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Joey Nguyen
Professor Ditch
English 113A
2 November 2015
The New Standard
In our western society, its common that corporations use sex appeals to promote their
products. Sex appeal is a strategy that easily catches the consumers attention in the form of
media. However, this method has been used a lot more than before. As a result, the media are
now flooded with advertisements that are sex appealing, and this creates a new social
construction of gender, a new standard. This new standard affects young women and girls
subconsciously into believing that this is how they are supposed to look and act (like models and
actresses). Although not all, a lot of these females are conforming to the gender performance that
the media or society expects them, instead of trying to be themselves, and this creates a problem.
In the article Good Girls Go Bad, for a Day by Stephanie Rosenbloom, the author
wrote about how girls in our generation appear to look more sexually attractive by the way they
dress. This trend has become so influential that Halloween should now be called Dress Like a
Whore Day (Rosenbloom 165). It is said that the trend was actually begins with little girls
(Rosenbloom 166). Heroic figures for women or considered icons of femininity are very much
anchored in the femme fatale imagery (Rosenbloom 166). When these little girls become older,
it is just a continuation of the same trend that they have been using. Meanwhile, manufacturers of
these costumes are keeping the trend going by mainly focusing on ultra-sexy costumes, they
even said that 90 to 95 percent of their female costumes have a flirty edge to them, and they

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had to divide their sexy category into three subdivisions this year (Rosenbloom 168). As
long as these companies are manufacturing sex appealing costumes, women will still be buying
them because that is all that is available (Rosenbloom 169).
Some women may argue that showing off their bodies is a mark of independence and
security and confidence (Rosenbloom 167). It is true that dressing up in a sexy costume or outfit
may make these women feel more secured and confident. However, they are only being sexy for
someone else, not for themselves (Rosenbloom 167). According to the article, when the girls
were asked what them feel sexy, they had difficulty answering the question (Rosenbloom 167).
As a result, these women are only feeling that way because they are confident that they will not
be judge by others.
Although there are respected female role models, such as doctors, authors, singers,
politicians, etc. However, the numbers are very miniscule in the media or advertisements. For
instance, in the trailer of Miss Representation, women in the United States are being under
represented in powerful and influential positions. Women only make up 3% in media and
entertainment, 17% in Congress and 18% in the film industry, even though women make up 51%
of the US population. For that reason, these respected role models do not make much of an
impact to the audiences and consumers, which leaves to the audiences own judgement to tell
what is right or wrong based on what they saw.
Although sex appeal seems like it only affects females, it also affect males in our society.
Similar to females, sex appeal is also considered as a standard for males. This standard creates an
expectation for the type of partner they are looking for. This not only forces females to conform
to the media, but prevent females that are not like that to get a partner. They also do not want to
be judged or bullied by others who have already conformed, this causes them to lose confidence,

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and feel insecure about themselves. As we move through our lives, society demands different
gender performances from us and rewards, tolerates, or punishes us differently for conformity to,
or digression from, social norms (Devor 35). Therefore, they had no other choice but to
conform to it as it is their only solution or a new goal they have to fight for.
In the article Visible or Invisible: Growing Up Female in Porn Culture, Gail Dines (the
author) discusses how young women and girls in the current generation are forced to conform to
what society demands. In our previous generations, women have been looking up to the
Stepford Wife image. However, it has now disappeared, and in its place we now have the
Stepford Slut: a hypersexualized, young, thin, toned, hairless, and in many cases, surgically
enhanced woman with a come hither look on her face (Dines 252). Moreover, the celebrities we
have today Britney, Rihanna, Beyonce, Lindsay, etc. embraces this kind of look. They
represent images of contemporary idealized femininity (Dines 252), in other words, they are
what young women and girls look up to nowadays, the role models of our generation. This led
young females into believing that conforming to this hypersexualized image will give them
power in society, not in our ability to shape the institutions that determine our life chance but in
having a hot body that men desire and women envy (Dines 252).
Along with the new standard, the fashion industry has always been pushing clothes that
are sexually appealing on womens bodies, however todays fashion look is inspired by the
sex industry (Dines 253). Young women and girls are now expected to dress up sexy
everywhere: in school, on the street and at work (Dines 253). Females students are often being
complained by teachers about how they look more like they are going to a party rather than
coming to school (Dines 253). In the previous generations, the standard of being a good women
was to be a good cook, cleaner and mother (Dines 256). However nowadays, all it takes to be a

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good women is just being a good lay (Dines 256), in other words, to look fuckable (Dines
253). According to Cosmopolitan, a women magazine, if a girls wants a partner, then not only
must she have sex with the him, she must learn ways to do it better and hotter than his previous
girlfriends (Rosenbloom 257).
This is a huge problem because not only that hypersexualized images are being mass
produced, but they also overwhelmed and crowed out any alternative images of being female
(Dines 253). Therefore, the only alternative of to be hypersexualized is to be invisible (Dines
253). This new standard not only requires females to look sexy, but also a body that matches of a
celebrity. This creates a physical impact to these females because in order to look like their role
model celebrity, they have become obsessed with getting their body thinner, which they will have
to starve themselves to achieve this body type (Dines 259). This goes to the topic of Womens
Biology, which is a social constructed concept (Devor 46), and society is trying to enforce this
concept into these young females. Therefore, they assumed that it is normal for them to do so in
which affects their actual biology.
Carls Jr., American fast food chain that is known for its burgers, made a commercial that
uses sex appeal as its main form of advertisement, which features Kate Upton as its main actress.
This means that Kate Upton is someone that the public consider to be very attractive. This is
what Carls Jr. wanted to do: giving out what the public wants. They are promoting their
commercial by having her eat their sandwich, and the way she eats it is very seductive. As she
eats the sandwich, it shows that she is also sweating, which led her into taking her garments off
while eating the sandwich. This allows her to reveal her body to audience, and it is a way to get
their attention on not only of her body, but also of her eating the sandwich. Again, this is a
method of sex appealing. This method not only gets the attention of males, but also females

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because it makes them believe that they will be as attractive as Kate Upton if they are eating the
same sandwich. However, this may also serves as a bad influence for young female teens since
sex appeals are so common nowadays, it may affect their point of views of what the social norm
is, such as dressing or acting like Kate Upton in the commercial. Therefore, leading these young
women and girls to a wrong path.
The media has now become a tool to spread a socially constructed gender performance
across the nation. It sets a new standard subconsciously to people by showing them daily
contents, which has a really big impact to the society. Countless of people has now been
brainwashed by the media with its concepts. This worsen their ability to distinguish what are
right or wrong. For example, young women and girls believe its normal to dress up like Kate
Upton in her commercials because they think it is a social norm, a socially constructed one that
is. In Miss Representation, the media is shown to be incredibly powerful and influential, for
example, it shows that people learn more from media than any other available sources. For
people to know whats going on in the twenty first century, we have to follow and understand the
media. The media is powerful enough to shape different areas in our society (politics, life,
emotions, etc.) by just delivering contents to the mass. Moreover, the media has been
manipulating us since we were little, we grew up watching these advertisements on television,
and that is what shaped young men and women to become who they are today. By exploiting
womens bodies, the media is basically contributing to the social constructed concept of gender
performance by demanding how women are supposed to perform and behave like. To solve this
problem, people need to start becoming more aware of what is right or wrong, instead of
believing what they were told or seen.

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