Music Today: Not For Kids (Research Material)

The Sexualisation of Culture

Taken from: http://myarticlesunite.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/the-sexualisation-of-culture/
By Dr Linda Papadopoulos

20th May 2010


Driving my little girl to school the other morning, we had the radio playing in the background as usual.
But while I chatted to my seven-year-old about preparing her costume for the school’s open day, I began to notice the lyrics of the song that was playing.
‘Hey rude boy, is you big enough? Hey rude boy can you get it up?’ sang American pop star Rihanna.
Had it not been for my daughter’s presence in the car, I probably wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. After all, it was a mainstream station and she’s a mainstream singer.
So as I fumbled to change stations it hit me that this was just another instance of how desensitised we have become to the sexual language and imagery that pervades our everyday lives.
Our children are surrounded by messages and images that aren’t intended for them. But these messages are so prevalent they can’t avoid them.
It’s not just the obvious things that we see around us – the padded bras for eight-year-olds and the pole-dancing kits in toy departments – that can sexualise children.
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It’s as Dr Maddy Coy, a sociologist from London Metropolitan University, puts it: ‘The background noise of sexualisation that is directed at adults but is available to and absorbed by children’ that is so problematic.
Girls jokingly now call each other ‘slut’ oblivious to the fact that it’s actually a deeply insulting sexual label.
Billboards and posters on buses and in high streets display women in the sort of explicit spread-eagled poses that a generation ago would only have been seen in top-shelf magazines.
But they’re not selling sex. They’re selling ice cream or shoes.
TV programmes shown well before the watershed hour of 9pm are littered with sexual references. But one of the worst offenders are song lyrics. With their drip, drip effect, they form the context to children’s lives. And the effect is deeply disturbing.
It’s cumulative, it’s powerful and it’s sending a terribly unhealthy message to children, and young girls in particular.
Music plays a big part in shaping our children. Kids aspire to emulate pop stars and the lifestyles and fashions they promote. Research shows that pre-teens and young teenagers listen to music for between 1.5 and 2.5 hours a day.
A recent report from the American Psychological Society noted the increasing tendency of popular song lyrics to sexualise women or refer to them in a derogatory manner.
They give graphic examples from popular mainstream artists like the Pussycat Dolls (‘Don’tcha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?’) and rapper 50 Cent (‘I tell hos [slang for prostitutes] all the time, Bitch get in my car’).
And far from being confined to rap music, the psychologists point out that lyrics and videos across all genres sexualise and objectify women.
Analysing themes and content from hundreds of music videos, it’s obvious that the portrayal of sexuality in popular music has become both less subtle and more explicit.
Just look at rap artist Nelly swiping a credit card through a young woman’s buttocks (Tip Drill). Or a woman being stripped naked and thrown onto a prison cell bed (Lady Gaga, Telephone.)
Or women being walked on leashes (P. I. M. P. by 50 cent). Particularly worryingly, the women in videos are rarely allowed to actively participate. They don’t sing or play an instrument.
They are purely decorative objects. It all serves to shape teenagers’ views on women.
And it’s unhealthy to say the least. Meanwhile, in an article in the April 2009 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers looking at the associations between song lyrics and teenage sexual behaviour found that exposing young teens to lyrics that describe degrading sex was independently associated with teenagers starting sex younger and having more partners.
When this is considered in light of the fact that several studies have established links between early sexual activity, poor sexual health, teenage pregnancy, and degrading sexual practices it becomes evident why we need to address how media and pop culture messages affect attitudes and behaviours
Stripping sex of any commitment or emotion, and where one partner had power over the other, creates an unhealthy view of sex in vulnerable teenagers.
And that’s why the issue of sexualisation is much more complex than is often reported. It’s not simply about children learning about sex too early. After all, kids have a normal curiosity about their developing sexuality and that is both developmentally appropriate and healthy.
The real problem is when girls are presented with an unbalanced stereotyped point of view about who they ought to be and how they ought to perform in relationships. It’s when they are made to feel that there is little alternative to aspiring to the ‘ideals’ of being hot and sexually desirable.
Even where women are the stars, they are often presented and portrayed in an overtly sexual way.
An analysis of the main themes projected in music videos found that violence occurs in 56.6 per cent of cases and visual presentations of sexual intimacy in over 75 per cent. And that’s across the board. From rap to country, no area is immune.
More than 30 years ago, cultural theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out that we perceive the media’s effect on us as poorly as fish perceive the water they swim in.
In other words, the music is so prevalent and we are so desensitised, we simply don’t realise just what impact it is having on us.
Young women should be free to enjoy their sexuality when they feel ready for it and not before. We also need to provide new meanings of masculinity for young men that are not based solely on sexual conquest.
To do that we need to listen – really listen – to the sexualised background noise that surrounds us and act on what we hear to protect our children.

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**This article came out in NSTP on the 20th of May 2010