Sex in Consumer Culture

Book excerpt: Sex in Consumer Culture: The Erotic Content of Media and Marketing considers the use of sex to promote brands, magazines, video games, TV programming, music, and movies. Offering both quantitative and qualitative perspectives from leading scholars in a variety of disciplines, this volume addresses a range of integral issues such as media promotion, racial representations, appeals to gay and lesbian communities, content analyses, and case studies. Chapters represent diverse perspectives, addressing such questions as: *What happens when sexual content created for adults reaches children? *What meaning do sexual words and images have within the contexts of sporting events, trade shows, video games, personal ads, or consumer Web sites? *What effects might sex-tinged images have on audiences, and where should the focus be for new effects research? *Where are the current boundaries between pornography and mainstream sexual depictions? Exploring sexual information as it is used in mass media to sell products and programs, Sex in Consumer Culture is an important collection, and it will be of great interest for scholars and students in advertising, marketing, media promotion, persuasion, mass communication & society, and gender studies.