Naturalizing bodies and places: Tourism Media Campaigns and Heterosexualities in Costa Rica and New Zealand

Drawing on feminist, queer and poststructuralist theories of sexuality this article contributes to the field of tourism branding. Research findings on tourism media campaigns-New Zealand’s ‘100% Pure campaign’, and Costa Rica’s ‘No Artificial Ingredients’—illustrate how places and bodies are co-constructed and heterosexualized. We argue that both campaigns employ familiar landscape tropes of ‘nature’, ‘pureness’, ‘wilderness’, and ‘escape’, which discursively construct places and bodies as ‘natural’, ‘exotic’, and ‘romantic’. We draw on ethnographic and interview data to consider the lived experiences of these discourses for tourists and tourism businesses. By paying attention to the sexualized representations made and remade through tourism media campaigns the article challenges hegemonic conceptualizations of sexualities and offers an exciting future research agenda for tourism studies.

Research highlights
► State sponsored tourism media campaigns co-construct and sexualize bodies and places.
► Campaigns in Costa Rica and New Zealand employ hegemonic tropes of nature.
► Places and bodies are constructed as natural, exotic, romantic and heterosexual.
► State promises of nature represent the nation and are felt at the level of the body.
► The campaigns marginalize sexualities such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer.