:

My corpus focuses on VOGUE magazine and the advertising within the well-known fashion magazine. VOGUE magazine is very based around advertisement and the majority of the advertisement are woman with provocative poses or just an inviting sexual manner. I skimmed through the magazine first to see if I could recognize any advertisements the completely stood out and looked pornographic. There were many that could have been considered but I chose just a few that were the most expressive.

Findings:

I was shocked to find through content analyzing the various ways advertising has portrayed

women pornographically. We focuses much on this topic in class for a few weeks and studied

many different advertising including all types of media, but I was surprised to find such ads in

only one month's Vogue magazine.

Conclusion:

In retrospect of my studies, Debra Merskin and I have made very similar conclusions of how sexual and pornographic advertising has become. Sex only seems to be becoming more of the seller for companies and woman are continuing to portray themselves this way in all types of media.

References:

Merskin, Debra. “Where Are the Clothes? The Pornographic Gaze in Mainstream American Fashion Advertising” 2006, SEX in Consumer Culture.

Reichert, Tom and Lambiase, Jacqueline. SEX in Consumer Culture. Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, publisher. 2006.

Vogue Magazine. November 2007.