Researchers want sex to stop selling

John Blaise
August 11, 2011
3 Comments

Ayre Head Brandy GraceSociologists at the University of Buffalo have come to the conclusion that over the last several decades, the portrayal of women in popular media has become increasingly sexualized, they also found that the same was not true for men.

Did they really need to conduct a study to figure this out?

The interesting part of this obvious study is that the researchers came to the conclusion that the findings may be cause for concern, the researchers say, because previous research has found sexualized images of women to have far-reaching negative consequences for both men and women.

Researcher Erin Hatton said in a University of Buffalo publication about the results, “Sexualized portrayals of women have been found to legitimize or exacerbate violence against women and girls, as well as sexual harassment and anti-women attitudes among men and boys,” Hatton says. “Such images also have been shown to increase rates of body dissatisfaction and/or eating disorders among men, women and girls; and they have even been shown to decrease sexual satisfaction among both men and women.”

“For these reasons,” says Hatton, “we find the frequency of sexualized images of women in popular media, combined with the extreme intensity of their sexualization, to be cause for concern.”

The researchers wrote a book entitled “The Sexualization of Men and Women on the Cover of Rolling Stone.” The book examines the covers of Rolling Stone magazine from 1967 to 2009 to measure changes in the sexualization of men and women in popular media over time and the study will be published in the September issue of the journal Sexuality & Culture.

Hatton uses the Rolling Stone as an example and describes how the Rolling Stone images of women are not depicting women as sexy musicians or actors but as women musicians and actors ready and available for sex; which Hatton believes is problematic. Hatton says in the University of Buffalo publication, “ it indicates a decisive narrowing of media representations of women. We don’t necessarily think it’s problematic for women to be portrayed as ‘sexy.’ But we do think it is problematic when nearly all images of women depict them not simply as ‘sexy women’ but as passive objects for someone else’s sexual pleasure.”

I think it’s safe to say that sexy has changed considerably since the 1960’s. Style has changed, fashion has changed, what was once racy has now become commonplace, sex has evolved plain and simple.

I’m certain a great deal of research has gone into this study and I envy the researchers that had to sift through the thousands of scantily clad females and sexy photo shoots to come up with these findings, but there’s a very simple reason for these results. Sex sells.

Sex sells and the bottom line is that women just look sexier than men do without clothes on. If women were as horny as men and thought about sex as much as men did the results would probably be different.

I’m not a sociologist, but I’ve never heard of anyone reporting decreased sexual satisfaction from looking at Katy Perry or Ayre Heads.

What do researchers suggest? That magazines like Maxim, FHM and the like just shut it down, put parkas on the girls and stop selling sex?

Get real.

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Tags: Article, Rolling Stones, Sex, sex study
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