Today anyone who watches television goes to the
movies, picks up a magazine or a newspaper knows that sex is prominent across
all media forms. Whatever messages they convey whether positive or negative
ideas are viewed by all and raise a reasonable question as to what influence
will it have on its viewer (Edin Gruber, Joel Grube).
However, the sexual content depicted through the
media can affect any group but particularly the adolescent as they are the most
vulnerable of all the groups. This has lead to an increasing concern about the
younger audience’s exposure to sexual content through the print and electronic
media having an adverse effect on their sexual attitudes, behaviour and
beliefs. This group may be more at risk because of cognitive skills that allow them to critically analyze messages from the media
and to make decisions based on possible future outcomes are not fully developed
(Kaiser Family Foundation).
Ward’s analysis (1995) concludes that the
prime time shows viewed by adolescents were containing more of sex through shows
like Friends, How I Met Your Mother, Simpsons.
This is not only limited to soap operas.
The talkies have a major hand in it to. Every movie these days has intimidating
scenes. It is not something new as even the early 50’s had them. But these
scenes were depicted beautifully just by two roses mingling with each other on
the screen. However this isn’t the case today Elongated bed scenes with much close
ups are shown.
It
is clearly visible that media uses women as a sexist symbol to convey the
sexual themes and ideas. Like in the ad of Slice juice, Katrina Kaif is completely
portrayed at the verge of arousal in a juice ad fondling the mango with the ad
is named as ‘Amasutra.’ However, no nudity or vulgar sexual behaviour was
depicted in the ad (Meraj Ahmed Mubarki). But many a times, women are shown as shoddy and vulgar. Like the
old Amul Macho ad, where a newly married women in a village gets aroused while
washing her man’s inner garments at a river side. Second example condom ads
where a woman is shown in bed lying and fantasying about her man in a vulgar
way. All the Axe deo ads where the guy is followed by a mob of hot girls seductively
are absurd.
Also in many of the MTV videos it is the
female who wearing revealing clothes with a combination of aggression and
sexual imaginary. Today’s rap music is crystal clear about both sex and
violence. Examples: Eniemen, Enrique, Rihana, Lady Gaga,etc.
The print media equally participates in
this rat race. Many magazines and news papers have columns dedicated to sex. There,
youngsters discuss their sex life and get advice from sexpert. Many female
magazines address a guy as ‘boy toys.’ This has resulted into doubling the
number of stories with sexual content and themes. Also every newspaper contains
a bikini photo of an actress or model these days. Bombay Times horoscope
section had a 2 piece bikini photo of Angelina Jollie on her birthday.
The depiction of women in such a way is
an insult to womanhood but we are used to enjoy them with
little concern about the female respect and dignity, which used to be the
salient feature of our ancient tradition.
Recent research studies say that sexual content is
associated with sexual behaviour patterns (Manganello, Franzini, and Jordan,
2008), and since Indian TV commercials or movies are repeated more often, it is
assumed that the adult and sexual content reaches a younger audience whose idea
of sexuality may be whollu derived from the media.
