Sex sells.... to kids?

Mya McCannSenior Opinion Editor Sex. I’m sure that got your attention. It gets everyone’s attention. Actually, that three-letter word is arguably the most influential word in the English language. It’s for this reason that advertisements all over the world adopt its suggestibility as they attempt to achieve market gain and get consumers to buy the products they are selling.The concepts the word conjures up and the images it elicits are plastered all throughout media, billboards, movies and even toothpaste commercials. “Sex sells,” they say, as if that justifies the perverted nature of our media-saturated nation. And why do so many companies use this strategy in their advertisements? It’s simple; sex plays on the biological desires of every single living being.So it’s true that sex sells, it’s been proven that consumers will more likely buy a product from someone who is physically attractive than from an unfortunately humble looking person. However, the sad truth is that this sex-driven consumerism culture is flourishing at the cost of our innocence.As advertisements endorse shorter skirts, younger generations are becoming increasingly encouraged to emulate these mature styles into their own lives.As children, pre-teens and teenagers are bombarded by this suggestive propaganda on a daily basis, they start to become desensitized to the raunchiness of the images in the advertisements and begin to adopt similar exteriors, but in miniature form.It’s a shame that companies care more about selling their products than they do about setting positive examples to children and teenagers. But this is a capitalist culture and businesses have to do what they can to stay afloat among competitors; setting a good example is one of the last priorities a company has, if it is even a priority at all besides selling the product.A girl looks at a picture of Miley Cyrus (or Hannah Montana) wearing a revealing mini-skirt and she immediately assumes that it’s appropriate to dress that way. If her Disney-endorsed life-hero dresses like a hooker, she can too. This is juvenile logic and an immature way to reason things. But these are just children, what do you expect?Adolescents are struggling to find where they fit in this world, and they more than often use examples they see in the media as templates on how to model their own lives. Luckily for myself, I’ve learned that in those shorts from American Apparel, I’ll look nothing like the model in the billboard; I’ll look ridiculous.Many have yet to reach the era of enlightenment that I have, and I know this by simply walking through the hallways and looking at the revealing attire some students wear. I suppose this is where the parents are supposed to come in, or maybe even Dr. Phil, if it ever gets to that level of seriousness. It’d be most impressive though if teenage girls didn’t need any push at all and could “de-sluttify” themselves independently. But, they’re all too wrapped up in the white noise of the hooker-chic culture of commercialism to try.mmcann@thesamohi.com