SEX (or "Lets see how many people read this blog post because of its title")

Sexual innuendo makes me laugh, it's a crude form of humour and I sometimes pretend I am above such gimmicks but the truth is: I revel in it (when it has been done intelligently). Social taboos dictate the degree of entertainment that can be derived from an "off-colour" joke or reference.In South Africa adverts that feature a subtle hint of anything to do with the merging of ones nether regions with another is certain to garner a fair amount of attention and, of course, critique.This is, in my opinion, an indication of how sexually immature we are as a country.

Having lived in Spain for a while my eyes have been opened to a better (again, my opinion) way of living in terms of general frigidity. When one goes to the beach, the majority of female beach goers sunbathe, swim and walk around topless and men don't ogle them and make them feel objectified or vulnerable. Similarly the women aren't doing it to attract extra attention or to put on some display whereas if it was done in Cape Town (and I tested it) people cant help but stare and giggle, point and even move their families away from where you are sunbathing. This, to me, is ludicrous as it teaches children to be ashamed of their bodies and makes people feel that women's bodies are some sort of "forbidden fruit" that has been hidden away from them and desperately needs to be acquired.

Although men obviously appreciate the female form in Europe it is not the same as in South Africa. Here women who wear short skirts or even shorts and a spaghetti strap in the street have to be scared of unsavory attention from men and even rape, more so than any other place I have been in the world. I feel this is a direct consequence of how sexually inhibited we are and the only way to break this is to make sex part of our everyday lives in a way which is not harmful but beneficial, in a way that starts conversations with our children and doesn't make them feel ashamed for asking.

The old argument about whether parents should ban their children from drinking any alcohol until they are of legal age (18 in South Africa) as opposed to letting them have a drink with their meal when they are with their parents, reminds me of the point I am trying to make. In France the legal drinking age is 14 and it is socially accepted for french children to drink a glass of wine with their dinner which in turn gives them a more mature approach to alcohol, making them the country with the lowest statistics of teenage alcohol related incidences. In stark contrast, America has a legal drinking age of 21 and I  think we have all seen how mental they get when they are finally legal- the website www.textsfromlastnight.com (my favorite site to read when I need to feel better about myself by comparison) comes to mind. Point being, prohibition or at least a heavily conservative attitude on a certain subject does not breed maturity but usually has detrimental effects. 

The definition of conservative is "holding to traditional attitudes and values and being cautious about change or innovation". We CANNOT afford to subscribe to this outdated mindset as it holds us back in an age of rising numbers of sex related crimes, AIDS and children growing up a decade before the last generation- Today, innovation and change is our only hope for surviving to see tomorrow.

In South Africa our general attitude to sex is that it's something that can mainly cause death and unwanted life which is illustrated in our highly unimaginative AIDS adverts. In Europe they focus on how beautiful sex is and how, if you protect yourself, you can live long enough to find the right man/woman to share that with. I realise that there is a different target market in Europe and that I, as a white female from an upper middle class upbringing, do not fit into the target market that they are trying to cater to in this country as I am part of the minority.
  

Please don't get me wrong, I realise that this is not something that will easily change in South Africa or even that we should look to Europe for a solution. I know that huge factors such as culture, average income brackets and level of education come into it. I also know that the market is flooded with cheap, sexually charged sub-standard adverts that (in some peoples opinions) cheapen the sacredness of sex and in some cases, objectify women. I am not condoning those ads, in fact I loathe them. I am simply stating my opinion which I know is a bit controversial (remember what Neville Brody told us Wendy), but hell, if this blog starts a conversation then I know I have done my job

Today I will look at adverts that aim to promote safe sex from both Europe and South Africa and highlight the differences between them and why they are different.

Metro Fm Radio Station Against Aids MAN and WOMAN outdoor advert by Net#work BBDO, South Africa

Unfortunately living in South Africa has made ads like these lose their shock factor with me. I know I am looking at a woman and a man who have contracted the virus, are close to death and bound to a life of sickness and taking mass amounts of pills daily to survive. These people probably have mouths to feed and a lot of people who love them, never the less I fail to relate to this ad. It is not because I am so far away from the epidemic, I have watched someone close to me die from aids in my own house and it is devastating! Ads like this are aimed for the majority of the population here in South Africa (I don't fall under that category) which statistically are under educated black and coloured teenagers and young adults. This campaign uses fear to scare people into safe sex or even abstinence in order to not contract the disease which in turn can have negative consequences in terms of how people view sex. This can be extremely detrimental to an individual's development as Maslow's Hierachy places sex in the physiological needs category along with food and breathing- it is not just something we do for fun and an unhealthy/uneducated attitude toward sex can lead to psychological problems. This ad reminds me of the ads on the cigarette packs in Europe which show black lungs and cancer victims. They utilise sarcasm in their tagline "Increase your chances of contracting HIV/AIDS, don't wear a condom.". Obviously one would not want to contract HIV/AIDS so therefore they would wear a condom but "Be Wise, Condomise" or "Decrease your chance of HIV/AIDS, wear a condom" has been said over and over and over (and over) again that I think they had to find a way to say the same thing in a (slightly) different way.

Boy/Girl, Creative director: Eric Vervroegen, TBWA 2008, France

This ad falls on the other side of the spectrum. It is a beautiful illustrated ad made for the AIDES campaign in France and has won two Bronze Lions for Press and Outdoor Campaign. When you just glance at it for a second it looks like a gorgeous space and ocean scene respectively. When you get a closer look you see a man flying, protected by a condom, through a galaxy of labia, legs, buttocks, tongues, legs, lips and blow-up dolls. The second ad features a young woman protected by a condom swimming through a sea of penis and tongue shaped sea creatures (my favourite is the cocktopus). The tagline reads "Explore, just protect yourself". I LOVE this ad because it shows the beauty of exploring your sexuality yet at the same time it warns to protect yourself because it can be dangerous, as could ocean and deep space exploration. Personally I don't find this offensive in the slightest but South Africa as a whole would never accept this sort of advertising in mainstream media as it could be misconstrued as implying that you should have sex with multiple people and go crazy as long as you are protected which, in a conservative nation, is not OK. The explicit use of penis and vagina images would also not go down too smoothly as (and I could be wrong) it has never been featured in advertising here and people are not comfortable with such graphic displays of genitalia. The target market of this ad would include my personal demographic which I guess is why I gravitate so much to it.

During my research for this blog and conversations that it has sparked I have realised that the reason I don't like certain ads is because I don't fit into the target market that they are aimed for. If I am wanting to be a great (read frikkin awesome) copywriter I must break out of this way of thinking and start recognising certain ads merits for who they have been made for as opposed to how they work for me personally.

I know that the European way of using sex in advertising would not work here due to the differences of the two populations but I do think that in South Africa we need to move from being as conservative as we are in order to reach and educate people on sex and make us more mature in our sexuality as a nation. How? I am not too sure, but I will be aiming to figure that out as I break into the industry. I hope I can be part of the movement that sparks the change we so desperately need.