Sexualization

Sexualization is the attribution of sexual characteristics to a person or an object. In the twenty-first century, sexualization most commonly refers to the sexual objectification of women by men, though women may also sexualize men. The American Psychological Association (APA) claims that sexualization is distinct from normal sexuality in that it values people based only on their sexual attractiveness, objectifies people as instruments for the sexual use of others, and applies sexuality to individuals inappropriately, as in the case of children.

The portrayal of most women in the media and popular culture as thin and beautiful has been shown to cause a number of mental health problems for some women and girls, who believe they must look like these women to be considered physically attractive. These problems can include dissatisfaction with one's body, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and the onset of cigarette smoking. Individuals can resist the effects of sexualization by educating themselves in media strategies and healthy sexuality.

Background

The term sexualization has been used in the United Kingdom and United States since approximately the mid-nineteenth century and has had several meanings over time. In the 1800s, to sexualize a noun in language meant to assign it a gender of male or female. The early twentieth century saw sexualization used to refer to the direction of people's erotic desires toward objects or people.

In the early 1980s, journalists and academics in the United States started using the term sexualization to refer to the ways girls were being portrayed as overtly sexual beings in popular culture. One of the first examples of this was a wave of cosmetic products marketed to girls by toy companies. At the time, parents and activists claimed that selling makeup to young girls amounted to sexualizing them, forcing them to abandon childhood before they actually grew up. American professor of child development James Garbarino supplemented this view in the mid-1990s when he wrote that children were corrupted when they were sexualized and that sexualized children were susceptible to receiving sexual attention from adults.

The American public became more aware of the sexualization of women and girls in the early twenty-first century, as the feminist movement proclaimed that female sexualization in the media harmed young girls. Some scholarship asserted that the appearances of thin, sexually attractive young women in such outlets of popular culture as films, magazines, sports, and advertisements were conveying to young girls that it is socially acceptable to want to be a sexual object. Additionally, critics argued, the sexualization of women and girls in the media only perpetuated the attitudes that lead to child abuse and child sex trafficking.

Impact

Psychologists and other researchers continued studying the sexualization of both women and men in global popular culture in the twenty-first century. The longevity of the practice of sexualization in many cultures around the world provided these researchers with several decades of data that they could analyze for sexualization statistics. In most studies, researchers found that the frequency of sexualization of women and men within various specific media outlets increased greatly from the mid to late twentieth century to the early twenty-first century.

In 2011, for instance, researchers from New York's University at Buffalo published a study in the academic journal Sexuality & Culture in which they examined cover photos from Rolling Stone magazine from 1967 to 2009 for examples of sexualization of both women and men. The researchers ultimately studied more than one thousand photos and concluded that depictions of women and men became progressively more sexualized and that women were sexualized more often than men. The cover photos were ranked according to their levels of sexuality, from "not sexualized" to "sexualized" to "hypersexualized." Photos featuring men or women with parted lips and exposed tongues and wearing little to no clothing earned higher rankings for sexualization.

The study concluded that in the 1960s, 44 percent of women and 11 percent of men were sexualized on Rolling Stone magazine covers. By the 2000s, 83 percent of women and 17 percent of men were sexualized in the cover photos. Additionally, 61 percent of women and 2 percent of men on sexualized on Rolling Stone covers were classified as "hypersexualized." The researchers wrote that such photos harm public conceptions of women by depicting them as objects that exist only for the sexual satisfaction of men.

Meanwhile, in 2016, Indiana University doctoral student Teresa Lynch performed a study in which she searched for sexualization of female characters in video games from the mid-1980s to the mid-2010s. Lynch analyzed nearly six hundred characters for sexually appealing clothing, thin waists, and overemphasized breasts and hips. She eventually ranked the characters in order of their sexualization.

The character Lara Croft from the long-running video game series Tomb Raider earned special attention in the study for her physical evolution over many years. The character transitioned from wearing shorts and other revealing clothing in the 1990s and 2000s to wearing pants and a tank top in the 2010s. Critics of female sexualization claimed this was because popular culture usually portrayed attractive women characters as either victims or heroes, with no other character types in the middle.

Psychologists and researchers in the late 2000s and early 2010s also worried that sexualization was affecting children. In 2011, the French magazine Vogue Paris drew negative attention for featuring child models as young as 10 years old wearing furs, jewelry, and cosmetics. The criticism motivated the French Senate to begin investigating whether children could be harmed by being hypersexualized by adults. Some members of the Senate claimed that girls would be severely psychologically misguided if they grew up believing that they had to be beautiful to succeed in life. In 2013, the French Senate banned French children younger than 16 years old from participating in beauty pageants.

In the late 2000s, the APA published a report claiming that the sexualization of women in popular culture contributes to mental health problems in young American women, who feel their own bodies are inferior to those of women portrayed in media. These young women can then become anxious and depressed and develop eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, which causes them to starve themselves to lose weight. The APA suggested that schools educate their students in media studies, particularly the unrealistic ways in which women and men are portrayed in the media, so they do not develop anxieties about their own bodies. Schools should also offer their students comprehensive sexual education programs, according to the APA.

Bibliography

De Melker, Saskia. "Researchers Measure Increasing Sexualization of Images in Magazines." PBS NewsHour, 21 Dec. 2013, www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/social‗issues-july-dec13-sexualization‗12-21/. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.

Duschinsky, Robbie. "The Emergence of Sexualization as a Social Problem: 1981–2010." Oxford Journals, 2012, sp.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/1/137.full. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.

Sidani, Karen. "The Hypersexualization of Young Girls and the Infantilization of Adult Women." American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research 7.1 (2023): 193-7, www.ajhssr.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/X22701193197.pdf. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.

McCall, Catherine. "The Sexualization of Women and Girls." Psychology Today, 4 Mar. 2012, www.psychologytoday.com/blog/overcoming-child-abuse/201203/the-sexualization-women-and-girls. Accessed 23 Jan. 2025.

Roberts, Darryl. "Sexualized Culture Is Creating Mental Health Issues in Our Youth." Huffington Post, 20 Oct. 2014, www.huffingtonpost.com/darryl-roberts/sexualized-culture-is-creating-mental-health-issues-in-our-youth‗b‗5994148.html. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.

Rubin, Alissa J., and Maïa de la Baume. "French Senate Approves Ban on Pageants for Young Girls." The New York Times, 18 Sept. 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/world/europe/french-senate-passes-ban-on-beauty-pageants-for-girls.html. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.

Strum, Lora. "Study Tracks 31-Year History of Female Sexualization in Video Games." PBS NewsHour, 8 July 2016, www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/study-tracks-31-year-history-of-female-sexualization-in-video-games/. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.