This book takes the reader through an amazing selection of studies--across media formats and cultures; spread over continents. It shows how often ""ritual degradations"" in the pervasive advertising we are exposed to subtly but also explicitly suggest fashionable notions of masculinity and femininity--often crossing the grey area between the erotic and the pornographic. The texts that this book looks at can be found in individual and traditional advertising, in global advertising campaigns, in commonplace communication such as promotional flyers for bars, or on simple promotional merchandise sites on the Web.

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