Is sexy back?

0:13Hello and welcome to our new fortnightly episode of stylish. That's right, we're giving you more stylish. My name is Madison Sullivan-Thorpe and my co-host is Rhiannon Joyce. Look, you may know by now if you've listened to our first few episodes, but we have a little bit of a different focus with these apps. We're analysing the world of brands with cult followings, creative campaigns we're loving that are capturing global attention, fashion and beauty trends, and exploring those little how did they get their career moments. Rhiannon, how are we? I'm great. I'm actually off to Sydney today. So a bit of a whirlwind day, one meeting to the next.

0:50I've got back to back. She's a jet setter. Back from the UK on Sunday, now this. I was laughing with Zara, our co-founder and co-host of Shameless Podcast. She was like, how are you feeling about going to Sydney straight after London? I was like, I love it because it's giving busy gal. Super important. I'm not. I'm just leaning into the travel energy and like that's a big thing. Don't you think corporate travel when you're younger feels so like sexy, but as you get older, it gets slightly tiring? Absolutely. and I'm so old that all I want to do is be in my own bed. How's your week been? My week's been really chaotic, to be honest.

1:25I feel like I am burning the candles since getting back, just like trying to get back on top of things. The irony, when you work for yourself, no one's paying your annual leave, so you still have to be working. But I gave myself the gift of a full week offline and I am paying dearly for that week offline now. That's sad. Oh, well, here we are. Here we are. I'll have a Friday drink with you and it'll be fine. Mads, I'm super keen to hear your word of the week. We've spent some time apart, so I don't really know what you're bringing yet. So can you tell me? Yeah. So look, it's a couple more than one word, but we'll just go with it.

1:57It's the unfortunately I do love trend. And unfortunately, I do love this trend so much. If you're not aware of it, there is a trend going around on TikTok at the moment, which is predominantly women saying, unfortunately, I do love and listing all of the things that maybe are not societal norms or what are glamorized on social as things to love. So I think coffee on empty stomach, having a drunk cig, staying out at a club until 3am. It feels very reminiscent of like the brat era of Charlie XCX. But what I love is that I think so much of social media is about what is perfect and habit stacking and making the most productive use of your time and being the healthiest, best version of yourself.

2:40Like, I think we're a little bit exhausted by that. Like this whole like 75 hard lock in, like be the best version. I've kind of loved seeing women just lean into all the things they're doing that are not great. Like using your dirty makeup brushes, texting your situationship. Have you seen this? I've seen it everywhere. I also love the audio that's backed. It's like a da-na-na-na. It's like a real rock energy vibe. You did that so well. Thank you. I mean, I've seen so many of this trend. I agree. I think it's the antidote to this perfect picture that people are curating on social media. My one little gripe is when I can tell someone's popped it into chat GPT and it's just spat out the most like generic ones.

3:22I really love when they're really personal and specific. But if it's generic, sorry, babe, I'm swiping up. I did ask chat GPT what you thought of me after I had done my own. Thank you very much. ChatGPT wouldn't know how many forms of potato I love, but you certainly would with been at enough restaurant. Yours felt really specific, which I loved. And again, when I've seen creators do it and it feels very specific and niche, I'm like, nod to that. Absolutely obsessed. I also want to put a pin in this because I do want to come back to this trend in this week's episode, because I think it ties in nicely to a point that we'll make later on about is sexy back.

3:58All right, then come on, Ray. Tell us what are we chatting about today? So as you guys know, we've been apart for a fortnight. It was the longest fortnight of my life. This is the longest Mads and I have gone without seeing each other. It's been really hard, but we have been away for two weeks and in our group chat and also in the Slack channel, we were sharing quite a bit and talking a lot about this whole concept of is sexy back. Now, a cultural reference I just want to draw on that I recall in the last couple of weeks is the Sabrina Carpenter VMA's performance. It felt like to me on TikTok, in my group chats, everyone was talking about how sexy this performance was and it being a nod back to the Britney Spears serpent snake performance that she iconically did at the VMAs as well.

4:45What was your take on this performance? Did you think it was a resurgence of sexy? I think it is complete resurgence of sexy. And I'm glad you brought up the VMAs. Sabrina is one example, but Tate McRae cannot be ignored for me. I feel like maybe you ended up on the Sabrina algorithm and I ended up on the Tate McRae algorithm because it just felt like the noughties were back. And I think the pop star era in general is that Dua Lipa's tour, Tate McRae's, but very much at the VMAs, we're seeing that resurgence of sexy in both costuming, in dance, in what they're wearing on the red carpet. I'm not going to lie.

