Sex in the Media
Sex: a theme with which we, as teens and adults, should be at least somewhat familiar. It is also a theme that can be found much too easily in modern pop culture—one can locate sexual themes without putting any effort in. This is the problem that we are running into today: the fact that mature themes are so readily available in not so mature media. It seems not that one cannot turn on the radio, visit a theater or flip on the television without being bogged down by sexual innuendos, the over sexualizing of women characters, and actual sex scenes themselves. Our children today are being way over exposed to this theme which they are not ready to learn about, and its constant availability in our media needs to be lessened in order to promote better mental, emotional and sexual health in our kids.

The radio is one of the largest culprits of over-sexualizing today’s media. At any hour of the day lately, I have found it hard to find any song with absolutely no sexual element to it. This includes rap and pop stations, but I have surprisingly found that country music is the guiltiest when it comes to singing about sex. They arrange their lyrics in ways that make what they are saying less noticeable, but it is very hard to hide the true meaning behind them when artists like Josh Turner sing “Baby, lock them doors and turn them lights down low.” And later goes on to say “You don’t know how much it turns me on, just to be your man.” In addition, most country songs are rather degrading to women. In many, all the men compliment is the woman’s looks, including, but not limited to: her boobs, her “badonkadonk”, her hair and how she looks in a certain article of clothing. Of course , parents could expose their children to kids channels, including top hits such as “Don’t Drop a Brick on Your Foot”, but the reality is that parents are going to listen to what they want, and their kids will experience whatever it is that happens to be.
Some of the best examples of over-sexed music were extremely evident at this past year’s VMAs. When Miley Cyrus performed a mash-up of “We Can’t Stop”, with Robin Thicke and his song “Blurred Lines” (which is literally entirely about sex and rape by the way), they took the world by surprise. Miley wore a nude leotard and a foam finger, which she continually made obscene gestures with while grinding into Robin. I think the reason that it was so shocking to people is that it was a visualization of the music. Most people neglect to really listen to what songs are saying (even when they know every word), and this performance gave all of those words an image. The case of Miley and Robin is small though, considering the hundreds of artists on the market that are doing the same thing, however less noticeably. I feel that in order to not prematurely expose our children to sex, they should begin to find new topics to sing about. Pharell’s song “Happy” is the perfect example. In it, he merely sings about how good of mood he is in, and it has brought great popularity to the song. If more artists followed his example, they could change the music world for the better.
Radio is not the only form of media that is over sexualized in the modern world. Movies are yet another vehicle for this theme to reach our lives. Movies have always been profane, but it seems more evident in the last five to ten years than ever before. Honestly, it seems that now, movies are not rated R just for their strong language and brief drug references anymore; they have to contain some sort of sex scene, nudity, or both. The movie industry has really taken to focusing on the idea that “sex sells”. Even in a perfectly good action movie with a strong storyline, humor and experienced actors, the producers find it necessary to have the main character make love to some beautiful woman. It seems a little extravagant to me. In addition to movies like these, there are also films that are based only around the idea of sex. “No Strings Attached” and “Friends with Benefits” literally tell us just that in their title alone—the whole storyline is crafted around several sex scenes between the main characters. Usually very artistic films making a statement on society, the “Wolf on Wall street” broke the trend and was nominated for an Oscar in Best Picture. This movies is strewn with sex, hard drugs, naked women and men, and much more, yet somehow the academy commended it and gave it a nomination. I realize that the R rating on most of these movies would strongly discourage children from watching them, but it is more than that now. These movies are over sexing our nation as a whole, and they are defining our culture as one that is inappropriate and not child friendly.
Finally, we come to television, the most common, yet least noticeable form of sexualization in the media. On television, they cannot show any nudity, use profane language or show actual sex scenes, at least not during the day or prime time, and especially not on cable channels. This is for the exact reasons that I have been speaking about; the idea that if there are children around, they do not want to imprint them too early with these sexual themes, when they do not even know the meaning of the word yet. Television does, however, slyly make sexual references, comments and jokes. One must be pretty quick in order to catch most of them, but they are there. Even family shows such as Modern Family are notorious for doing so. In addition to the rather constant sexual jokes and comments that are made, in one episode the kids walked into their parent’s bedroom when they were being “intimate”, so the entire episode went on to talk about that and its related sexual topics. Gloria on Modern Family is also the epitome of the over sexualized woman, just on a much larger scale. She has very large boobs yet is very skinny, so they make her wear very high heels and very tight dresses to constantly show off her figure. In addition to comedies, television today also have many shows like ABC’s Scandal. The premise of the show is based around a women that is the mistress of the President of the United States. This show is obviously over flowing with sexual themes, as we often find the two making out or in bed together. There are thousands of shows on television today, and though some are much less obvious than others, an extreme number of them carry sexual themes. Because a lot of these are things kids would watch with their parents, television is probably the biggest factor when it comes to negatively impacting children.
Here in America, our media is extremely sexualized. There are sexual themes carried throughout our modern music, movies and television shows, and they are now so evident that no one even seems to even notice them anymore. Whether it is songs base on sex, movies with nudity and sex scenes, or shows containing sexual humor and themes, it has gotten to be too much. Early exposure to learning about sex can harm a child’s mental, emotional and sexual health, and cause these parts of the brain to not develop properly. That being said, as consumers, we should decide to avoid media outlets with these profane themes, yet when it comes down to it, there are not many choices left. The writers, producers and directors behind these projects need to step back and realize that this has gotten out of hand, and they must actively band together to create things that break the trend. Because in the end, what is more important: making a little more money, or helping to properly develop our future leaders of the world?