I keep hearing people
whinging over the fact that sex sells. Some cute-but-braindead actor demonstrating their
ignorance on talkshows, or magazine ads featuring ever more
naked individuals. This particular whine seems to often be accompanied with the phrase
Sex sells... Often said with rolled eyes.
I don't see what's wrong with that. How could it possibly be any other way?
Listen up, folks. WE'RE ANIMALS. To be specific, we're mammals. Just like the chimps and the lions and the wombats. Just like any other animal, we have sexual impulse wired right into us. Monks have it, nuns have it. Even those sworn to celibacy can't avoid the sexual impulse; going into the cloister doesn't make you any less an animal.
I don't need to go in too much depth about this: it's common knowlege. Suffice it to say that the survival of any species is entirely dependent on that species' sex drive. Entirely. Without our animal instincts with regard to sex, humanity would certainly not exist as we know it.
The only thing that sets us apart from other animals is this mystical, magical thing called culture. We can (sort of) communicate. We can (sort of) relate with one another. We establish frameworks within which we have various sorts of transations with one another: personal, emotional, and, yes, financial. In modern culture, we've traded hunting and gathering--an exercise in interpersonal and societal transaction about food exchange and survival--for more "civilized", usually financial, transactions. But this behavior is grafted onto much older, much more basically animal, stuff.
So how can it come as any surprise that the drive that sustained humanity through the period where population growth was the key to ensuring the future of the species is still lurking around? We roll our eyes and pretend it shouldn't be, but is anyone actually surprised?