Sex: We need more of it

The camera opens to a beautiful blond woman walking — nothing too unusual, except that she appears to be completely naked. Men all around stop and stare, but not at her beauty — that would be crass. No, they are staring at the succulent burger in her hand.

If this sounds like a strange melding of middle school fantasies, it’s not. It’s the plot line of Carl’s Jr.’s most recent Super Bowl commercial. Tragically, during this year’s Super Bowl, there was an unsatisfying number of blatantly sexualized ads, compared to those of previous years. Not only should there be more commercials like the Carl’s Jr. one, but sex should be a larger part of all forms of media.

Why wouldn’t we bombard everyone with sexual images more than we already do? For one, it’s commonplace, meaning it has become a standard. A study by sociologists at the University of Buffalo found that from the 1960s to the 2000s, the percentage of sexualized images of women on Rolling Stone covers went from 44 percent to 83 percent. This was according to a system that took into account everything from body pose to clothes. Progress is always good — we can all agree on that — but 83 percent is barely a B. How can we become a more caring and liberal society if we can’t even use sex to sell 95 percent of Rolling Stone magazines? It is admirable that Rolling Stone attempted to bring considerable attention to the campus rape culture, but it would be much more effective if it simply put more heavily sexualized images on the covers to teach men that women have sexual agency and can wear whatever they want, especially since that task does not require accurate fact-checking.    

Another benefit is that sex sells, and as any Republican can tell you, whatever stimulates the economy is good. Sure, there is no definitive proof that sex sells, and a study in the Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology says it doesn’t. But hey, when did anyone ever pay attention to science? There is nothing better than subtly, or not so subtly, using sex to draw attention to your advertisements. Most of the time, sex is not at all related to the product, and unwarranted images of intimacy apparently offend people, but why would people say sex sells if it didn’t?

And even if sex doesn’t sell, think of how entertaining society would be if it became even more sexualized. There are some concerns that the beautiful men and women we see all over the media will warp our sense of beauty and impair our ability to view each other as unaltered humans. But think of the alternative — where would we be if sex was just a normal activity and not something that drew attention? Undoubtedly bored out of our minds! After all, there wouldn’t be a single reason to watch any of the music videos by Nicki Minaj, Rihanna or Miley Cyrus. We also might teach more about the medical facets of sex in school, which would clearly waste precious taxpayer dollars.

Plus, more sexualized ads will give our elders something else to complain about besides how lazy and unmotivated millennials are, and it would distract everyone else from depressing news. I am confident that a full-on sex scene in an ad for washcloths would outrage everyone enough that we wouldn’t hear about vaccines or health care reform for weeks.

There is much to be said for a world that focuses more heavily on sex. Art, music and human relationships would all be simpler. It might mean that we have less time to do anything actually productive, but it also means we would have less time to do anything destructive. Sex is fun, so why not include more of it everywhere? And since it is still illegal to outright buy sex, we might as well use it to sell things.

Eli Talbert writes a biweekly satirical column for The Pitt News.

Write to Eli at ejt26@pitt.edu.