All of these advertisements were very similar in that they sexualized females or the female body in order to sell their product. I stumbled across an ad which caught my attention very quickly and almost was disturbing. This ad for Nova Schin, which is a non-alcoholic beer, features a pregnant woman holding a very large glass of the beer. Not only is she holding a glass of beer, but she is featured in a bikini. This ad is located in many magazines and is supposedly not geared toward men, but in a way I believe that it is for both men and women. Firstly, if you are pregnant it is a well known fact that drinking is out of the question. Featuring a beer that is non-alcoholic is a good idea for those women who cannot live without the taste of beer, but I feel that this ad is very distasteful and disrespectful to women because it is sexualizing a mother. Not only that, but it is quite obvious that this advertisement has been heavily airbrushed to make the woman appear to have the perfect body. If you talk to anyone who has been pregnant, more than likely they will say that they gained weight as well as stretch marks. I feel that if a company was to take it to this level they should have been more realistic than featured a "pregnant" model in a skimpy bikini. This may also appeal to men who are alcoholics and like the taste of beer. The woman is gorgeous and as ideologically flawless and someone can get, so for them it is something nice to look at.
Overall I found many similarities between the beer advertisements and the liquor advertisements. All of them were very sexualized and made the female body seem perfect in the eyes of most people. The reference to sex was used quite often and at first I wondered why this was but came up with my own theory. Most people who drink do it in public situations. That may be a restaurant, a bar, or a club. When people drink they become less inhibited and more willing to talk to complete strangers. I feel like many of these ads were so sexualized because many people refer to alcohol as being the liaison between themselves and sex. What is quite surprising and frustrating is that this is linked to unsafe sex. Barbara Critchlow Leigh states that, "there was a strong relationship between frequency of using alcohol or other drugs in conjunction with sexual activity and the frequency of engaging in risky sexual behaviors." (Leigh: 199) This is very scary because alcohol does hinder the use of condoms and if alcohol continues to be advertised using blatant sexuality this will keep occurring. All of the ads, except for Nova Schin, I found in men's magazines. Women's magazines didn't have many advertisements and if they did they were just as sexualized. This may be culturally acceptable because when women go out drinking they are most likely dressed with a bit less clothing than they would be during the day. In my personal opinion I think it is quite upsetting that the only ads that I found for alcohol whether it was beer or liquor made women seem like sexual objects. I wish that alcohol could be associated with something other than sex and that it wouldn't have to be so blatant in the advertisements.