When we think of a sex industry we often think of pornography. Yet the sex industry contains a number of other components, most of which reflect gender-based issues and concerns. The sex industry encompasses globally recognized criminal activities such as sex trafficking, prostitution, child prostitution, sexual tourism, mail-order brides, and war crimes, as well as encompassing more mundane areas such as dance clubs, advertising, erotica, and porn. In all of these cases, the industry focus is on the commodification of sexualized human beings. The sex industry is a capitalist system that turns humans and their bodies into commodities that can be bought and sold, in metaphoric, virtual, and real capacity. The "goods" are human beings who sell sexual services in some capacity. Consider the following example of a uniform from Twin Peaks restaurant (known locally as a "breastaurant") in Austin, Texas:
The industrialization of the sex trade involves the mass production of sexual goods and services structured around local, regional, national, and international divisions of labor. The international marked in these goods encompasses the local and regional levels, making the global imperatives impossible to avoid. Also impossible to avoid are the objectified status of women and children within the industry, and the patriarchal and misogynistic values that underlie and are reinforced by the sex industry. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2009), "women are disproportionately involved in human trafficking, as victims. Nevertheless, the majority of traffickers are male." Sex trafficking is widespread, and the 2005 UN estimate of the total market value of illicit human trafficking was 150 billion USD (ILO, 2014). Add to that the legitimized trafficking, pornography, and other legal forms of sex and gender commodification, and the total industry worth over 200 billion.
As with all commodification, the system thrives by rhetorically constructing itself and related industries in a way that reinforces core values benefitting itself. Thus, businesses such as international, regional, and local hotel chains, airline companies, and the tourist industry benefit greatly, if not always openly, from the sex industry. Take for example the current entrepreneurship trends such as "Bar Chix," "the Caddy Girls," and "Corona Beer Girls."
Selling Sex Appeal: Advertising as Sex Industry
In the 1970s Jean Kilbourne began a series of lectures that culminated in the 1979 documentary Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image of Women. Kilbourne's lectures and the film critiqued the advertising industry for using sexualized images of women to sell a variety of goods to consumers. Killbourne has continued to discuss the stereotypes and images of women in advertising, pointing out the dangers of advertising standards for women and girls who become accustomed to seeing themselves and their gender through overtly sexualized representations.
The advertising industry continues to reproduce images of sexualized women and girls, and as Kilbourne points out it has impact on reaffirming the misogyny in culture. There are some who disagree with Kilbourne's analysis, pointing out that girls and women can find means of personal empowerment by reclaiming those traditional feminine images and using them as empowering icons. This was a trend illustrated particularly within the Third Wave Feminism, Girl Power, and so-called "Lipstick Feminism" movements of the 1990s and 2000s (Baumgardner and Richards, 2000; Orr, 1997). But that type of hyperfeminine ideal, echoing Doane's masquerade, provides only limited empowerment when faced with the ongoing systemic reinforcement of feminine sexuality through industries such as advertising and mass media (Douglas, 1994; Newsom, 2004).
Susan Bordo (1993) defines the body as woman's enemy within patriarchal culture. The body becomes a prison for the soul. Women and girls attempt to shape and control their bodies because it gives them a sense of personal empowerment-power over their own bodies. However, Bordo argues that this is false empowerment because it is reconstructing the female body to the confines of the patriarchal system. The feminine images in the media often have "perfect" bodies; however, these bodies imprison the image-carriers who must use their bodies in prescribed fashions. Bordo also argues that the imprisoning features of these restricted bodies cause self-policing in the audience, which can lead to body dysmorphia and self-harm through cutting, anorexia, bulimia, and other problematic means of body image control.
The problem is further complicated by the acknowledgment of the artifice behind much of the advertising industry. One researcher states:
My lab at Northwestern University created a self-report measure of women’s tendency to critique the beauty standards they see in media images. After surveying hundreds of women, we learned that many are highly critical of unrealistic beauty images. The bad news is that there was no evidence that this protected women from the effects of these images. In fact, women who were most critical reported higher body dissatisfaction (Engeln, 2018).
Since Killborne's arguments became commonly recognized, some within the advertising industry have attempted to address the problematic nature of sexuality, body image, and selling sex. The Dove Self-Esteem Project is one of the best known corporate attempts to address the problem of body image, especially for girls and teens faced with airbrushed media un-reality. In January 2018 CVS pharmacy announced it was planning to make over it's beauty aisles without airbrushed images (Engeln, 2018).
Yet will these attempts fix the problem when the entities speaking out against airbrushing and overly sexualized images are still a minority in the industry? Will pointing out the false images be enough when we are still surrounded by the created images of beauty and sexuality? By enacting and the ability to define and re-define woman and femininity, the advertising industry is able to commodify the images of woman and sexuality, and therefore offer consumer products to reinforce that identity in the audience.
Selling Sex Acts: Pornography as Sex Industry
The word pornography comes from the Greek words porne (meaning "prostitute" or "whore") and graphos (to write) (Dworkin, 1979/2003). Therefore, feminist Andrea Dworkin (1979/2003) claims, pornography literally refers to "writing about whores", who for the ancient Greeks was a sexual slave. Dworkin goes on to argue that pornography therefore isn't about sex, it's about the "depiction of women as vile whores" (p. 385). Dworkin connects this depiction to the degraded status of prostitutes in language. Citing Kate Millett'sThe Prostitution Papers, she argues that the porn industry serves to victimize and dehumanize women through terrorism and male physical strength, and the power of money (Dworkin, 1979) by using degrading language as a means of containment and disempowerment. Take the quote she cites from Millett (1973):
Somehow every indignity the female suffers ultimately comes to be symbolized in a sexuality that is held to be her responsibility, her shame....It can be summarized in one four-letter word. And the word is not fuck, it's cunt. Our self-contempt originates in this: in knowing we are cunt. This is what we are supposed to be about — our essence, our offense. (p. 95)
Pornography holds a unique space in feminist theories as it is read by feminists in multiple ways. Some (Dworkin, 1979; Steinem, 1980) argue that pornography is degrading to women, and can lead to violence against women including rape and sexual harassment (Edwards, 1987; Phipps, Ringrose, Renold, & Jackson, 2018; Romito & Beltramini, 2011; Zillman & Bryant, 1982). Others argued it leads to a distorted understanding of the female and male bodies, including the appearance of sexual organs (Dines, 2010; Sharp & Tiggeman, 2016; Tylka, 2015). Some claim it has a negative impact on ideals of sexuality (Dines, 2010; Mikorski & Szymanski, 2017; Sharp & Tiggeman, 2016). Some have even argued that it encourages male anxiety about their sexuality (Mikorski & Szymanski, 2017; Sharp & Tiggeman, 2016; Zillman & Bryant, 1982). And there are those who argue that it holds the potential for true feminine and female empowerment (Attwood, 2007; Crewe & Martin, 2016). Dworkin (1979/2003) also argues that capitalism is at play, as the porn industry is one of the largest media industries in the U.S.
Dines (2010) argues that one of the key problems with the porn industry is the increasing inclusion of violence and misogyny in the products. Consumer desensitization, she argues, has pushed the industry to incorporate more hardcore extremes. Distinguishing between hardcore and softcore pornography highlights how some feminist and academic scholars argue for the potential empowerment of the porn industry for its stars and audiences. Echoing Radway's Reading the Romance (1984), proponents of soft core porn argue that women-centered and other new forms of pornography can help audiences and producers construct sexual display as recreation and pleasure (Attwood, 2004, 2007). Other feminists firmly disagree, citing pornography and women's pleasure media, such as erotica, as very different art forms (Steinem, 1980).
References
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