Your Value…
…Their choice
In search for identity, often our society
has a greater impact then we do in figuring
our destinies. It holds most of us in its
changing cultural grip and releases us to the
bowels deep within the society’s group psyche.
It does this by exposing us, from the very day
we are born, to what actions are socially
acceptable and towards which steps will
ensure success. In Greece very specific sexual
practices between two men often meant a sign
of great maturity and value, but it was still
only sex. In America’s early 1930’s, society
became the different ways one could obtain
pleasure, growing into a search for
satisfaction, fueled by a growing sex driving—
seeming to be a result of the great depression,
and even more so, a way to escape. Now, still
in the early 21st century, our society on the
whole is bombarded with commercials,
billboards, magazines, celebrities, and even
religion, telling you exactly when, how, and
where you should have sex. And it’s still, only
sex; only sex that is branding the youth of
today. “Sex is a part of nature. I go along with
nature.”—Marilyn Monroe. Leading us to
believe that if we don’t have sex, we aren’t
natural. “I want to f*** you like an animal”—
Nine inch nails. Our music contains lyrics
such as this, and envelopes our way of
thinking, weaving sexually oriented words into
the chorus and going on to illicitly describe
sexual practices. “Be fruitful and multiply, fill
the earth and subdue it”—Genesis 1:28 (New
International Version). Now are religion tells
us to fill the earth, to subdue it to our ‘oh so
powerful ways’, to make god’s creation our
own. And finally what we buy sells us. Our
clothes. Our perfume. Our furniture. Their
message. It’s still only sex.
Now of course
there is freedom of
sexuality and the beauty
“Sex is a part of
through which it is
nature. I go along
expressed, and music
with nature.”—
and television are
Marilyn Monroe
nothing if not the ways
in which one can
express themselves,
their thoughts, their
1|Page
Above is a picture selling the Calvin Klein Jeans, as a part of
their campaign towards the young adult population. Strongly
suggesting sensual tension and an underlying desire to achieve
an” unmentioned” intimacy.
beliefs, and their opinions. I mean this “new
age” is all about the new way to catch people’s
attention, the new way to be able to captivate
an ever less penetrate-able audience. Klein’s
commercials come from a more edgy
perspective; he captures the “attractiveness of
the clothes” by accenting them, making the
particular item the only thing seen on the
model, thus elaborating the splendor each
piece has. He makes girls see the natural
beauty in themselves “I love woman. I’m trying
to do beautiful things with them. I’m not trying
to insult them. My life is not about that.”—
Klein; he shows the world the beauty of a
woman’s figure and places such on a pedestal,
an object of desire. He also utilizes such
beauty as a canvas upon which to express art
on a new medium. “Anyone who is secure
about herself is not threatened about the type
of ads I do”—Klein. Come to think of it, Mr.
Klein seems to be that of a break through
artist, with new break through ideas, and a
unique futuristic way of interpreting them.
Klein is actually empowering woman, giving
them an example of what they can look up
too. He is embracing woman’s sexuality rather
than exploiting it. “People read things into my
commercials that don’t even exist.”— Klein
But it’s still only sex.
But wait. Do we want our little girls to
be virtually undressed, topless, lying on top of
one man, as he lies atop a green couch; she
leaning backward to make out with another?
All while another man (most probably awaiting
his turn) lies casually upon the floor, unbuttoning his pants, blazer undone, and
satisfactory look upon his face. Not to mention
the fact that the girl is only dressed in mini
shorts, having her back caressed by the man
she is kissing, and her chest (bare-of course)
ogled by the boy beneath her. Too
scandalous? Just an over dramatization of the
“sex-centered” campaign of Calvin Klein? No.
This is an actual advertisement for the
company’s jeans department.
Most of Calvin Klein’s commercials
feature scenes like this.
