Posts Tagged by Advertising

{This post is reprinted with permission from Jack-Booted Liberal, where it was originally posted on July 11th, 2009.}

Social Construction of Sexy

Your preferences are not your own.

One factor that influences your preferences is the perception of what other people are liking. I read in a Wired magazine (and, sorry, but I can’t find a link, nor am I going to dig through my old copies of Wired to find the article) about a study that was performed to determine the effect of people’s perceptions of others’ preferences on popularity. A database of obscure musical tracks was created and groups of people in the study were invited to listen to the tracks and rate them. In the control groups, the tracks started out unrated, and the ratings evolved solely on the basis of the preferences of the participants. In the test groups, songs’ ratings were pre-set, as if the study had been ongoing before the participants arrived, giving participants the perception that other people had already weighed in on the songs’ merit.

Surprise, surprise. Very few songs were consistently rated as stinkers and hits. For the most part, participants preferred songs that they believed had been previously highly rated, and disliked songs that they believed had been previously rated down. If you asked the participants what they liked about a certain song, they definitely wouldn’t say, “I liked that it was rated high when I got here,” but the numbers show that was exactly what was happening. The exact same participant, placed into a different control group, could have ended up liking a totally different song, and hating the one that he or she had loved in an alternate reality.

To sum up: there are some things that people are very prone not to like (the smell of feces and rotting meat), and other things that people are very prone to like (sugar, opiates), but the vast majority of things fall into a middle ground where our like or dislike of them is shaped by multiple factors, one of which is our perception of whether other people like or dislike them.

If you think the same isn’t true when it comes to “sexy,” you’re wrong.

Are the people in the image above sexy?

Preference is a feedback loop, especially when Media gets involved. What individual people “like” is dependent on a variety of factors. Oh, you may think you like what you like, but expectation and familiarity play a huge role. Ever been loving a mystery-dish right up until you found out what was in it? There you go.

Media primarily presents content designed to appeal to the largest number of people—the lowest common denominator. The images that are presented are not necessarily inherently sexy, if such a concept can even be said to exist. They are a social construct of sexy that is the result of constant refinement of the images that are presented by media and taken in by consumers. Washboard abs, big boobs stuck onto a bony chest: we disproportionately find these, and other, physical characteristics to be sexy, because they are constantly and exclusively presented to us by media as sexy. This leads to the sub-conscious conclusion that many, many other people must also find these things sexy, which increases our own propensity to find them sexy. There’s your feedback loop.

I came across a great example of the social construction of sexy recently:

There is plenty to critique in this ad, but what I’d like to focus on here is the fact that, in order to create your “ideal” woman, you are allowed to change her: lips, breasts, and butt. That is all. The flat tummy is apparently non-negotiable. So are the skinny legs. What if my idea of a sexy woman looks like this?

That option is not supported by the ad. This woman must not be sexy. Because if washboard abs and big boobs on a bony chest are sexy, then the lack of those things must be un-sexy.

But the fact is that CamGirlKitten (I am told) makes a very comfortable living producing pornography for legions of fans who do, in fact, find her sexy. Although they probably don’t talk about it in public. CamGirlKitten and other BBW porn stars like her are relegated to the realm of “fetish,” or, “kink,” which basically means, “Anything outside of the relatively narrow subset of physical characteristics that are reinforced as desirable by mainstream media.” The powerful negative association that the words, “kink,” and, “fetish,” have with many people is indicative of how strong the social urge to appear to share others’ sexual preferences is.

And it’s a shame, for many reasons. First and foremost, the constructed definition of “sexy” has been so refined that only a fractional percentage of actual, real live human beings match it. This means the vast majority of us are constantly dealing with the message that we are not sexy, not desirable, not attractive. Some people just internalize that message, which is a tragedy, but it’s probably good for some companies’ bottom lines, since they can then sell products that purport to fix the un-sexy condition. Some people manage to reject the message, but they have to deal with the social stigma that comes with such a subversive act. Imagine that: thinking of yourself as sexy is a subversive act.

The second reason it’s a shame is that most of us are participating in propagating that message, which means we are thinking of others as not sexy, not desirable, not attractive, largely because they do not fit the constructed definition of “sexy,” when in fact we might find those people sexy, desirable, and attractive if we could just step outside of that construct. And I’m not talking about pretending to find people sexy in order to “be a good person.” I’m not talking about a pity-fuck. I’m saying that human preference and sexual response is varied enough that most of us are capable of being sincerely attracted to more than just that fractional percent of people who have physical characteristics that are portrayed in the media, and by limiting ourselves to those characteristics, we’re missing out on opportunities for enjoyable and fulfilling interactions with other people.

Your assignment: If you consume mainstream pornography, spend one week consuming only pornography that features models with body types that differ from the mainstream norm (skinny, flat abs, huge penis, big boobs, rock hard pecs, etc…). Notice how your sexual response to them changes. It may take longer than a week to notice a change, depending on various factors.

If you do not consume pornography, you may be able to accomplish a similar result by having sexual fantasies about people who have body types that differ from the mainstream norm. Fortunately, such people are ALL AROUND YOU, so you should have no shortage of material. Imagine them naked. Then imagine them sexy. In case you think that this assignment is in some way inappropriate, keep in mind that YOU ARE POSSIBLY ALREADY DOING IT. If you are like most people, you are already imagining the people around as NOT SEXY all the time. So a shift to imagining them as sexy instead isn’t much of a change.