Media and Sexuality

So this is super rough guys. Like, about as rough as rough gets. I ended up changing my topic pretty late in the game tonight, so really I’d just love suggestions on how you would arrange it/places I could take it I haven’t thought of/critiques of general ideas. I have some different ideas for shaping it up better, but this is my working thesis and my initial ideas puked on paper (well…blog). So yeah. Sorry you have to struggle through this.

The hyper-sexualization of the media has led to the emergence of hookup/rape culture.

Sex sells, as they say, so it comes as no surprise that advertisements and pop culture have become increasingly sexual in recent years. If you’ve ever walked into a Hollister or Abercrombie and Fitch store, you’ve seen the hardly clothed models pictured in very provocative poses plastered on every wall and shopping bag. Television, music, and especially advertisements have dealt increasingly with the idea of casual sex and erotic appeal.

What’s becoming increasingly disturbing about this trend, however, is the effect it’s having on societal views on sexuality. What many people don’t realize is that advertisements don’t just sell products, and television and magazines don’t just entertain – they teach us standards of love, beauty, sexuality, success, and what is normal and expected of us. And when we are surrounded by media where casual sex is the norm – from perfume and colone commercials which imply the use of a certain fragrance will end in a hookup with an attractive stranger, to alcohol commercials which are as much an advertisement for one night stands as they are for liquor – society as a whole begins to adapt the mentality that casual hookups are not only acceptable, but also, to a certain extent, encouraged.

The University of Buffalo conducted research on the sexualization of images in recent years, using Rolling Stone Magazine as an indicator, and found that in the 2000’s, 17% of images of men were sexualized and 83% of images of women were sexualized, while in the 1960’s, only 11% of men and 44% of women were sexualized. And in the 2000’s, of those images, 2% of men and 61% of women were hypersexualized. This is a dramatic shift in a relatively short period of time, and it’s concerning because we’re no longer just seeing female icons that are sexy, we are seeing female icons that are sex objects – too often, we are seeing women stripped of worth that is not related to their sex appeal.

Take a look at the music idols that have appeared in the 21st century – we had Brittany Spears, who came out with the sexually charged song “Slave 4 You” in 2001 when she was 19 years old, and who was known for little more than her embodiment of the whore-madonna dichotomy. Now we have Rhianna singing about sadomasochism in her song “S&M”, Nicki Minaj singing about wanting a man to “take over control”, and Ke$ha glorifying hookups and party life. Combined with the extremely sexual wardrobe and general style of each of the above, this has contributed to a media environment which celebrates casual sex and puts pressure on young people to participate in the hookup culture they promote.

An even more disturbing edge to the sexual nature of modern media is the promotion of rape culture, which is essentially a culture in which rape/sexual violence has been trivialized, normalized, or excused. Many times, sex in advertisements is borderline sexual assault, with the woman portrayed as powerless to the man. Women are often portrayed in positions that imply vulnerability or submission: they have their hands over their mouths, they’re bent in slightly unnatural positions (think vogue models), lying on their backs, etc. while men are pictured as large and strong, typically assuming power stances. This emphasis on stereotypical gender roles leads to an idea of women being submissive and helpless to the violence and power of men – in fact, in many ads, violence is eroticized, showing bound, battered, or (in some extreme cases) murdered women portrayed in a sexualized manner. This kind of imagery, when viewed repeatedly, desensitizes people to sexual violence and makes them far more likely to blame the victim or see sexual assault as an unavoidable and even somewhat normal aspect of life. Erin Hatton, an assistant professor in the department of Sociology at the University of Buffalo stated “Sexualized portrayals of women have been found to legitimize or exacerbate violence against women and girls, as well as sexual harassment and anti-women attitudes among men and boys. Such images also have been shown to increase rates of body dissatisfaction and/or eating disorders among men, women, and girls, as well as decrease sexual satisfaction among both men and women.”

So ironically, the increase of sex in the media has actually made women and men watching feel less sexy, as they are constantly comparing themselves to the ideal images of “sexiness” they are seeing on television and in magazines. The media’s portrayal of men being large, muscular, and very dominant leads to pressure on men to live up to this stereotype, which is just not attainable for some. In the same way, the media’s emphasis on extremely skinny, yet well-endowed women leads to the increase of eating disorders and general lowered body-image for women, who feel they must be hypersexual all the time to prove their worth, since that’s what they’re seeing in magazines and on television.

The objectification of women and ubiquitous nature of casual sex in mass media has created a toxic atmosphere where both men and women feel pressured to conform to predetermined ideas of sexuality that are not only dissatisfying, but also dangerous in their promotion of rape culture.