They're selling what??

In class today, we talked about the shift from objectification of women to the objectification of men, starting with the photo we discussed in class of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. When men are objectified in the media, they often times look passive, yet still very muscular and sexually appealing. This is the case in many Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch ads; these ads show extremely (almost impossibly) attractive men, but more times than not, they are missing at least some articles of clothing. How can these ads be selling clothes if their models are not really wearing them? To put it simply, sex sells. People want to buy the brand of clothes that the appealing models represent—it doesn’t matter what they look like in the clothes, we’re still attracted to and gravitate towards what these objectified men “represent.”

In this ad in particular, all we see is a male torso and hints of Abercrombie & Fitch clothing. The objectification of the model in this ad is undeniable; they’ve removed the head from the body, therefore, making the viewer see the body as just an object for viewing (sexual) pleasure and fantasy. By seeing just the (basically) nude torso, the viewer is forced to objectify it and lust after it; the advertisers know that they’re perpetuating objectification, but they continue to, because it works for them. These half-nude models (they stand outside shirtless, model in the store itself, and are on the shopping bags people carry out after they buy things, therefore allowing the customer to take the image home with them) are half of the reason people come to their store and pay outlandish prices for almost the exact same clothing (without the brand name) they could get elsewhere at a fraction of the cost.