"Sex säljer", eller?

Sammanfattning: The study captured young women’s experience of sexualization in advertising and examined the different coping strategies they adopt to tackle sexualization in everyday life efficiently. The study was grounded in a qualitative method with an epistemological approach of a critical realist nature. Thematic analysis and semantic coding was used to interpret the data. Seven semi-structured interviews were carried out with female university students at Lund University in April 2019. A qualitative method puts emphasis on human experience and the critical realist approach further lies in assumptions about a ‘real’ existing world that is independent of our perception of it. Regarding to this approach, phenomena in the world can be captured through our sense and need to be interpreted in order to be understood. Our main findings were that women’s experiences of sexualization in advertising have adverse effects on their wellbeing. Another significant contribution made was the different coping strategies used by these women, such as selectively controlling exposure for sexualized pictures on social media, and experiences of habituation when it came to advertising in general. The coping strategies are essential because they could potentially be used by other women struggling to tackle sexualized advertisements, hence make a contribution to increasing the overall wellbeing of young women. A question raised in light of our results was whether marketers should be using sex to sell. Finally, we formulated suggestions for research to quantitatively investigate the coping strategies found in this study, their frequency of use and their contribution to wellbeing amongst individuals.