Mass Media And Sexuality

In my paper, I am going to discuss whether and how mass media may shape adolescents’ sexualities. I argue that, though there is no doubt that media have a great impact on the formation of adolescents sexualities, nevertheless, adolescents do have substantial control over the use of mass media - what medium, which messages, where and when. I argue that teens are capable to assess critically the content of mass media. They are inclined to choose those media messages that best suit their needs and personalities. Thus I may say that they also take part in and contribute to the formation of their sexualities.

I do not view adolescents as a passive audience, mere consumers of products produced by mass media how they are often portrayed in the images

I may also rephrase it as the process of learning the ways of their culture. As adolescents become older, they learn what it is to be a man or a woman in that particular culture. To be a man or to be a woman implies certain ideas about appropriate behavior for representatives of respective sexes. It should not be a surprise that adolescents may frequently turn to mass media to gain such information about issues concerning gender and sex. As the results of various surveys show (see Chapin, 2000 and Y Bay-Cheng, 2001), mass media are important providers of sex education for adolescents. Teens usually learn about birth control (use of condoms and pills), various sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and HIV/AIDS from mass media. Mass media very often turns out to be the only source of information about the matters because parents and other adults may not be competent or may feel uncomfortable to talk about it. Other studies show (ibid.) that media may also provide the so called sexual scripting of behaviors - for example, guidelines how to behave in the first date, who is to be considered and chosen as one’s mate not to mention a depiction of the very sexual acts. A number of analyses of the content of prime time TV show reveals that some most sexually oriented show consisted of nearly 60% sexual dialogue (Chapin, 2000). The analyses also show that male sexuality is more often featured than female sexuality. Among the most popular themes in TV shows, there were sexual/romantic relations often depicted as competition, men valuing and selecting women on the basis of physical appearance, and sex as the defining act of masculinity (Chapin,