The danger of watching sexualized advertising

Nowadays, our society can be described as a society in which a proliferation of sexual texts is part of our lives on a daily basis. Of these sexual texts, this thesis will discuss the advertisement sector. For some time, there has been a debate about what kind of impact sexualized advertisements have on young women. As is shown in previous studies, the sexualization and objectification of women can lead to many negative effects such as disordered eating and body shame. As a result, the focus of this thesis will be on the effects that these sexualized advertisements can have on women. More specifically, cognitive skills and mood. Furthermore, religion can serve as a defensive factor against the images that are portrayed in sexualized advertisements. Therefore, this thesis will focus on Dutch Muslim and non-Muslim women. An experimental design that was used in this study has shown that sexualized advertisements have an effect on the cognition of women. Thus, the sexualization of advertising does entail negative consequences.