Kiilbourne's Effects Of The Sexualization Of Children In Advertising

We may think of sex as a passionate way of showing one’s life-long partner one’s love, or as a means of satisfying oneself, but in the recent years we have grown accustomed to the idea of casual sex becoming the norm. As a result, the once scandalous sexualized ads of the early and mid-1900s have become so common that Kilbourne claims that these ads contribute to our current rape culture and to the objectification of women and children. In her essay, she describes the effects that sexualized advertising has on the psyche of the viewer and what it implies for the society that accepts it. Kilbourne asserts that by creating such advertisements, it is both encouraging and allowing one to downplay the effects that sex has. She claims, “sex in advertising

However, such ads gain a lot of media coverage for their lewd depictions and thereby a lot of free views for that ad. The drawback is it allows children to be seen as sexual creatures and thusly advertisers take away their innate innocence. As children see these ads, they become predisposed to thinking about others sexually at a young age. If parents do not step in and teach their children the morals, they can grow up to think that men are supposed to be perverted and women submissive. In an example given by Kimmel, a boy as young as three and a half was reprimanded by his father for behaving too much like a girl for crying when injured. His father sought to make sure that he did not turn out to be weak and effeminate and to instill manlier qualities within the boy by making him spend more time with him. By spending more time with the father, Sigmund Freud states that the boy must go through a period of disassociation from the mother and association with the father. During this time, it is thought that the boy will learn more about manhood from his father and learn to identify as a man where he must learn to be confident, not only emotionally but sexually. While the boy may not learn the ideals directly, he will observe his father’s actions, and from the father’s example the boy will learn about the ideals of the society he lives