Can my pictures be used for ads?

Why do ads targeting women show sexy pictures of women?

• Why does this appear to work to sell, for instance, women's clothes? This question was born from . Jen shared pictures of American Apparel ads for unisex shirts (a shirt that can be worn by either men or women) in which the ads worn by men were sexually neutral, and the ads worn by women were decidedly not.. click above to take a look. Assuming the intended target audience for such ads is ultimately women (after all, women buy a lot more clothes than men do), why does it appear to... work to sell shirts to mostly heterosexual women by showing pictures of naked women? Is it about women consciously or subconsciously wanting to appear like the women in the ads? Is it a set of more indirect relationships (eg. photos of naked women in junk mail are more likely to not be tossed in a household, where men and women can enjoy the pix for different/similar reasons)? Or is it that most women are more bisexual than men?... No disrespect intended, but it is interesting how men's and women's magazines have both tended to emphasize sexy images of women. And presumably, if women *did* find such images degrading, wouldn't Americans, like Swedes and Brits, also slam such ads so that they would not be as effective....? The last point refers to a link that Jen posted: http://www.buzzfeed.com/copyranter/now-swedes-slams-sexist-american-apparel

• Answer:

  The idea is that "Women want to look sexy, we can get their attention by showing the female models sexy." and "Men want to see the pictures of beautiful, half/fully naked women, we can get their attention by showing female models sexy." Another example to this kind of thinking would be, female celebrities are usually on the cover of both male and female magazines. Although I don't support this at all, there's a little logic in the decision. Women tend to have female celebrity role/style models more than men tend to have male celebrity role/style models. A woman would more likely buy a magazine because Jennifer Aniston is on the cover and she likes Aniston's style, than a man would buy GQ because George Clooney is on the cover. This is mostly because, in my opinion, women are being put in a position by the society where they need to be perfect, at an ideal weight, have a good fashion style, have a strong personality...etc The more pressure on women to be perfect make women be more interested in strong, beautiful female figures they can look up to to reach that 'perfect'. So even if we dislike it (I surely do), this makes sense for good marketing, right? Only if we don't look at the big picture. makes some excellent points in her answer and explains how such advertisement cause women have some serious problems like sexual objectification, related; street harassment, related; not being taken seriously. Women didn't begin trying to look perfect, women began trying to look perfect after the male-dominated industries started to compete women with each other and forced them to have a certain look -- whatever look is popular in that era, that is. This is still the marketing technique of fashion and cosmetic industries: "You have to look sexy, young, no wrinkles, and my product can make you look like that." They first give the insecurity, then the solution, make money in between. A clothing company arguably might have better sales if they showed their  female models sexy, even when it's not necessary like if it's just a  flannel shirt as in those American Appeal ads. The question is, do  better sales worth indirectly bringing serious problems into women's lives? Is it okay to objectify women if it will make you earn more money? As long as the media and fashion industry care more about their sales than what they are doing to women, they will be a huge part of the objectification and pressure problems women face.