DEMAND Series, Part 1: Sex Sells… But Should It?
By Lee Ellen Starks, Office Manager
Sex sells.
You’ve heard it a million times in advertising strategies. Businesses decided a long time ago that sexualizing an advertisement, even if it is for buying a cheeseburger, would return a significant increase in sales. “Follow the money” is also a popular phrase and businesses do just that. We, as consumers, have wittingly or unwittingly participated with our dollars in encouraging and increasing the “sex sells” concept in our society. Now, some might say, “Well, I don’t like/care about the ads. I just like the product.” This reminds me of restaurant chains who require wait staff to wear revealing clothing, drawing customers to highly praised, mediocre food. Are they really drawn to the food or the wait staff?
In my research, I was surprised to find a study done in 2015 by the American Psychological Association that found over-sexualized advertisements don’t actually sell more product.* They claim that violent and sexual content distracted from the actual product for sale. Businesses selling a product rely on the law of supply and demand. They drive up the demand for a product by increasing the number of times you see it and hear about it. And when the demand increases so does the supply. If what our minds are taking away from these advertisements are the violent and sexual content rather than the non-sex-related product, what demand are they actually driving?
It may seem a stretch to relate this concept to human sex trafficking, but not if you acknowledge that sex trafficking IS a business… a lucrative business of selling sex. It must be said that far more than selling sex, this business is selling the sexual control of another human being. The supply, also known as the product in sales, is sexual access to a human, and the demand is from men who seek to buy that access. Though the study mentioned above refutes the claim that sexualized advertisements sell more product, sexualizing content continues to be a popular marketing tool. So if these ads are failing to sell the products advertised, their only actual success is in dehumanizing women and girls and giving men permission to view them as products themselves. Instead of “selling” a product, she becomes the product for sale. This thinking absolutely fuels demand and the exploitation of women.
Let’s consider some hard questions.
Does our purchase of a business’ product with sexualized advertisements confirm and promote that the “sex sells” model works?
Are we collectively contributing to the model with our purchase and encouraging businesses to continue to utilize sexualized content to sell more product?
Thus, are we (consciously or unconsciously) agreeing that sex is in fact for sale through our financial support of such purchases?
Difficult and uncomfortable questions but important steps in confronting our contribution to the demand side of human sex trafficking.
In this DEMAND Series, I will press into three specific topics in the overarching, sometimes daunting area of demand within the scope of human sex trafficking: the buyers, social media/internet presence, and music/television/movies. At End Slavery Tennessee (ESTN), our mission statement is “To promote healing of human trafficking survivors and strategically confront slavery in our state.” In our organization’s TAAP model, we focus on Training, Advocacy, Aftercare and Prevention.
We approach the first half of our mission statement through training and aftercare. As you may know, we have a robust aftercare program that provides comprehensive resources to survivors as they address their complex trauma from being trafficked, and our staff walk alongside each survivor as they traverse the long road to healing. This is a crucial part of lowering the number of trafficked persons. Without long-term support via holistic, trauma-informed aftercare services, the cycle of exploitation continues and can get passed down from generation to generation. We also raise awareness and train professionals to identify human sex trafficking in the workplace and their everyday lives. We inform our local community of the latest statistics about human sex trafficking in Tennessee. We also provide free courses on our website.
Advocacy and Prevention in the TAAP model activate the second half of our mission statement, “strategically confront slavery in our state.” ESTN has a long history of affecting change through key stakeholder relationships in the Tennessee General Assembly to advocate for survivors and prosecute traffickers. ESTN advocates and educates on the issues that impact survivor recovery, always looking for ways to change systems to free the oppressed. There is still more to be done, and we will continue to be active in that arena.
The fourth focus for ESTN is prevention. You may think this means preventing ourselves and loved ones from being trafficked. This makes sense and truly is an aspect of prevention. But a glaring part of prevention is preventing ANY person from being sold for sex. Focusing on only preventing it from happening to us is the equivalent of water running in a plugged bathtub until it is overflowing in the whole house. No one wants to be affected by the flood so they wear rainboots in the house and maybe go into a different room, close the door and stuff towels against the crack. The water continues to rise so people get better sealing doors and invite others into their dry rooms out of the flood. All the while, the simple question is…why doesn’t someone turn off the water faucet?
So, how can we, the collective “we,” help turn off the TAAP of DEMAND? Join me for additional blog posts addressing the demand component of human sex trafficking. I realize this series may be uncomfortable for some and too hopeless for others. But stick with me, and I think you will find there are some actionable ways we can push back on demand. We are driven by the principle that if demand decreases so will supply. As much as we pour into our aftercare program, the best-case scenario is that survivors were never trafficked in the first place. Let’s face the demand epidemic by stating loud and clear, “Sex doesn’t sell anymore.”
UP NEXT: Stay tuned for the release of DEMAND Series Part 2: Who’s Buying? later this month.
*Lull, R. B., & Bushman, B. J. (2015). Do Sex and Violence Sell? A Meta-Analytic Review of the Effects of Sexual and Violent Media and Ad Content on Memory, Attitudes, and Buying Intentions. Psychological Bulletin. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-bul0000018.pdf.