4 Sexualized commercial images The main thrust of this chapter is answering the questions; ‘what do sexualized commercial images in the Netherlands look like?’, and ‘how is moral indignation about the public display of sexualized commercial images expressed in the Netherlands?’. They will be answered by the analysis of some ‘sexualized commercial images’ that have recently been displayed in the Netherlands. The analysis of the images requires an answer to three questions; ‘who made the image and with what purpose?’, ‘what is the content of the image and what does it imply?’, and ‘how does the public react to the image?’ (Banks, 2001). These questions are answered in the running text. The theoretical framework has showed that ‘sexualization’ can mean making something sexual in character, and also the public expressions of sex in media and culture. Yet, these definitions do not tell us which things, or images, are sexualized. Whether an image is perceived sexualized depends on personal views about what is sex and what is sexual. Take for example the poster of the Museumnacht from the introduction (page 12) with the naked black man standing behind a naked blonde woman, squeezing her breasts with his hands. There will probably be a consensus about this picture being sexualized, because of the amount of naked skin, the squeezing of breasts (if …show more content…
It was based on the second sub-study ‘Beyond Stereotypes’ (Etcoff, Orbach, Scott, & D’Agostino, 2006). It consisted of the advertising of commercials and ads featuring six women with curves and all with different tones of skin color, in order to pose a counterpart on the stereotype that only long, skinny and white is beautiful. In September 2006, Dove created a short film, called ‘Evolution’, in which the process of transforming a woman into a model was showed. With this viral they hoped to increase awareness of the unrealistic images we see and what that might do to our perceptions of