Codes of online sexuality: Celebrity,gender and marketing on the web

Marketers use the combination of sex and celebrity to sell movies, music, and more. this qualitative project uses content analysis to track sexualized images on the official Web sites and fan sites of 41 celebrities. An official Web site may construct a celebrity’s sexuality as part of overall marketing, with all images as tightly controlled as trademarked images. Over time, these celebrity images become a public sexual iconography. While such images have been studied in other mass media, few studies have scrutinized sexuality on mainstream Web sites. This analysis finds that female musicians are more likely than other celebrities to be represented by sexualized images, and that all types of female celebrities are sexualized more than males. In general, a female celebrity who uses sexuality to promote her public image wears this sexuality like a uniform on both official and fan Web sites.