Oversexualization Of Women Analysis

The Oversexualization of Women and How it Affects Young Girls

If you go on Youtube and search for covers of the song “Worth It” by Fifth Harmony, you’ll find many girls as young as eight or ten singing their heart out to the hit song. “Worth It” peaked at #12 on Billboards Top 100, and earned itself a triple platinum with over three million sales. The music video has almost 1.5 billion views, which is an absolutely huge number. Think about it, there are about 325 million people in the United States, which means that the number of views on this music video is more than four times the number of all the people living in the United States. This video and others like it have obviously made a big impact, but is it a good one? While many feminists

The young women in this video dance, dress, act, and sing in an extremely sexualized way, and they look entirely out of place in the work settings they’re put in. And yet they’re praised for it! (give example here) “Feminism Is Sexy” is another phrase that appears on the screen, and it is very purposefully made to be more obvious than the other phrases that were on the screen. Fifth Harmony singer Lauren Jauregui defends the sexuality of their music videos, saying “A woman embracing her sexuality is something that shouldn’t be taboo…” (Barbagelott). But the majority of Fifth Harmony’s fans aren’t women. They are young, easily influenced girls, who are already being bombarded by sexual messages everywhere they

This has been proven in a number of studies, like one released by the American Psychological Association in 2008. It stated that the sexualization of girls and women leads to depression, unhappiness with their bodies, and causes girls to care less about academic and other achievements, and causes them to put more focus on their appearance. When these girls and women have more focus put on their appearance and internally objectify themselves, they end up putting less effort into achieving goals or educating themselves (Zurbriggen et al, 18-34). One study in particular really shows how much self objectification affects women. Researchers had a group of 42 women, half of whom were put into sweaters, and the other half put into swimsuits. The group of women in swimsuits were far more self objectifying than the women in sweaters. Both groups were given a math test, and the women in swimsuits scored significantly lower on their test, which would suggest a strong correlation between self objectification and academic performance (Fredrickson, 276-280). These studies and many others go to show that the sexual messages and stereotypes the “Worth It” video promotes have been proven to be very obviously detrimental to young women, and the effects of these kinds of music videos are simply not worth