Barely Behind the Line

             So where is the so-called line anyway? What kinds of images or language are appropriate to include in the mainstream media? Do we have any cultural standards for what can and can't be shown in magazines, television and in our newspapers? Many companies are stretching limits on what they will advertise to get their point across. .
             Sex is rampant in advertising and no other type of psychological imagery hits people closer to where they live. Advertisers have long dangled the lure of enhanced sexuality to entire consumers to buy. In everyday life the average consumer is subjected to thousands of advertisements each day, many of which contain sexual imagery. Not surprisingly, most consumers have become callous to this "mainstream pornography" means by which to sell a completely asexual product. It appears that few are shocked and many surrender to the sometime extreme imaging and perverted innuendoes included in Australian advertisements. .
             You can show any number of sexual images in advertising and you can use very young models but advertisers must be careful how young and how sexual advertisements do get or the plug will be pulled. For example looking through Cosmopolitan at advertisements featuring women's nipples flashing in the centre of the page. A nipple aren't even shown in advertisements actually relating to breasts but is it now officially OK to show bare breasts on the cover of a mainstream magazine? Has the line been moved? People sometimes argue that "the female body is beautiful, why do we have to be so uptight?" But the issue is far too complex to dismiss that easily. Using nipples to get our attention is one more shocking tactic to get us to remember another unrelated piece of merchandise. But sex does sell even that kind of sex. Meanwhile, the distasteful advertisements generated thousands of inches of free publicity.
             Until we acknowledge the connection between the comodification of the female body and sex-based violence against women and girls, it is irresponsible to keep pushing the line towards anything goes/anything shows.