5:26I'm loving every goddamn minute of it. I'm loving it because it feels like these young women are really embracing their sexuality. They're not shying away from owning the fact that they are sexy. I also want to talk about some red carpet moments that have popped up over the past few weeks as well that lean into this idea that sexy is back. Quite literally, Margot Robbie rocking the sexiest dress with the sexiest back I've ever seen. Gagging. Gagging. I honestly have never seen someone look that good. It's the return of the naked dress. Oh, like, do you think she woke up, looked in the mirror as she was like getting ready to go and went, I really am that bitch?

6:06I, yeah. And she is that bitch. And also that was the, I honestly think I'm going to call it, that was the most shared photo I've seen on Instagram probably this year of a single red carpet look. Agreed. She is iconic and obviously a homegrown talent. So I'm obsessed with that. But we also saw Dakota Johnson wearing Gucci and a very similar naked dress style. Yep. For those two looks to be dropping quite closely together in the same week, for me, indicates that sexy's back, babe. I agree. And then also we've kind of got this lingerie dressing that we're seeing at the moment with these like little silky camis, the sort of Doen style shorts and things that we're seeing a lot of Zara kind of duping it as well.

6:46I think we're seeing bare sexy dressing, not just on red carpets. We're seeing it on our favourite creators and quite literally just on the street. Well, why are we talking about this and why are these cultural moments so relevant to the conversation we're having today? Well, Mads and I really, really wanted to focus on the traditional way that sex has been used in advertising and brand building back from the 80s and 90s. Look at the past, a time period where the sexual innuendos became less subtle and sexual imagery became more provocative and how in 2025 pop culture and the campaigns we're seeing right now are reimagining what sex or in our case sexy means in the same context.

7:28But before we get into our deep dive, I want to spend a bit of time exploring the origins of the theme of sex and the dated concept of sex sells. And you're using your little like funny quotations. I am using my little quotation fingers because I think it is that slogan that we naturally gravitate towards or rely on to explain something that's sexy. And look, if you're in marketing and branding, I don't think this would be unfamiliar. And it dates back as far as 1871. It was actually a brand called Pearl Tobacco, lol, when it was actually okay to advertise cigarettes. It's wild to me, but yes, there was a time.

8:03So a brand called Pearl Tobacco emblazoned its cigarette packages with a drawing of a naked woman. The phrase sex sells also dates back to this time. So in our research, that was very much where this term sort of came about and where we started to see sex being used as a marketing tool. Now, throughout the 20th century, and Mads, you touched on this earlier with the noughties and even in pop culture, the sex sales strategy evolved as more and more brands pushed the envelope until it became commonplace across many industries. Yeah. And I think a lot of the time we kind of reference the 90s, 2000s as that peak sex sales period.

8:41I don't know if that's because we're millennial women or because that's when it felt like it peaked and kind of went from, you know, advertisement of product to people and campaign. Like it really evolved outside of just, you know, a singular campaign focus. For me, it was at the core of the campaign. I think back to some of these brands like Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, Tom Ford. These campaigns were all driven by sex. And I'm going to be really honest, when I look back on that moment, it is so obvious to me that they were also driven by the male gaze and the focus was on objectifying women.

9:15Totally. I think women's bodies were used both as the product and the entertainment and largely driven by males in boardrooms for males at home. What I'm excited to chat through today is the evolution of how, personally, I believe women have taken some power back in this narrative of sex sells, again, using my little quotation fingers. But I think exactly to your point, Rae, we've got examples like Abercrombie, we've got examples like Victoria's Secret, but also brands like Playboy Bunny. Yes. Evolved out of just product and campaign with the magazine into reality TV shows like Girls of the Playboy Mansion.

9:53So true. One thing I really want to emphasize for this episode is how much culture influences campaigns. And throughout this episode, we'll talk from two perspectives. Where was the culture at, at this point in time? And then how did that influence the campaigns? Bringing it forward to 2025, same lens. What is the culture right now? And how is that influencing this idea that sexy is coming back? When I look back at the early 2000s and the noughties, Mads, you've touched on, you know, the Playboy Mansion, other cultural film, television things that come to mind that were really, really popular and just felt like they were everywhere.

