Sexualization Of Women In The Media Essay

Young people consume great amounts of television, music videos, and advertisements. Unfortunately, the media frequently portray women in a sexually objectifying way, meaning that a woman’s sexuality is used to gain attention or sell a product (Stankiewicz & Rosselli, 2008). Regardless of our awareness, sexually objectifying messages have a strong influence on society’s implicit attitudes about women. Such messages are associated with anti-woman attitudes (Stankiewicz & Rosselli, 2008) and girls’ self-objectification (Vandenbosch & Eggermont, 2014). It is approximated that 94% of popular adolescent sitcoms contain sexualizing messages about girls (Vandenbosch & Eggermont, 2014). Another popular media platform among adolescents is music videos, and some genres display a staggering amount of sexualized and objectifying female images. Content analyses of music videos reveal that women are rarely in lead roles, but are instead most often portrayed in inferior or servantile roles, dressed in provocative attire, and behaving in sexually suggestive ways (Andsager & Roe, 2003). Print and video advertisements also pervade

Also, the narrow range of roles that females occupy in music videos is correlated with girls' low level of confidence and poor performance on cognitive tasks involving math, logic, and spatial reasoning (Grabe & Hyde, 2009). Mercurio and Landry (2008) argue that self-objectification impairs women’s sense of wellbeing and overall life satisfaction. Disturbingly, these effects are thought to be worse in young girls, who reportedly begin to internalize objectifying media messages as young as 7 years old (Grabe & Hyde,