Advertising has changed in our society over the past four decades. Due to technological advances, advertising through different media mediums has become more popular and more effective among companies. Increasingly, young women are presented not as passive sex objects, but as active, desiring sexual objects. These advertisements make young women seem like they participate enthusiastically in practices and forms of self-presentation that earlier generations of feminists regarded as connected to subordination. Robert Goldman argued that these changes in advertising occurred because advertisers were forced to respond to three challenges at this time. First, there was the growing experience of "sign fatigue" on the part of many media audiences fed up with the endless parade of brands, logos, and consumer images. Secondly, advertisers had to address increasing "viewer skepticism", particularly from younger, media-savvy consumers who had grown up with fast-paced music television and were the first generation to adopt personal computers and mobile phones as integral features of everyday life. Thirdly, advertisers needed to address feminist critiques of advertising and to fashion new commercial messages that took on board women's anger at constantly being addressed through representation of idealized beauty. Goldman argued that advertisers response was to develop what he called "commodity feminism," which is an attempt to incorporate the cultural power and energy of feminism whilst simultaneously domesticating its critique of advertising and the media.
The "midriff' has become the new sexual representation of women. Advertisers have mistakenly constructed the young, heterosexual woman to be one who knowingly and deliberately plays with her sexual power and is forever "up with it". The "midriff" is a part of the body between the top of the pubis bone and the bottom of the rib cage. This part of the female body has become the site of erotic interest in many non-western cultures for a long time. Advertising aimed at the midriffs is notable for its sexualized style, which deliberately objectifies women as sex objects. Midriff advertising has four central themes. These include an emphasis on the body, a shift from objectification to sexual objectification, a pronounced discourse of choice and autonomy, and an emphasis upon empowerment. Today, the body is portrayed in advertising and elsewhere as the primary source of women's capital. Instead of caring or nurturing or motherhood, it is now a possession of a sexy body that is presented as a woman's key source of identity.
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