10:30Britney Spears, Madonna, you know, really embracing sex as part of their personal brand and in their music, the toxic film clip, you know, even Madonna's whole aura and has always been quite sexual. In the film space, American Pie. Oh my God, what a brilliant reference. It just felt like how many versions of that film did they end up having like four iterations of it? You know, brands were tapping into the culture and the zeitgeist and what they were able to tap into was that sex was really prevalent and it was absolutely by design to serve men and the male gaze. It was rampant. I agree. And I'm really glad you brought up sort of that pop era, which is why I think the VMAs in our current sphere mean so much because when you go back to the VMAs, we had Britney's 2001 Slave For You routine with the big serpent.

11:28We had the Britney and Madonna kiss. We had like the dirty era of Christina Aguilera. Like this is very much a moment in time. And I kind of timestamp that there where it feels like it was for men and for the male gaze. And then there's kind of this juxtaposition for me, which feels like it was ahead of its time, which is Sex and the City, which felt like it was sex was selling for women by women. Do you kind of feel like those two lived in like a, you know, at the same time, but at totally different viewpoints? Yes. I also think Sex and the City, for me, and I was really young when this show came out, but looking back with the modern lens, Sex and the City probably surged a lot of the discomfort and the rejection of advertising and cultural moments being set by men.

12:17Yes. It was like, hey, wait a minute. This is actually what I want to see. Women being represented in a way where it's sex positive. It's not the censored version of sex. It's not sex from the position where it serves the man. Like, I cannot stress how ridiculous it is, how many brands and how many film and television were just there to serve like 14 to 16 year horny 16 year old boys. Let's be honest. Sex in the City was for the girls. Oh, yeah. And that is what I feel like started to bubble and started to, you know, drive the conversation around, wait a minute, I don't want to see this anymore.

12:49I'm not accepting this ad about a product that is completely unrelated to a woman being front and center in it, you know, particularly across the food category. And I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit, but I am going to be talking about Carl Jr.'s, which is an American burger brand later. But they were notorious for it, particularly in the Super Bowl era. The Super Bowl era of the 2000s was rife with ads objectifying women. And then we started to see this real shift and surge away from that. And I honestly think sex in the city had a huge part of that. Who do you look to and see as kind of, I guess, the turning point of the ship?

13:27Top of mind is Dove. I've spoken about this on the podcast before, but we started to see brands embrace different body shapes, diversity, messaging that felt like it was targeting women and was for women. Now, in a previous episode, I did criticize with the modern lens how that campaign perhaps hasn't aged well, but also we've got to remember in that current time, that was huge for women to be able to see themselves in a campaign. That was a real shift from what traditionally we were seeing in the marketing and the media landscape at that time. So that is something that I look back on and I look at a moment being like, huh, okay, something's shifting here.

14:06The positioning of a product is being more female focused because at the end of the day, the women in the room are the ones buying the product. So why are we ostracizing them? But also I just think women's voices in general got louder in the early 2000s and we really started to find our place and were given space to be able to criticize and critique and have critical conversation about what was happening and not standing for it anymore. Yeah. And what I love so much about the last five minutes of what we've discussed is we have two very contrasting examples that have had the same impact. One being sex in the city, where it is overt discussion about sex and body and reclaiming power.

14:45And Dove, which is taking the sexualisation out to talk freely and openly about, you know, different body shapes and types and honest conversations, both coming at it in very different veins, but the end result ultimately being very similar. And pushing the narrative forward. And I think that's the most important thing, because when we get to the conversation around 2025, there's been 25 years of evolution from that point. So to see where we are and to have a conversation about that, I'm really excited. But before we deep dive into some recent campaigns and cultural moments that are resurging this sexy trend that we're talking about, we're going to hear a word from today's sponsor.

15:25Okay, looking at the current climate and the zeitgeist pop culture, you know, earlier on in the episode, we touched on the Supreme Carpenter, Tate McRae, the VMAs. I really want to home in on the cultural moments right now that I think are influencing the campaigns. What you and I have both seen is the return of the sexy pop star. Yes, the pop star is bringing sexy back. I feel like I could talk about this for 30 minutes, but I'm not going to ramble. I'm going to put it so concisely as Dua Lipa, Tate McRae and Sabrina Carpenter. You look at Sabrina Carpenter's show, we have this trend of her doing, have you ever tried this one?

