I'm kinda lost. This seems like a good thing? We can move forward, past weird times sex based marketing, and go towards an intellectual discussion of a subject.
Well, sex is what keeps mankind (and animal-kind) alive all these millennia. And only a puritan society would find it bad.
Activism on the other hand can be a blunt instrument, which can also be totally bad. It's also usually a sign of a society in fight with itself. So it's kind of a mixed bag in itself (it's not just Rosa Parks or Harvey Milk, or the noble kind of activists. Any kind of loony can fathom themselves an activist. It can also be used as a cover for political intervention in some countries, exploited by politicians, and various other things).
Now, when brands are coming in, and big corps and big money, it's ever worse: it's activism with a profit motive. Or faux-activist messages that pander to the sentiment du jour. When brands get into politics and everyday life, everybody suffers. It's not like when you do it for profit you stop at the "good activism". If something oppressive is fashionable with their target demographic, they will just as well promote messages in its favor.
One can enjoy a healthy sex life and unrestricted informations about it, without having genitalia forced onto them everytime they take the subway to work or watch a screen.
But I agree with you : commercial activism will probably end up in the same place... Maybe the problem is not the subject, but the existence of big interests willing to do anything to be associated with it.
In what country does this happen?
After advertisements for local colleges, the second most common Subway and MTA bus advertisements are for breast augmentation and men's/women's lingerie. I don't particularly have a problem with these sort of ads, but their ubiquity belies phozy1's point.
It's also worth noting that arguments akin to "sex happens in nature, therefore sex is good" are both appeals to nature and not particularly strong justifications for sexualization in advertising. It's possible to have a sexually open society (i.e., not a puritanical one) without plastering our public transport with glamorizations of surgery or $300 lingerie.
(Breasts obviously aren't genitals, I'm not sure why they're being mentioned)
I mean, seriously, the only people who argue this 'informal' reading are pedants like myself.
There's nothing wrong with it, but let's call it what it is. In context the point was reference to sex and genitalia, not the literal display of genitalia which I truly hope most of us would understand is not the case on the NYC metro (or any other, for that matter).
Of course here I am typing out a response to an outrageously pointless line of conversation that nobody in their right mind would consider serious, so for all I know that's the same kind of reasoning that led to my reply. I guess I'd just prefer to see less of this kind of noise here, and I'm sorry if I'm contributing to it.
The article does not mention intellectual discussion even once. What it mentions are things like trending on twitter and instant (over) reactions to any form of perceived good/evil. We are moving towards marketing that seeks to maximise gain in goodwill for minimal financial effort.
Ads are ads.