Sex To Sell A Kids Meal?

My name is Angela White, I am a education major at ACC. This website is for a psychology course I am taking. It is designed to highlight the extremely sexual nature of the media in our country today. I am attempting to show how our media is wrong in not advertising condoms and other types of sexual awareness advertisements. Please feel free to leave your comments, and take any polls I have on the page. Thanks!


Sex is a very common part of the media in our country, but it not always used in an appropriate manner. We use sex to advertise everything from food to clothes to perfume. But what our media does not contain is the "good" sexual advertisements that should go hand in hand with such a sexual environment.

The saying "sex sells" is obviously very true, and companies take advantage of that fact, often combining sex and humor to sell their products. Take this video for example (also, listen to the song I have posted(the second video)-it is the inspiration for the song in the commercial):

(And yes, this commercial is currently airing on television)

While the commercial is humorous, from some aspects, is it really something that our children should associate food with? While the argument can be made that children the age that this commercial is directed at won't understand the subtext behind it, what about the older kids who see this commercial? Or how about this commercial, one that IS directed at teenagers and adults:

(Along with how sexual it is overall, what about the Arby's logo representing the formation of an erection?)
A kid the age of twelve or thirteen will see this commercial and completely understand what it is about. Our children are growing up with advertisements such as this, constantly being bombarded with sex, as well as music that objectifies women and promotes sexual violence in general. Like this song, which shows not only violence towards women, but also the victim's retaliation towards the man:

Then there are more commonly heard songs such as "Lollipop" by Lil' Wayne, which displays women as sexual objects:


And here is a link to the lyrics, for closer inspection: http://www.metrolyrics.com/lollipop-lyrics-lil-wayne.html

Music videos have an ability to imprint an image upon our minds, so every time we hear those lyrics we flash back to that image. Any other type of advertisement is the same way.
With the Burger King commercial above, anytime we not only see a Burger King, a kids meal, but even the cartoon Sponge Bob Squarepants, we will automatically think of that commercial, about 'square butts', with very sexual undertones.