Is it sex or shopping? Adbust

After a lingering shot on the large "Net-A-Porter.com" bag and an expensive bedside floral arrangement, the final shots of the text of the ad appear. In rapid succession they read: "ARE YOU?" and announce the name of the online shopping website as well as many haute couture and high fashion label names. The full text of the ad reads: "In The Bedroom, Women Are Doing It Everywhere, Are You?" The website, shown here in picture form, reads "Net-a-porter is driving a global shopping phenomenon and everyone who is anyone is doing it wherever the mood takes them. Are you?" This text, surrounded by emaciated, mostly white women strutting their stuff on a runway, paired with the images of their video exemplify the commodification of the image they want to sell- a white woman, wealthy enough to buy couture whenever and wherever she pleases, to the extent that she is wealthy enough to throw it around her bedroom as if it is disposable. This woman is interested in shopping and is motivated by the collective conscious that is a part of the "global shopping phenomenon," not in any other pursuits. And believe it or not you can BUY your way into this lifestyle, just by "Clicking to Shop!" This ideal of conspicuous consumption shows how capitalism is at the center of the degradation of all women into having a gendered love of shopping. 

By framing this scene in the bedroom and by displaying discarded clothing strewn about, the ad implies female nudity and sex. This conflation of shopping and insinuated sexual activity equates the act of and spoils of shopping with women's sexual pleasure "in the bedroom." It also traps women's activities within the bedroom or the realm of shopping. The ad doesn't contain any people or artifacts to suggest who inhabits this bedroom, just anonymous couture-label attire. The universality of this scene, as well as the text of the website itself ("everyone who is anyone") extends and forces these desires on every woman, regardless of class, race or opinion of couture clothing. Women who don't fit into the label they're selling-white, affluent, feminine and obsessed with shopping- are suddenly inadequate, and lucky thing is, Net-a-porter has just what you need to measure up. 

View image HERE