16:04And look, I have not been lucky enough to go to a Sabrina Carpenter show, but it is very high on my to-do list. But she has this section in the show where she sings one of her most popular songs, Juno, and she illustrates on stage a different sexual position each night for each city that differentiates between each show. And it has gained some serious cultural attention. I've seen it everywhere. Everywhere. You look at Tate McRae's sexy little dance breaks, Dua Lipa's very sexy lingerie inspired costuming that we're seeing across her tour. Even more recently, Taylor Swift's pre-teasers of Life of a Showgirl.

16:43I feel very comfortable saying this is the sexiest era of Taylor Swift we've ever seen when you compare it to like folklore and evermore. And I know she touched on the evolution of pop star in Miss Americana, her Netflix doco. Are you seeing this as well? Yes, I'm seeing it a lot. My direct reference is actually Troye Sivan and Charlie XCX. I can't believe I didn't think of them. God bless. The holy duo. The holy duo. Did you go to Troye Sivan? You did go to Troye Sivan's concert as well. I think that was the sexiest thing I've ever seen. Guys, if you didn't go to this concert, it was so sexy.

17:18I was hot and steamy watching it. I turned to Zara and Annabelle, who I went with. They're both from the Shameless Media office. And I went, oofed. That concert was sexy as fuck. Yeah. And I loved it. And do you know why I loved it? It felt that it was serving someone who had been really transparent. Like, Troye Sivan has gone on the record and shared a lot about his journey coming out as a gay man. and it felt to me on stage, he was the most comfortable he is in his sexuality and was not shying away from exploring it. It felt really liberating to see a pop star who started, you know, his career on YouTube, quite shy.

17:57He's even spoken about not wanting to perform certain songs from his early albums because he doesn't feel like it reflects his true self. To be his true self and for his identity to be so strong, for him to be so proud of it. And it was such an exciting moment for the queer community that they could feel represented. I do want to share a quote from a review of Troye Savant's Australian concert. So Time Out's Winnie Stubbs, the travel and hotel editor for APAC, said about the Sydney show. The show itself was a theatrical masterpiece, sexy and sweaty and spectacular. Supported by a group of absurdly attractive dancers, Sivan brought each of his songs to life with a routine that matched the energy, each uniquely confident and seductive and wistful and poetic.

18:43That is exactly my experience at the Melbourne show. It felt so sexy, so fun. And as I said before, liberating. And what I'm loving at the moment is that social media is mirroring this and social media and what I'm seeing on TikTok, particularly off the back of this trad wife trend is this antidote trend of sexy is back. Yeah. And you know you touched on this in your word of the week Mads. Unfortunately I love this trend on TikTok is embracing what women aren't expected to be like and I love it and it's a little bit dirty and it's a little bit sexy. Yeah and I think it's what women are not expected to be like and what traditionally men have not wanted women to be like.

19:28And I love that this current era is women reclaiming their power. There's no, you're going to put me in that box or I'm going to behave to the standard that you want for me because we've done that for way too long. There's this really liberating feeling of, I'm just not conforming. And I think that we're seeing that both at the very top of the pinnacle of A-list pop stars and, you know, bear dressing from the likes of Margot Robbie right down to the average girl in her bedroom filming. And unfortunately, I do love alongside a video of her blackout drunk outside of a club at 2am. I'm here for it.

20:05It also feels reminiscent of the punk era, which was very anti-establishment in the 1970s. It feels like this is our way to be anti-establishment and really reject those expected notions of women, but also the queer community as well. So now I want to get into my campaign example. And I'm so excited to hear about this because I mean, you did just breadcrumb it, but Carl Jr., when we were talking about what brands we were going to chat through and we were like riffing together, I've got to say this was not on my bingo card. Also not on my bingo card for a stylish episode. This is a burger chain in the US.

20:39Interestingly enough, as someone who has worked in brand and marketing for a very long time, I even remember when I was at uni, the bikinis and burgers ads that would run during the Super Bowl for Carl's Juniors and the amount of notoriety and negativity that they attracted because by design, they were serving the men in those sporting stadiums, at those pubs, in their houses, watching the footy. Their main tactic was a sexy woman eating a burger in a seductive way. It was so reductive and it was so positioned from the male gaze. Now, fast forward to 2025, Carl's Juniors returned to the roster of the Super Bowl, but in an unexpected way.

