Sexualization
Because I am woman I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, “she doesn’t have what it takes”; They will say “Woman don’t have what it takes”,
Clare Booth Luce.
Sexualization
Because I am woman I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, “she doesn’t have what it takes”; They will say “Woman don’t have what it takes”,
Clare Booth Luce.
Society has been conditioned by sex. We have allowed sexuality to find comfort in our basic lives. Children are introduced to sexual images and activities as early as their motor skills are developed. The Media has created a society that is addicted to sex. Woman are symbolized and their bodies idolized. They are given a message to act according to their appearance. Girls have been instructed to use their bodies to gain importance. Statistics show that teens are more likely to engage in sexual activities if they believe their peers are. If young girls are surrounded by sexual images from childhood they will establish explicit habits. Females are becoming sexually active before they are even considered woman. The earlier a girl is when she first engages in intercourse, the greater the risk of suicide attempts, alcohol use, drug abuse, truancy and pregnancy says Harold Leitenberg, Ph.D, a professor of psychology at the University of Vermont*. He conducted a study that determined that girls aged 11 and 12 lost their virginity to men five or more years older. Young lives are being corrupted while they are still children. As they become woman they are trained to think that its is necessary to be sexually active in order to establish a relationship. When morally it is necessary to establish a healthy relationship before engaging in sex. This is what we need to be embedding in our daughters minds. Instead we are allowing them to mimic sexual dances and gestures that they are being introduced to through entertainment!? Teen girls who watch more than 14 hours of music videos are more likely to have multiple sex partners and worse diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease. On average music videos contain 93 sexual situations per hour , 11 of them are consider hardcore scenes portraying explicit activities such as intercourse or oral sex. Youth who are exposed to sexual content on T.V are more likely to overestimate the rate of sexual activity among their peers and are more likely to have more permissive attitudes toward premarital sex.
The entertainment industry plays a strong role on the Americas passivity towards sex. They portray sexual images on television, through movies, sitcoms, music videos, reality shows and commercials. More than two thirds of the shows aired on television in the United States included sexual content. This was reported by Vicky Rideout of The Kaiser Family foundation in her biennial report on sex and entertainment. She describes the sexual content as sex talk, characters planning to have sex and scenes with sexual intercourse. Entertainment is a dramatic reflection of reality, poverty and lack of education play into early sexual activity*.
Woman especially lower class woman have historically used sex (in prostitution and various other domains) as the "bartering chip" to gain access. Misogynistic ideas and practices from the past have been passed down to today’s hip-hop youth. Some men have become overly addicted to valued economic assets and use these assets to manipulate and control woman. What is more disgusting is that many woman defined their self worth based on what they can, do for and get from a man. Several woman are willing to take risks their hearts, bodies, and souls hoping to raise their socio-economic status. Most perform these risks to obtain security for their children’s future. They have learned and are teaching to use their sexuality to gain power. Vibe Magazine talked to four women in an article published in September 2001. The woman regularly had one-night stands or on-going sexual relationships with rappers. One of the women Vibe talked to named Nikki, a 30-year-old woman who has had many lovers in the hip-hop industry. Vibe stated, "…her lovers read like a Who’s Who of rap." And questioned her reason for partaking in multiple insignificant relationships with rappers? Her response was "I’ve got nothing to offer…No education, no good job, no nothing. So why would a man want me, other than sex? I felt I had to give, so I used myself.". This is the mentality that has conditioned our woman.
The solution to this problem is education! This has been said repeatedly but it is truly the key. The community first needs to become aware of the problem, and it cause not just the outcome. Woman’s rights are being violated; verbally through sexual lyrics, visually via television, magazines and the internet and in physical interactions such as events and shows. Girls are targeted Through a variety of media, from television and movies to song lyrics, as well as advertisements showing body-baring doll clothes for pre-school girls, and pre teens while posing in suggestive ways in magazines as well as the sexual antics of young celebrity role models. Researchers found these images may make girls think of and treat their own bodies as sexual objects. Ann Pellegrini, an associate professor at New York University who refers to this issue as the sexualization of children. Stating "Not that I would deny there is this aggressive marketing to children, but there is a deep moralization around it," she says. "I do think girls and women are still profoundly objectified when it comes to sex, but there may well be some things that look like objectification that are being experienced by girls and young women that feel empowering.". Most woman find gratification in being attractive and sexy. But teaching this behavior to our daughters is not cute nor acceptable. Realistically it is corrupting our young ladies and causing them calculate their self confidence according to their physical appearance. The younger a female begins having sex the less likely she is to graduate highs school and have higher rates of teen pregnancy, seventy percent of those woman end up on welfare. Clearly woman are the ones suffering and their children are reaping from this, thus the cycle continues.
Parents are a child first teacher it is time we lead by example. We need to practice actions that are safe and healthy. How are we doing this by allowing our children to engage in sexual activities. Entertainment portrays sex with passiveness but we need to inform our youth accurately. Sex is a form of compassion that is shared between two persons who share intimacy. Not a loose game used to manipulate someone’s feelings or a tool to gain status. It is to remain within the privacy of those individuals. The media has gone to far by allowing privacy to become entertainment. It is time to redirect our daughters to establish themselves and work effectively in becoming a woman. Education, art, sports activities, dancing and creative drama are all constructive things that can help redirect our mademoiselle’s.
