Rough Women and Sex in Advertising

One of the most popular brands of denim and leather clothing for women in my world is Leigh, and their "Rough Women" advertising slogan has been in use for several decades. In fact, the phrase Rough Woman is as iconic in my world as Marlboro Man is in yours. While their older ads emphasized a rugged and individualistic woman against the elements, in their more recent years, their ads have become much more focused on sex. The first ad above is from a billboard, with enough hints of the fun stuff for women, yet safe enough for the averted eyes of sensitive men.

The ad below, meanwhile, has been running in the pages of women's lifestyle magazines.

Venus Needs Men

Last month, Blog Buddy Matty Boy at Lotsa Splainin' contacted me and Blog Buddy Undersquid with an idea for one of his regular Giant Women posts. He wanted to feature collages inspired by several verses in four of Elvis Costello's songs which allude to either giantesses or shrunken men. The verse I eventually worked with was from his song My Science Fiction Twin.

He's trapped in his own parallel dimension,
That's why I'm so forgiving,
But how can I possibly forget to mention those fifty foot women
Who put the fascination back into my science fiction twin?

You can see the final results of all four collages and verses at this post here. Featured are two collages by Undersquid, another by TheShrinkee, and one by yours truly, which is also posted below.

I'd never made a fifty-foot-woman style image before, nor any other size difference other than what fit within the confines of My Own Parallel Dimension. However, I was also loath to depart from the rest of my collages and do a one-off piece that I couldn't really post here as this blog is, really, only about my world. This led me to come up with the concept of a poster for a science-fiction movie or TV series from my world which features your classic 1950s-style giantesses, but updated for modern times. This is what I ended up with.

The Sexual Politics of Advertising

In my world, the marketing of women's clothing tends to emphasize assertiveness and aggressiveness, dominance and power. On the other hand, men's apparel is usually sold with imagery suggesting submissiveness and temptation, implying that the worth of a man is in the eyes of women. This is most readily apparent in underwear advertising for men, who are almost exclusively portrayed as sexual objects, dressing themselves for the gratification and approval of women. Usually in fashion advertising on my world, both women and men are pictured together in positions symbolizing domination and submission, instead of merely presenting just women or men posing in their respective clothes. Some say that advertising agencies know what works, that on a subliminal level, appealing to the natural tendencies of the respective genders; others say that advertising itself, and mass media at large, are responsible for perpetuating antiquated and chauvinistic stereotypes that represent the forced subjugation of men.

In my world, the latter group are a very small and often-ridiculed minority in popular discourse.

Before or After, It's Always Time for More Advertising

Some cigarette companies in my world play on the image of the rugged individualism of cowgirls astride horses in the American West, while others just use a whole lot of sex to sell their wares.

You may be wonderin', would bare breasts be allowed on advertising billboards on my world? And I would tell you that yes, yes they are. We're not as prudish about bodies and body parts over here in my world, unlike in yours, and over here, full nudity of both women and men can be found on giant billboards plastered over city skylines and highway-sides. But more on that later.

As an aside, these ads are a nod to one of my favorite online authors, marknew742 who wrote two of my favorite stories, Tara's Lathe and Matt & Emma. His stories are novella-length, and he puts in a lot of effort into creating believable situations and characters. I don't share his love of hugely muscular women though, but it's easy to read past that and just enjoy the scenarios he creates of worlds where women become the stronger sex, physically and so much more.

Further Adventures in Advertising

Update: Replaced the image with a new one fixing some minor shading and masking problems that I'd overlooked. February 14, 2008.

I first made this collage after I spotted the original source image, which was just begging me to try to do something with it. I mean, seriously, an attractive, athletic, woman, teeing off on a golf-ball resting on a man's puckered-up lips? How could someone like me possibly resist. The source image was challenging to work with though, mostly because the man's legs were actually not in the frame and I had to cobble them together using a combination of copied sections from visible parts of his pants, and shoes from some other image. I also had to figure out some way of filling in the background sections that were obscured by the original man's body and also to make shadows and lit areas on the ground conform to his new size. All of this, of course, compounded by the fact that I had just started collaging, and was really just blundering around.

I learned a lot making this image. I also swore a lot.

I've returned to it quite a few times since. My first fix was to make the man smaller, to be more consistent in this world. In an initial spate of laziness, I'd only shrunk him down to about four and a half feet tall because I wanted to avoid large areas of empty space to have to fill in. Thankfully, I'd come back to this image after more than a year of collaging experience. More recently, I've modified the woman to make her appear taller and more muscular. I also thought it would be more fun if the image was an actual advertisement, you know, one of those amusingly risqué and chauvinistic ad campaigns that occasionally cause an uproar in your world.

Not as much uproar in this world though, except from a small number of unattractive, yet extremely vocal men who would shut up if they could just get laid every now and again.

Sex in Advertising

When I started on the idea of this world, I played around with the idea of creating magazine covers that would reflect news and culture that would exist here, and also, advertising images that would grace the pages of such magazines. Advertising, in particular, interests me, because it's such a part of our media-saturated existence. Some popular ad campaigns have even become cultural touchstones, adding to our everyday speech catch-phrases and new vocabulary.

My other interest in advertising imagery is of course, all the implied sex.

C'mon, whadja think I was making all these collages for? Political and artistic comment on our consumerist culture? Please. It's mostly about the sex, and there sure is a lot of it in advertising. And power too, because power is sexy. And the threat of violence, because the withholding of violence is power. And boots, because... well, just because.