When Brand Safety Becomes Censorship
It's a sign of the times that Rosalia's Motomami album cover is entirely blurred in so many big media title end of year lists, when it doesn't contain more nudity than the average fashion mag pictorial.
A journalist friend flagged recently that all of the bigger women's interest publishers, from Glamour to Bustle to Jezebel, have quietly removed all their sex related categories over the pandemic, and replaced them with sections on empowerment, entrepreneurship and/or mindfulness. The odd article may still appear under a health related section, but it’s a disappearing topic.
While Buzzfeed once was full of hilarious sex quizzes and articles, it no longer even appears as a topic in the nav bar. If you search for articles with the tag “sex”, only three have been published in the past three months. Two of those are advertorials for ‘best of’ product lists.
It's significant because sex and bodies are no longer referred to in personal ways, but are referred to relentlessly still through the lens of celebrity and life improving products. The first recommendation in that Buzzfeed article about the top sex toys of the year is a ring emblazoned with the Diesel logo, in the brand’s distinct red.
I’m not sure how it would improve sex if I glanced down and saw my cock had become a billboard for an Italian denim brand.
It's all happened for one clear reason: the reliance on monetized content.
Brands don't want their chocolate adverts appearing next to Rosalia's album cover or midway through articles about sexual health and body image. Because nobody interested in alternative menstrual products, body shaming commercials or finding out the pregnancy risk of sex during your period paused mid-article to click through and buy a discounted hoodie from a banner ad.
The click through rate on articles speculating if a Kardashian is pregnant because they look like they've put on a few pounds and have been photoshopping themselves slimmer on Instagram is pretty decent though.
There has to be a point this ends. The creeping purpose of everything online can't be to funnel sales to advertisers, or we’ll run out of grit. And while it’s not a deliberate act of censorship by brands, their general guidelines in working with publishers and content creators set the floor and ceiling for what’s appropriate.
People are now incredibly aware of needing to pursue a puritanical personal brand on social media, or they’ll never get hired or get taken aside at Christmas for a talking to by a family members. And our influencers are rewarded for acting like CBBC presenters, knowing that brand safety will otherwise rule them out of endorsements from the mainstream brands with big bags of money.
Once upon a time parents were worried about how much sex kids were exposed to online. A generation raised through Tumblr are mostly quite glad we had access to those educational resources tbh. And now we’re becoming parents, I’m honestly more concerned that brands may be muting out the spaces our kids could be educating themselves about sex and normalising body diversity, while creating opportunities for multinationals to advertise branded cock rings.
