Large part of Western society is fighting its battle against exposed nakedness. In most of the countries you can spend a night (or more) in jail for walking around without enough clothes to cover your breasts or genitals. Few years ago, Jennet Jackson’s nipple provoked reactions like she showed us the ultimate horror from the pits of hell and not something we all have – a nipple.
On the other side, just open some of the magazines or walk the street and see the billboards in that same Western world. Or turn on the TV. See all the girls and boys in the advertisements. Is oversexualized the right word?
You might think that those that are trying to ban anything sex-related and nude from public space and those that use nudity for marketing are on the opposite sides. Wrong! At least one of them doesn’t see it that way, and is even prone to finance the other. Maybe this sounds weird on the first glimpse, but let's check it a bit closer.
No matter what is your sex, gender or sexual orientation, you are going to notice breasts when they are around. And they will provoke the subconscious reaction. That is normal and actually quite expected.
Most probably, the first food you have ever taken in your life came from that direction. Not only that your need for food was satisfied, there was a sense of security in mother's hug and joy of hearing her voice talking baby nonsense to you. It doesn’t matter that you can’t recall the memory on those moments, you will never lose the feeling of pleasure from the depths of your mind. And that feeling is associated with breasts. One of the first associations your brain has ever made.
Then you grew up and added the sexual dimension, be it attraction or identification or both, to the breasts. yes, they play a huge role in our minds.
illustration by dandellion
So you’re going to notice the advertisement if there are boobs or anything similar in it. It doesn’t matter that you maybe won’t pay any attention on what the advertisement wants to sell you. Your brain does a lot more work than you’re aware of. Brand and image of the product will be somewhere in your mind and, even more, it will be associated with the feelings of pleasure and attractiveness. Dirty job is done.
But if somebody around is free to show those precious parts of our bodies without commercial intent, then they are ruining the business. If there is too much nakedness around, those on billboards will not attract the precious views. Exploiting our warm feelings for nudity is much more effective if the nudity is scarce.
So, to protect its territory, corporate world will do anything to keep the exclusivity of showing you the nipples and all the other parts that attract the views. If that means they should finance the party that wants to ban nudes from advertisements too, they’ll go for it. They know that the nudity will never be completely banned and that the first victims will be those that do it for no commercial reason. It’s all about the right measure so they can stay the last ones alive showing us the breasts. And getting profit out of them.
While the idea is fascinating in it's beauty, there's one hole in it. Like all conspiracy theories it has to assume a large number of people are actually competent and know what they are doing.
To my knowledge, this assumption is very much unfounded about any sufficiently large group. :)
It still makes a nice anti-anti-nudity argument to throw at people, though.
I agree that large amounts of people that are competent and know what they are doing is a scarce resource in the world. But a good conspiracy theory doesn't need it. As any good enterprise, it takes just a few smart people and a large number of obedient. Huh, I still have to write the post about how conspiracies work.
I tried to start a few, they just don't. :) Natural trends, however, do exist, and people who see them first can appear supremely smart and competent even when they aren't. Consider for example this chain of stimuli-responses:
1. Advertising research shows that breasts seem to improve sales. While data about that is notoriously hard to get in any kind of reliable way, naive logic suggests it makes sense and is therefore true, so more breasts get used in advertising.
2. Since advertising is ubiquitous, people who normally saw breasts only in rare circumstances were exposed to larger and larger amounts. Since that triggers moral values instilled by restrictive upbringing in them, which implies a display of breasts is somehow 'sinful', they bundle together against any display of breasts.
3. Assembling in sufficient numbers, they are capable of labelling the display of breasts as deviant to the society at large. This affects private display of breasts but does not affect the commercial display quite as much, since when it's on an advertisement it's not a person who does it, and companies cannot be deviants by not being people.
4. This makes advertising a larger remaining source of breasts. Even though the real impact of breasts on advertising is still unknown, this makes deviant behaviour both desirable and permitted if you work in advertising, and thus it becomes more popular.
5. Someone is able to promote the whole sequence of events that has been in progress all the way since the 60s as the conspiracy they have originated for boardroom cred. :)
It now looks like a conspiracy exists when in fact nothing of the sort happened. :)
I wouldn't say that this one is a conspiracy from the start. It's much simpler than that. Like.
Boobs start showing up in advertisements due to some research and/or somebody's good insight in human psychology. But the idea that breasts are sinful is already there, it's there for centuries (cause of this is a whole new topic). We can safely assume that the marketing genius had that in mind. It doesn't take much to realize that breasts are valuable sight because they are already banned. Sin is always a good thing to sell :)
Of course, voices of anti-nudity people are getting stronger as a reaction to more nudity around. And this hurts private display of breasts. Not that companies can't be devious, they get attacked too. But companies are better protected. Person got sued is not in the same position as a company get sued for the same act. Company has a team of lawyers and budget dedicated for the case. That is something that was calculated in the business operation. With a bit of luck and skill they will even get more exposure by being attacked. Private display, or doing nudity for artistic reasons are just not that lucky.
But, after all, anti-nudity movement gets weaker. Boobs are still taboo but far less then they were in 50's or 60's. And since in past decades we've seen more and more of human bodies displayed on billboards there is not much left to exploit. And that's where this little conspiracy comes to game. Why losing a precious asset if we can finance the "enemy" to keep it valuable for us? It doesn't take many people for that.