21:17They actually didn't have an ad feature in the Super Bowl, which is estimated to cost about$8 million for a 30-second spot. Eye-watering sums. Eye-watering. In terms of where your marketing budget is going. What they did do, though, is run a social media campaign. Guess who they tapped? The biggest social media star in the world right now, I would say Alex Earl to front face this campaign. So a bit of context about what the campaign was, Carl's Jr. updated the 2024 free burger day into a national hangover day and they were actually giving out hangover burgers the day after the Super Bowl. So they were very much tapping into this Super Bowl cultural moment without having to spend the money on the main spot.

21:59Genius, really. We love adjacent marketing where you don't have to invest but you still get to tack on to the cultural moment. Brilliant. So given that it was promoting the Hangover Burgers, I'm not surprised they also tapped up Alex Earl because Alex Earl is notorious for doing Get Ready With Me videos for her to go out clubbing until 3, 4 a.m. in the morning. She also honestly fronts camera a lot looking quite hungover, eating a lot of junk food. So that contextual alignment for me was really strong. The spot cheekily did make a nod back to the provocative ads of the 2000s, the iconic Paris Hilton 2005 ad, which garnered a lot of controversy.

22:36But one thing I really want to home in on is I did a quick online pulse check. We love a pulse check. Love a pulse check of what was TikTok saying about this ad feature and what were the media saying about it? Interestingly to me, the tone shift was not very negative. It was actually quite complimentary of the fact that Carl's juniors had moved so far away from that traditional 2000s ad that they had become notorious for. And instead, there was more emphasis on how they were able to tap into this cultural person being Alex Earl, who is really relevant to young people. They also gave a lot of credit to the fact that there was that contextual alignment with Alex being someone who liked being a bit of a party girl, being a bit unrefined.

23:24And again, that resurgence of someone showing up on camera and being like, oh, I'm not like my best self. I'm not perfect. And the third theme, hat tip to the Paris Hilton ad, which at the time was controversial. But the reason why I feel like it's landed now is because they've made a little hat tip to it, but they've also demonstrated the evolution from the ad. The other point I want to make is not only was the zeitgeist and the pulse check relatively positive and supportive to the ad, the media was quite supporting and the campaign reportedly did really well. So the leading Instagram post notched up 47 % engagement and helped the brand secure a 91 % increase in followers.

24:02So those stats were shared by Metricool social data and were referenced in the Marketing Drive article that I pulled this information from. So this is interesting to me, like the contrast, I guess, in sentiment shift from Paris Hilton to Alex Earle. Do you think that they were targeting a younger consumer following Alex or at least, you know, in that sphere of Alex's world? Or do you think that they were targeting the male gaze like they were with Paris Hilton? 100 % targeting a Gen Z younger audience. I would argue this ad did dip slightly into the classic tropes of the male gaze, given that Alex is objectively white, skinny, very attractive.

24:44She was wearing not a lot of clothes in the ad, but I didn't think it defined the ad. It felt well balanced and it felt like the contextual alignment of working with Alex Earl because of that social presence that she has, the party girl S vibe, and also the lean into it being about the hangover the next day. They also made a really clever nod in the commercial where they opened with the line, we all know tomorrow is going to be a hot mess, which is the name of Alex Earl's podcast. So it was very clever. I also think the social climate at the moment isn't as sensitive to sexy ads or sex. Yeah. Because we've seen and there's such an overexposure on social media.

25:24I do think young people aren't as perhaps shocked as what it would have been like in the early 2000s. We're desensitized now. We're seeing it so much. I do want to wrap up with a quote from Cara Gasparro who spoke to Marketing Drive and is the vice president of creative strategy at Carl's Jr.'s parent company, CKE Restaurants, and what her take on the campaign was. So Kara said, we didn't have a spot in the Super Bowl, but we had so much buzz on social media. Between the free giveaway and the campaign itself, a nice fit for us to reintroduce Carl Jr.'s to a younger audience. So yes. Bang on. Bang on.

26:01Yeah. And I think they did exactly that. They did. Also, no one worked harder in the Super Bowl, aside from the team on the field, than Alex Earl. Oh my God. That girl did like four or five brand promotions. She seriously got the back.