Cheesecake and Beefcake: No Matter How You Slice it, Sexual Explicitness in Advertising Continues to Increase

Abstract

Previous research revealed that sexually oriented appeals in American advertising had become increasingly explicit through the mid-1980s. This study updates earlier research by assessing images of women and men in magazine ads in 1983 and 1993. Results show that both genders were portrayed more explicitly and through more sexually intimate contact in 1993. Women were three times more likely than men to be portrayed explicitly, but for the first time, images of men were shown to be more explicit in the 1990s, albeit in smaller numbers than women. Portrayals of women and men were most explicit in women's and men's magazines.