Golden Age Of Advertising: The Sexualization Of Women

As we enter the twenty-first century there has been an evolution in the media outlets that once ruled over the household. As a modern civilization, media started from newspapers and then developed into television, but now we are centered around the use of online media. This last progression is one that affects all our daily lives and is not something that can be easily avoided. For the generations before the tech-boom they feel that online media has made the current generation more accustom to the sexuality that is being expressed, but this argument is not fixated on a single generation, as it was been a reoccurring issue throughout modern civilization. The sexualization of women throughout the history of modern media starting with the global

The invention of the television would become the preferred grounds for advertising because of societies huge swing from print media to television. The impact that television would have on youth would out scale the influence of print media. It would be assumed that has civilization progressed and women gaining more rights over their bodies that the sexualization of women would decrease significantly. This conclusion did not fit the historical outcome from the invention of television and quite the opposite became the truth. Dr. Victor C. Strasburger, an American pediatrician and adolescent medicine expert, stated that “more than 75% of prime-time programs contain sexual content, yet only 14% of sexual incidents mention any risks or responsibilities of sexual activity” (Council). These statistics are alarming because the data was taken from programing created within the last decade and not from 1950s misogynic era. The sexualization of women has increased in the last few decades using television and is a re-mediation of the message carried out in the newspapers during early 1900s. This re-mediation can be seen in the current day advertisements that span from the beauty industry to food and beverage. Although the messages have been toned down because of the

Children are being pushed to look and dress like women who are manufactured to be the image of perfection, when the sexualization of women in media is driving a oversexualization of children in real life. Based on findings from an experiment at Journal of Adolescent Health testing the sexual knowledge of thousand children the researcher determined, “Adolescence is a developmental period that is characterized by intense information-seeking, especially about adult roles and, given the lack of information about sexuality readily available to teens, adolescents may turn to the media for information about sexual norms." (Journal). If this adolescence reliance of media for information on social norms, the observation from a New York Times article stating that, “…some studies indicate three-fourths of all girls have had sex during their teenage years and 15% have had four or more partners” (Schleifer) displays a connection to the inappropriate messages that the media is giving and the actions children are taking consequently. The use of sexualized television advertisements is creating generations of children who are more worried about how they are perceived regarding their sexualized