Sex in the Super Bowl

What if there were no sexually enticing Super Bowl Ads? Well, there would basically be no Super Bowl Ads left. The media is filled with sexually appealing ads which contribute to what viewers think the social norms are. When watching the Super Bowl, avoiding the sexual ads is basically impossible to do.   After watching the Super Bowl, I began to think about the commercial advertisements.  What ads are the worst offenders? If typed into Google, “Sexual Super Bowl Ads”, thousands of results come up. There was one ad in particular, from 2003, that I was attention-gabbing. The Miller Light Catfight commercial is definitely a sexually primed commercial.

In a nutshell, everything about this commercial revolves around the ideal “hot” woman and how they can be sexualized. 

The two women in the commercial get into a catfight about why they drink Miller Light beer.  In the end, clothing is flying and the girls are in their underclothes. The actresses in the ad are very pretty and make you want to watch the commercial, even though the message is a little far-fetched.  I found it interesting, that when I was discussing Super Bowl commercials with my dad, he remembered this particular add which is more than ten years old.

            In the end of the commercial, we see that two guys are pondering about the commercial.  In the final line of the commercial, one guy says he has an idea for how the commercial should end. His idea is that the two women should make out. Media has the ability to contribute to misperceptions of social norms about sex. This is just one example of how the media can influence people. Stella Chia and Albert Gunther conducted and published research on this topic. They found that “…college students tend to overestimate how comfortable their peers were with premarital and casual sex” (Chia 314). These findings support the fact that sexual ads, especially prominent in the Super Bowl, affect how others are thinking.

Bud Light is not the only offender of sexually explicit commercials. The reality is that people like watching the ads. Many Super Bowl ads feature sexual innuendos, which in turn, leads to viewers thinking that this is the sexual norm. Although the Kate Upton Southwest Patty Ad was not allowed to air during the Super Bowl, it was still created, and perpetuates the theme of sexy Super Bowl Ads. 

Reference:
Chia, S.C.,& Gunther, A.C. (2006). How media contribute to misperceptions of social norms about sex. Mass Communication & Society.