Thursday, March 3, 2011

Dolce & Gabbana: Sexualization Sells



by Maureen Ventura




In today’s society the theory “sex sells” is more prevalent than ever.  More often sexual advertisements are seen in magazines, on television, and on billboards.  Many times these advertisements deal with women being the sex object.  One company in particular is known for their sexual advertisements, Dolce and Gabbana.  D&G degrades women in many of their ads and lowers women to be a sex object and not a human being. There has been much controversy over Dolce and Gabbana’s advertisements over the years.


Dolce and Gabbana’s 2007 advertisement raised the most controversy for them.  The advertisement shows a woman in a tight dress and stilettos looking around indicating she is in search for help.  One man who has no shirt on and is wearing sunglasses is hovering over the woman pinning her down by holding her wrists to the floor.  There are four other men in the photograph all looking down at the women.  The men are wearing either no shirt or unbuttoned shirts.  This advertisement depicts a perfect scene for a gang rape.  The woman in the photograph looks helpless and not able to control the situation.

Dolce and Gabbana’s purpose for the ad was to satisfy people’s “sexual fantasy”.  What woman’s fantasy is to be gang raped? To be sexually abused? This is an advertisement to encourage violence against women.  With the publication of advertisements like this it is setting a norm that it is normal to abuse women.  Young boys viewing this advertisement in an average magazine will see this as normal; especially when these boys are not educated that this advertisement is wrong.

Rape is far too common of an occurrence to joke around about and publish it in an advertisement.  This ad glamorizes rape and violence against women, but there is nothing glamorous or attractive about it.  This advertisement, which is true with many of Dolce and Gabbana’s ads, is seen more for the act of what is going on in it rather than the clothing in the ad.  

This advertisement was banned in Spain and Italy but that is not enough.  Dolce and Gabbana got more free publicity because of the controversy.  And their next advertisement series still included women being abused.  The women continue to be viewed as a sex object and nothing more.  People need to boycott Dolce and Gabbana to really make a statement about how offending their advertisements are towards women.  More people need to speak out about how degrading these ads are.  Women need to take a stand against Dolce and Gabbana in order for the violence to stop. 

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