In 2011, the average number of televisions per household in the United States was 2.5 with 31% of Americans owning four or more televisions. Research shows that the average American watches over 4 hours of television each day. Leading television networks reach approximately 60% of television viewers in the United States per week on average. A study conducted in, 2005 by the Kaiser Family Foundation determined that eight to eighteen-year-olds spend on average six and a half hours a day with media in general. American teenagers alone spend 11.2 hours watching television a week according to another market research study conducted by Teen Research Unlimited. They also found that these teens listen to FM radio 10.1 hours per week, spend 3.1 hours playing video games per week, and surf online for a total of 16.7 hours per week. MTV is the favored television channel to watch among both boys and girls in America, averaging over six hours a week viewing it. Research also shows that on any day a teenager is exposed to over 200 cable television networks, 5,500 magazines, 10,500 radio stations, over 30 million websites, and over 122,000 recently published books. Multiple forms of media can be seen throughout society in almost every facet.
Prime-time television One in four teenagers report that television is their most frequented and useful source of sexual information. The prime time content of television that is most commonly viewed by teenagers is analyzed for their sexual messages. Studies have shown that sexual references are made anywhere from 8 to 10 times during 1 hour of prime time television. Teenagers between the ages of 13 and 15 claim that media entertainment is the number one source of information about sexuality. According to the American Psychological Association, they estimate that teenagers are exposed to 14,000 sexual references per year on television (Media Influence on Youth, 2001). In a study conducted on prime time television in 1971, it was found that 18.3% of the featured characters were women where the rest were men. A different study conducted in 1974 found that 70% of the characters who gave demands or assumed a serious role in prime time television were men, leaving only 30% as women. Today, awards shows such as the Fox Teen Choice Awards present categories titled "choice hottie female" and "choice hottie male". In the music category, there is an award that goes to the best "hook up song". This is encouraging teens to "hook up" with each other and view other males and females as a "hottie". The Super Bowl, for example, is one of the most viewed prime time shows to ever be broadcast. Super Bowl 2012 alone tuned in 111.3 million viewers setting the U.S. television ratings record for the third year in a row. With advertisements fighting to stand out, companies such as GoDaddy (featuring the race car sensation Danica Patrick and trainer Jillian Michaels) and Kia Motors (featuring supermodel Adriana Lima) resorted to sex and the sexualization of their actresses.
Young girls are starting to hit puberty earlier than most young girls in the past. These young girls are not ready to deal with the issues of sexuality. Jane Brown, a journalism professor at the University of North Carolina, claims that "Twelve to fourteen year old girls who start puberty earlier are more interested in sexual content in the media." Her studies have shown that adolescents who watched a lot of sexual content in the media are more than twice as likely as others to have sex by the time they reached the age of sixteen.Luscombie, Kingsbury, Salemme, Sharples, 2008
Magazine portrayals and beauty myth: "what boys like" The Beauty Myth, a term coined by author Naomi Wolf, is used to describe the theory that beauty itself is a socially constructed value. Wolf discusses how unattainable standards of beauty are used against women when they are unable to conform and achieve these ideal standards. Psychologist Carol Gilligan believes that love depends on being in a relationship (meaning being in sync with another person): connected by a bond of equality and mutuality. "Both love and democracy depend on voice," she believes. Seventeen Magazine's November 2006 issue featured an article describing how a boy would be most likely to stay with a girl who would "rub on his sunscreen", "plan stuff", and "support him". Cosmopolitan magazine in past issues feature articles with titles like "The Sex Position He Craves" and "His Secret Pleasure Zone". In Cosmopolitan's August 2011 issue includes on the front cover "Guys Rate 50 Sex Moves: Thousands of Men Rank the Hot and Not-So-Hot Things You Can Do to Their Naked Bodies" as well as "The Sexy Confidence Men Can't Resist". There is plenty that tells girls what guys like, but barely anything that says what women and girls should make clear that they deserve. There are always articles like "The Sex Positions HE Craves" or "HIS Secret Pleasure Zone" but rarely the other way around. Positive aspects about magazines such as Seventeen: they always include a health section labeled "Sex Ed" with accurate facts.
"Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object- and most particularly, an object of vision: a sight." This idea can be summed together by what is called the male gaze.
Health concerns with females and media When a survey was conducted to teenage girls, they claimed that the media was the primary source of information about health issues. A study was conducted on mass media magazines and it was found that women's magazines had 10.5 times more advertisements and articles that promote weight loss than men's magazines (National Association of Social Workers, 2001). After an analysis of 21 popular young women's magazine covers, it was shown that 78 percent represented a message about bodily appearance. What's shocking is that none of men's magazines contained those types of messages (Collins, 2002). Female fashion models are advertised everywhere, and it is found that female fashion models weigh twenty three percent less than the average female. According to the American Association of University Women in 1991, most teenage girls thought that their appearance is a major part of self-esteem. Not surprisingly, more girls than boys search the internet for health, fitness, and dieting information (National Association of Social Workers, 2001). Girls between the ages of 15 and 18 who said they used weight control pills in the last year, 73 percent of them were readers of health and fitness magazines. A big thanks to advertisements; teenage girls and young women spend over $4 billion each year on cosmetics (Collins, 2002). Excessive social media use is said to be associated with multiple psychological problems such as anxiety, depression and loneliness. Health related issue that have known to effect teens are depression with signs and symptoms of low self esteem due to the amount of time they are spending on social media and the pressure of keeping an image to impress other peers. Teens have often feel emotionally invested in their social media accounts, an anxiety inducing pressure that they must respond quickly and have perfect picture and captions posted (Gordon, S. 2018). Throughout different social media platforms, young women were stressed about being "visible" by exposing their faces or bodies or emotional distress and mental health. They created a fear of how they were viewed towards others and how viewers would see them. Comments that related to appearance, even if positive, were seen as or even more likely to create higher feelings of self-objectification as much as negative appearance-related comments. Self-objectification in girls at an early age was suggested to contribute to depression, sexual dysfunction, and eating disorders. Mental health outcomes that have occurred in a high rate amongst young girls and women.
Female portrayals in the media Writers and researchers such as M. Gigi Durham feel that the sexuality of females, not only in the United States but throughout the world, is extremely "exploitative, abusive, and harmful." Just from child trafficking and prostitution alone, two million children (with the majority being girls) are estimated to fall victim to Sexual abuse. Facts like this one are taken into account when thinking about the certain effect groups such as the Spice Girls have had on younger audiences. Children, mostly girls, in elementary school consist of the Spice Girls' bulk audience. The Spice Girls are most often seen wearing very high heels and exceedingly short skirts (with the exception of Sporty Spice). While some may see this as a way to show young girls a means of healthy expression, others may see this as detrimental to body image. Other more recent celebrities that fit right into this kind of image display include the Pussycat Dolls, Paris Hilton, or Kim Kardashian. The coauthor of the book Manifesta, Jennifer Baumgardner, believes that when young girls wear stiletto heals and belt out to the Spice Girls songs they are actually engaging in a "spirit of 'fierce, fun independence." There are also others who refer to the girls who engage in this sort of behavior as "prosti-tots" and "kinderwhores". There are numerous studies that have been conducted that suggest that the higher amount of mainstream media girls buy into, the higher level of importance they place on being beautiful, sexy, and desirable. To go right along with this, other studies have shown that teenage girls and college girls who "hold conventional beliefs about femininity- especially those that emphasize beauty and pleasing behavior- are less ambitious and more likely to be depressed than their peers." These girls are also less likely to enjoy sexual intercourse or use condoms. A study was done where a group of female college students were exposed to a series of television commercials. The group of women were considered to be "can-do girls" enrolled in advanced math and science classes. Out of six ads, four of the ads contained neutral content like cell phones or animals. The remaining two ads contained stereotypes: a female boasting about her new acne medication and another salivating over brownie mix. The group that was exposed to the stereotyped ads actually expressed far less interest in careers related to math and science compared to the group that only saw the neutral ads. In another study, two groups of both boys and girls were asked to either try on a bathing suit or try on a sweater before taking a math test. The group of students that tried on the bathing suit prior to taking the exam showed poorer results on the test than did the group that tried on sweaters. However, the male students included in the study showed no disparity.
Marketing these portrayals