And of course the argument always
has been, and always will be, at which point
do we find a middle ground between the two
extremes. One cannot simply deny the fact
that sex exists, or rather push it aside as
language that only whores, prostitutes, and
johns take pleasure in using. To do so is to
hide the beauty of sexuality, and instead of
looking upon with glances of disgust
embracing it as the very reason the human’s
exist. But then, you can’t simply exploit sex. If
you do you shall end up in a world of either
pure chaos, or in a world where thought
doesn’t belong of the individual but rather as
the “whole”. People only focused on giving
themselves to other people and getting back.
At this point a standard of moral must stand,
in some function of government—oh I most
nearly forgot where does my right to moral
end? At the sex AD in front of my face.
Calvin Klein is selling his customers
sex. We’ve always been sold sex. But now
we’re wearing sex. And that is deciding our
value. Whether or not we want our product to
2|Page
be communicating
what the Ads sell.
“Everyone belongs to
Like AXE, “Spray
everyone”—Huxley
more, get more”,
Axe being a brand
of products for the
teen boy population, consisting of body spray,
body wash, deodorant, and scantily dressed
females attacking the product user. Not to
forget Burger King’s use of the hotel heiress,
Paris Hilton, in an ad selling their brand of
hamburger. In which features a soaking wet
Paris, dressed in a black string bikini,
washing a black SUV—in standard high
school cheerleader style—and in the middle of
it all, she whips out a signature burger king
whopper, in which she precedes to eat
seductively. So now our food sells sex. This
coming from a joint that makes kids meals,
KIDS meals. Now as much as I am a
proponent of freedom of press and speech, I
disagree with the “pushing” of too many
sexual images upon young children who grow
up to search for group orgy’s in their
classrooms, and nudity in their lunch rooms.
“The power to respond to truth exists in
all of us. But so unfortunately, does the
tendency to respond to unreason and
falsehood.”—Huxley (Brave New World
Revisited) This quote demonstrates a basic
fact of human nature, the fact that we are
generally searching for things we can’t have
but want to posses and also the power to
distinguish which ones are logical to pursue.
“Everyone belongs to everyone”—Huxley
(Brave New World) This quote from Huxley’s
novel is one which they used to brain wash
society’s citizens into exploiting their body for
everyone else to have in the sense that
everyone would be able to derive pleasure
from such an act. Essentially every teenagers
dream at this point in time, to be able to have
sex with whomever they want whenever they
want with no negative repercussions.
Something that wasn’t ideal for the teenager
in Huxley’s time. Only more evidence that his
science fiction novel is becoming ever more
non-fiction. The fact that Calvin Klein’s ads
promote such an image on the young
population isn’t helping the idea that we all
control our own fate once we end up in
Huxley’s world. Not so much that Klein’s
strategy is bad but the fact that young people
should decide what they are and aren’t
subject too. That too may create a world with
great similarity to Huxley’s.
“Everything has a code”—Rapaille (The
Persuaders) When Rapaille states this he is
communicating that which is true for all
venues of advertisement, the goal is to sell and
the trick is to figure out how to sell. Now the
code for Klein is most obviously sex, however
many “spin-off’s” of this concept are that he’s
selling beauty. And in that the definition
Sexual Identity comes into play. It all depends
on what sex means to you. It could be
something to release the animal desire within
you or a way of expressing ones love in a
physical medium. Whatever the case the point
always comes back to young people, and
whether or not what they can decide about
having intercourse.
Our birth rate only continues to sky
rocket with more and more teen pregnancies,
those babies are making less room for
everyone else, everyone else is going to get
crabby with the space issue, and the bottom
line is I have to live with these people. And I
most certainly do not want to live in a world
where thought isn’t my own and food comes in
short supply. Not mentioning the fact that
there is no denial to where this world is
heading and that is directly into the world of
Huxley and Fahrenheit 451, and 1984,
whether it be one for all, fun for all, or all for
one, there is definitely a harder time
distinguishing Identity from society if such a
line isn’t so blurred to the point where they
are one in the same. So your clothes are
selling you, you just have to decide whether or
not you like what they are saying.
3|Page