Hypersexualization and Sexual Objectification – A Real Concern?

We have seen the bombardment of imagery everywhere. Boys and girls alike who are young of age are constantly overwhelmed by sexualized imagery, from American Apparel advertisements to Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition to Victoria’s Secret to Abercrombie. Whether it be clothing brands, TV sitcoms, movies, or music videos – the “objectification” of women is everywhere. More than objectification, modern feminists and many other sociological proponents throughout academia are wanting to argue that these images and trends within media are only serving to reinforce gender inequalities and are straight out sexist in nature. After all, is this really not just the outright result of capitalistic society in which “sex sells” as the overarching rule? We also know that violence and sexuality, along with portrayals of things related within and between the two, have increased in recent years so wouldn’t it be safe to conclude that these things have a clear effect on the minds of our children?

Not really. In fact, all of it is based on bogus reasoning and bogus science. Let me explain.

First of all, let me assert that it is certainly true that children are effected by the media. This is unavoidably true but to what extent and in what way it is true will continue to be researched and studied by scientists for decades to come. And, unfortunately, the findings are difficult to come by with any real scientific accuracy because of the fluid and constantly changing motion of media across the board. The important truth that does remain the same, however, is that parents continue to have a powerful, overriding type of influence on their children. Perhaps one of the biggest problems we find in society in the way that children are being raised is that parents have allowed too many of the megacorporations to become involved in what should be recommended to and served to their children. Parents these days everywhere are 1) busy and 2) on a budget so their solution for “food” is often McDonalds, their solution for “play” is usually a public park (or the McDonald’s play pens), and their solution for allowing the kids to “unwind” is to put on Cartoon Network or any number of other channels to occupy their children with television sets rather than parents actually having to take the effort to calm their kids down.

The kind of food that kids are eating is another huge problem. Little girls AND boys are hitting puberty earlier than ever before because of the food processing that takes place with meats, dairy products, and other consumables. “Lunchables” are now often preferred to making kids a brown bag lunch but on top of that – people seem to have lost sight of so much more beyond the brown bag lunch! Heck, the brown bag lunch was not ever the answer either, we need to get kids away from peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on top of it all too! Pepsi Co. and Coca-Cola are ready and willing to provide your children with everything they need in quality nutrition, such as Doritos, Sprite, Cheetos, and let’s not forget Coke Zero (all of these products serve to increase rates of disease like diabetes and even the increased likelihood of cancer later in life but I digress).

The ugly truth that a lot of parents cannot understand is that their role within society has been manipulated far more than what the children’s role has. Parents are faced with the ugly truth that now confronts them: the media is just doing what the media does – attempting to make money. Meanwhile, kids are spewing out a lot of the “filth” that shows up on television and throughout advertisements. It is true, it is happening, BUT and it’s a huge BUT (no pun intended) – the fault of the children spewing out this supposed garbage lies in the hands of the parents. For some reason, a lot of modern psychology seems to think that concepts and constructs related to freedom, personal choice, and responsibility are somehow null and void. There are some people who carry an attitude that behaviorism actually eliminated this idea that people are inherently “free” some time ago but in truth, it did not. I explain why in a few of my other articles here on this site. The point is: parents are responsible for their children and the fact that corporations may be abusing their children is not the fault of the corporations. Even when those who actually believe that objectification has happened want to alter the “hypersexualization,” they usually say one of the best ways to do that is to talk to your children about the meaning of the imagery to give them the ‘tools’ to be media literate and to make their own critical thinking decisions. Hello! Teach this to your kids regardless of what they’re watching on TV.

Having said all of this, simply to address the other existing problems that pry into the well being of children and how they’re currently raised, let’s get into the evidence present with this idea of “sexualization” and “objectification.” The APA (American Psychological Association) has done a lot of work in this area and they even have a “task force” devoted to the subject. For a very brief period of time, I have been a Student Affiliate member of the APA but my membership is now ending at the end of 2011 for a number of reasons. While the fact that they would devote a ‘task force’ to this entire ideology is bad enough, the science they back it up with is even more awful. One study they cite from 1996, says: “The analysis revealed that even though MTV executives might have become more aware of gender issues as the new decade began, the popular music videos they presented continued to underrepresent women and portray them in a manner that emphasized physical appearance rather than musical ability.” The idea is that MTV executives will always automatically be able to make money but for some reason they are choosing to undervalue women anyway.

