The Harley- Davidson store in San Diego at Seaport shows women as an “object of desire” so I chose to use the tension “object of desire vs. domestic roles” in our American culture. My examples will lean mostly on “object of desire” with one example of domestic roles with woman.
While the store supplies mostly product, shirts, pants sweatshirts and other apparel mostly aimed at men it also has items to sell for woman. I noticed much of the product aimed at men that were not clothing had some sort of a women figure on it. The cups being sold had many picture of women on them. Each photo should a women exposing most of her breast, and also revealing much of her legs. The calendars that were being sold either had motorcycles in them or woman and motorcycles in them. Again each woman is half naked and exposing herself as a sexual object. There was clothing for woman to wear too, but most of this was skimpy tank tops, vests or shorts; all also quite revealing. I did notice a couple of shirts that they were selling for pregnant woman, and those to me brought out the domestic roles that woman to fill in today’s society. While some products are just labeled with the name “Harley-Davidson” and the emblem the selling point is obvious that it is the name or the sexy women and the name that the consumer is buying.
We have noticed in our reading and in the plays that women started in very domestic and gender roles but as time progressed in America, the blouses tended to scoop more exposing more breast, prostitution became more prevalent and sexy appeal began to sell more; we left behind our more traditional life styles and domestic ways and turned to our sinful ways of lust and sex to sell product in America.
