Sext Up Kids Documentary Analysis

Advertising can be viewed as a multibillion dollar industry; it is used as a powerful medium for all forms of media. Through advertisement in magazines and commercials, it can be perceived that women are mostly presented in one type of ‘light’. Women are disguised, altered, and body parts augmented all in order to be sexualized and viewed more appealing. These types of ads are known as Dismemberment ads. These certain standards lead the women in the outside population to self objectification; they wish to look like the images portrayed to them all to fit the mold and be seen more attractive. This desire might lead to a destructive path of internalization and they gain a disillusioned idea of what a healthy woman’s body is. In this comparative

Director Maureen Palmer, creator of Sext up Kids goes into great detail of the hyper-sexualized world. Kacey D. Greening from Capital University investigates the objectification and dismemberment of women in the media while Dawn M. Szymanki along with Chandra E. Feltman evaluate coping with the sexually objectifying treatment. Maureen Palmer of Sext up Kids offers several views about the hyper sexualized world. Her intent of this documentary was to investigate how a hyper sexualized environment affects kids and their upbringing. With the influence of several other researchers they first examined the factors in young children’s lives. The idea that Cinderella was “priming for sexualization” was brought to the table. They had a thorough discussion about how children feed off their surroundings; they will adapt and grow from what they’re taught. The documentary then transitioned into the media’s influence of preteen to teenage females. The mass media over time has taught teens, females particularly, how to sexualize their selves by what is presented and shown as ‘beautiful’. Dr. Ralph Diclemente with the public health in Emory University, stated the theory of how there may be a correlation between exposure to

Greening’s research journal article, she begins to explain her purpose for discussing issue of dismemberment ads of women in the media. She stressed the notion that advertisements are not the main cause but they do create and foster an environment that accepts women’s bodies being sold and sexualized. Her purpose of this research was to investigate the implications and prevalence of the dismemberment ads in our society. A key point echoed throughout the entire text is how sexualized messages pervade the American culture. The way of transporting this sexualized identity the quickest is through mass media. Gathering similar information like Maureen Palmer’s Sext up Kids, Greening took it one step further and included several surveys. One survey done in 2004 by Kuring and Tiggemann was administered to 286 undergraduate students in psychology courses at the Flinders University of South Australia; they were given a questionnaire that had measured self-objectification and self surveillance from mass media, including possible variables of depression and disordered eating. The results found that men experienced much lower levels of self-surveillance. A memorable and key fact was that only in women would self-objectification lead to self-surveillance which in turn leads to body shame and appearance anxiety. Greening was able to summarize all the studies she researched to reach her own conclusion about self-objectification. She was able to conclude that men