Why do commercials still need to use sex to sell? For how many people that object to the sexism prevalent in the highest ad-driven time spot on tv: the Super Bowl, why do we still see sex in commercials? The answer I would expect most people to give would be that sex sells? Yes I understand that but why? Why is it become the fail safe of advertising to throw scantily clad women on a product? I know more men that feel offended that the commercials feel they need to appeal to the sexual desires of themselves and not the other million senses they could appeal to. I personally feel insulted when a commercial has to delve to that level because they feel men are at that level all the time. Not only are there men that are offended but there are quite a few women that are too, if it wasn't painfully obvious. So why if so many people, both men and women, are so objective to these commercials that they continue to occur? The one reason I can see these continuing to happen is because of the incredible publicity a commercial would get by being so offensive, almost one of the only ways to get publicity these days. I feel it is necessary to stop giving so much publicity to offensive commercials and ads and the such because it only feeds the companies to follow suit in hoping off getting their own share of the mayhem.
This commercial shown on youtube is an ad for a robotic vacuum cleaner. You can watch the ad but in summary it portrays men as jackasses who aren't tidy by any means and shows women as the ones who are responsible and have to clean up after them.
In the ad it is not subtle by any means as it literally shows the man and husband as a donkey and unquestionably refers to him as a jackass although not explicitly saying it. The interesting thing in this commercial is how you look at it. You could see it from a sexist male or a sexist female approach. Either you could be offended that the commercial portrays the man as a literal bumbling jackass who cannot manage to keep a house clean for any amount of time or that the female is the one who has to clean for whatever reason. Most reasons that the female would have to clean are because she is the female and therefore has to/should. Either way portray both sides negatively and quite stereotypically.
I personally saw it as offensive to men. I also do not think anyone would actually care and take offense or take the offense seriously. That could be an incredible double standard in that because of the immense amount of female oriented sexism, the small amounts of male sexism is not taken seriously.