Perhaps I should give the example of ATO Records and Jem on this one. When Jem first premiered as a musical artist, she was actually relatively old for her introduction into the music industry at age 29. Her hit single, which, as it turns out was not quite as much of a hit as some of her later songs, was a song called They. Here is the original music video below for the song. You will notice that the video focuses on themes relating to overcoming societal barriers, questioning convention, conveying that there is a youthful spirit that exists outside of the contemporary hegemony.

The music video, I personally thought, was incredibly beautiful in its execution as well as its intellectual appeal. The record label along with the sales for the single itself, however, said something else. It is not that the single’s sales or popularity were lackluster but the record label knew that if they were to stick to the industry formula for success that the song would continue to climb more charts when they finally released it in the UK and other places. So, they thought it best to remake the music video, this time making an attempt to have greater sex appeal or “sexualization.” This, of course, included having some suggestiveness and nudity in the video.

Soon after, Jem’s career continued to rise and she has become a special sort of phenomenon in the music industry. The interesting thing? Many of her fans still say they like her because of her musical talent. Her vastly more successful songs are ones like Wish I, Come On Closer, and of course her latest single: “I Want You To…” In truth, the public is supporting the phenomenon that some of these people claim is some sort of sick societal type of problem. They are continuing to buy the music and watch the music videos, which only serves to further fuel the supposed problem.

Perhaps we should look at this a different way. Consider that almost the entire mainstream media is only controlled by a handful of major conglomerates – Time Warner, Disney, Google, Viacom, and News Corp. Of these megacorporations, many of them have lobbied governments for their oligopolistic control that they now wield on virtually all media. Even the safe haven of the internet, long considered to be one of the last shining beacons of “democractic society” by some, has come under recent threat. Net neutrality, they call it, is becoming an increasingly heated issue. Freedom of speech is actually under threat by these megacorporations.

Big corporations also have a rational interest in preserving other big corporations a lot of the time too, along with finding ways to make the world increasingly interdependent on itself through government and credit-based actions. Of course, all that aside and really just leaving it in for good measure, let’s consider the role these companies play in media only. Disney owns ABC, ESPN, the History Channel, A&E, and many others. Time Warner owns HBO, CNN, Warner Bros, TIME Magazine and TIME Inc., and many others. The list goes on for each one of the major conglomerates. Among the five major corporations that control the media, there are only a handful of individuals who own these corporations.

Maybe that is the bigger issue that we should think about rather than the supposed objectification of women. Some supporters of the hypersexualization opposition groups include people who literally want to find ways of regulating or forcing these companies to limit their content. I do not think that limiting free speech is the answer to anything. The truth still lies in responsibility, it still lies in taking care of your own children and teaching them to understand the world in which they live. At the end of the day, the female body is really not the enemy, nor is even the supposed objectification of it. What we would call objectification today the Pagan origins of so many of our ancestors would have shown great confusion to. In fact, the female body in more ancient Pagan culture was seen largely as the most pristine embodiment of fertility. During this time, females decorating themselves and their bodies was a way of bringing focus and emphasis to fertility itself, which was seen as extremely important for overcoming death and famine of the time.

In addition, many claims are made in regard to sexualization and body image. We are told that eating disorders have increased in prevalence because of the media hypersexualizations. Even if this could be made certain as a correlation, you would be hard pressed to prove this in a causative manner. In modern time, we have shifted from not being obese at all to suddenly seeing obesity be rampant. So suddenly when girls dressed in bikinis who make provocative facial expressions do so for a paycheck and to put on a show, it “under-represents” females in general? Perhaps this is because females in general do not have a sexualized type of personality or attitude about things along with their being more and more commonly obese. But can we really say it is the media’s job to “represent” females all the time? The simple and obvious answer to me is no. If anything, the increased attention to this thing that we call “objectification” should really be a way of drawing attention to our ill attitudes regarding sexuality itself, the cultural trends that surround the sexes and genders, and the seemingly obsessive and abhorrent taste people have for their own sexualities. It is the job of parents to educate their children about what all of this means while simultaneously educating themselves about their own media perceptions as well as the principles which should surround those media perceptions.

At the end of the day, we might also be better off if those who truly do oppose this issue would create their own, non-sexualized media. When they do, they might find it difficult to compete with media that IS sexualized. Even without competition, can we really say that there is any more fault in the changes that are happening in our children do to these companies than there are effects from how these children are raised by their parents? I hope one day the world will wake up to the truth and have some common sense, as this entire concept is growing quite tiresome.