Sex is Marketing

I’m reading the book Syrup: A Novel and it’s an older fiction book about marketing.

It’s got some killer lines and this one I can’t get out of my head: Because sex isn’t sex at all. It’s marketing.

Playboy starts with a woman’s face, then a breast, then a body, and it finally gets to a nude. However, if we just see 50 nude bodies lined up, or we see topless women in Europe, or we see topless women in South American cultures, it’s not the same. Why?

If it’s all nudity, just show the body and get on with it. But it’s not. It’s marketing.

What it comes down to, you see, is that a naked body is just a naked body. But the possibility of a naked body is something special.

Of course, none of this is about naked bodies or sex: it’s about possibilities and potentials. It’s about resisting just diving into anything that promises the immediate gratification, the quick fix, or the thing we think we think we want. Because, most of the time what we actually want is the possibility and potential that eventually gets us to the goal.

That might be what makes life (and sex) more exciting.