I quickly noticed that alcoholic beverage advertisements use many different tactics to grab the viewer’s attention, whether it be by including a famous celebrity, a famous athlete, or simply just an attractive woman in swimwear. As mentioned, I coded for both instances of sexualization and for instances when a female was seen wearing a revealing bikini bathing suit. In my coding process, I would tally up the number of times each instance arises within the twenty five media sources and found that there were 24 counts of a woman being sexualized through demeanor and tone of voice as well as eleven instances in which a woman was seen in a revealing bathing suit. Sexualization can be defined as making something sexual.
Throughout my research I was looking for instances in which a woman’s presence within the commercial was made sexual or the woman became an object of sexual desire. With the total count of sexualization being 24, it later became evident through my qualitative analysis and its findings that almost half (11) of the total counts of sexualization (24) depicted women in minimal clothing and bikini bathing suits. It appears that the sole purpose of the women’s presence within these alcoholic commercials was not to endorse the beverage but rather to grab a male’s attention and be portrayed as sexual objects.
In the 1990 Coors Extra commercial “Birthday Wish”, the sexualization of women through skimpy bathing suits can be seen on full display by having the women appear on screen in bikinis when the male made his “birthday wish” while being at the bar. In Michelob Dry “Dry Is” commercial of 1990, women can be seen swimming, diving, and running on the beach in nothing but bikinis as the men are shown at the bar waiting for ice cold beers. Another instance of sexualization seen via the use of swimwear is in Yellow Tail Wines’ 2017 advertisement titled Yellow Tail Wine, here a man is describing the Yellow Tail ethos, but upon spotting a woman walking on the beach in a bikini he stops talking. He gets sidetracked, insisting that he forgot what he was doing because he began to gaze sexually at the woman. Although the sexualization of this woman via their minimal attire was a clear pattern. This slowed down and began to fade over time. Twelve out of the twenty four counts of sexualization of women came from commercials aired during the years of 1990-1999, three counts came from the years 2000-2009, five counts from the years 2010-2019, and four counts from 2020-2023. Summary statistics show that as time has passed, the sexualization of women within alcoholic beverages commercials aired during the Super Bowl has declined in the sample. The same can be said for the presence of skimpy bathing suits; ten out of the eleven counts of women in bathing suits came from commercials aired during the 1990s and only one count was shown in the time period of 2000-2023.