o What are the effects of the media’s portrayal of sexuality on adolescents’ sexual lives?What are some negative and some positive effects of the media’s portrayal of sexuality?
o How has the media’s portrayal of sexuality affected your life?
The effects of the media’s portrayal on sexuality on adolescent’s lives are vast. Most media in today’s society portrays acts of sexuality as commonplace and expected. It shows young girls being flirtatious and having sex. It shows young men as sexual predators or pressuring the girls. It is far and few between that a show displays age appropriate sexuality for it’s viewers. The media also represent’s young gays and lesbians more readily than it would have years ago. I think this is a good idea since that demographic of viewer base has increased greatly. This increased awareness for young people has both positive and negative impacts. The increased awareness of the effects of sexuality in early ages such as pregnancy and STD’s are more prevalent than in yester years. However, the increased stimuli of sexuality leads to more exploration of our younger generations to have sex earlier than they should be and producing babies at a younger age as well as they are contracting more STD’s. I think the media’s influence on our future generations needs to be tempered and that is the job of the parent or caregiver. The media’s portrayal of sexuality has not has as great an effect on my life as it could have as I do not watch much TV and tend to read more often than watch a movie. The media has more of an impact on those around me and influences me through them. My friends have an intense amount of pornography that they watch and it makes them see women as objects instead of as human beings. They want to go to Hooters instead of a nice restaurant. This is because the advertising for Hooters portrays the women working as waitresses there as sexual objects much like their pornography does. My nieces and nephews play video games with more sexual content than I would like and the women in them are always large breasted and small in stature. They are sex symbols. Everywhere around us the media present the feminine species as sexual symbols to every man out there and then we wonder why women are seen as little more than that. I don’t like the effects this has on the women I love in my life nor how it makes others see them. If I had a choice that would be the one thing I changed about how the media presented sexuality. Women would be presented as thinkers and achievers not simply as a sexual object. It is this concept that eats away at the heart of what America stands for, equality. Even though it is expected of me I treat those around me with respect, regardless of race, sex, orientation, or lifestyle choices. This has been an enlightening class in showing me how others around me are affected by sexuality.