The sexual content of media aimed at pre- and early adolescents (including magazines, movies, TV shows, and websites) has increased dramatically in recent years. Psychologists have expressed concern that exposure to such material leads to “internalized sexualization.” A recent APA Task Force (2007) called on researchers to study sexualization among pre- and early adolescent girls to understand its effect on development. In this master’s thesis, I developed the first known measure of internalized sexualization. The scale was demonstrated to be internally reliable and valid. The scale was also used to examine the relation between internalized sexualization and academic achievement. A strong negative relation was found between the two constructs; girls with higher levels of internalized sexualization have poorer academic achievement than girls with lower levels of internalized sexualization. The implications of the findings are discussed and future directions for research are suggested. / text

The sexual content of media aimed at pre- and early adolescents (including magazines, movies, TV shows, and websites) has increased dramatically in recent years (Durham, 2008; Levin & Kilbourne, 2008; Olfman, 2009; Oppliger, 2008; Orenstein, 2011; Sarracino & Scott, 2008). Psychologists have expressed concern that exposure to such material leads to “internalized sexualization.” A recent APA Task Force (2007) called on researchers to study sexualization among pre- and early adolescent girls to understand its impact on development. For my dissertation, I sought to fulfill this mandate by completing a longitudinal study of internalized sexualization and its consequences. Ninety-nine girls and 94 boys at a private middle school were recruited for the study. They completed measures twice a year for a total of four waves of data. At each time point, girls completed measures of: (1) internalized sexualization, (2) body surveillance, (3) body shame, (4) body satisfaction, (5) general perceived self-competence, (6) physical perceived self-competence, (7) social perceived self-competence, (8) cognitive perceived self-competence, and (9) sociometric popularity. Girls’ pubertal status and grade point average (GPA) were also obtained. Boys completed the measure of sociometric popularity. Cross-sectional analyses suggested that internalized sexualization among girls increased as a function of age; however, linear growth curve modeling did not suggest intra-individual growth in internalized sexualization. Across time points, higher levels of internalized sexualization were associated with higher levels of body surveillance, body shame, and pubertal development, and lower levels of body satisfaction, general perceived self-competence, and cognitive perceived self-competence. Structural equation models suggested that increases in pubertal status temporally preceded increases in internalized sexualization, and increases in internalized sexualization temporally preceded decreases in general perceived self-competence, cognitive perceived self-competence, and GPA. Implications for intervention and social policy are discussed. / text

Sexualization can affect individuals of all ages, colors, sexualities, and genders. Sexualization may affect women and girls more commonly and intensely, however. Sexualization occurs when one's value is placed solely on their appearance. Sexualization has been observed to happen through two main sources: the media and interpersonal relationships. Consequently, a third source may arise when girls internalize the sexualization. It has been demonstrated that sexualization can have negative and positive consequences for adolescent girls. Though sexualization may have positive consequences, such as sexual agency, the negative consequences seem to outweigh them. Despite the amount of attention this topic has received, there seems to be a lack of literature exploring ways to prevent or decrease sexualization among girls. However, research has shown that awareness-increasing interventions have been effective in changing health-related behaviors. The present study searched for common themes among previous awareness-increasing interventions. The results indicated 3 common themes: education, training, and monitoring. It is possible, then, that an intervention designed to increase awareness of sexualization, train the targets skills necessary for challenging sexualizing messages, and monitoring their progress could reduce sexualization. Finding a way to decrease sexualization aimed at adolescent girls could make more girls realize that their worth does not just lie within their appearance and not allow people to treat them as such.

Thesis advisor: Suzanne Conway / This paper looks at the ways in which pornography influences American society. It explores the rise of porn culture with an emphasis on Internet porn and the impact it has had on the distribution and availability of pornography. As a result, advertising companies and other producers of mainstream media have looked to the porn industry for ways to increase their profit margins. As sexual imagery has become a standard aspect of everyday life, it has impacted younger generations in terms of clothing and how they develop relationships. The popularity of social media applications has also helped to perpetuate the pornification of mainstream culture by focusing on physical appearance. The college hookup culture illustrates the lack of satisfaction that can result from the strictly sexual relationships highlighted in pornography. Acknowledging the effects of pornography can help to reduce the many problems that result from a hyper-sexualized society. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

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This study is aimed at exploring a better understanding of gender-biased context in digital games. Based upon a female analysis of Tomb Raider series, this study attempts to compare the appearance and figure of female characters in video games by researching the representative game. A focus group with a group of women from different countries has been used to better understand how women feel and react to female images in the video game Tomb Raider and figure out how female protagonist Lara Croft changed in the video game. The thesis attempts to offer a better understanding of biased context in video games and to compare differences in dressed figures of female characters through the Tomb Raider series. From this, the sexualization of female figures and their images of power has positively changed during last two decades. Ultimately, the connotation of this thesis is to discuss the possibilities of negative effects on audiences in digital games, typically for the young generation.

While it's clear that the objectification of women is a prominent feature of Western society, it is far less clear what it actually means to be objectified. Philosophers, feminist scholars and psychologist agree that objectification involves a denial of humanity, however, the nature of this dehumanization has yet to be explained. Although existing research provides evidence that objectified women are associated both with objects and animals, no research has examined the conditions under which women are likely to be dehumanized by one form or another. Here, I propose that animalization, characterized by an association with animals, occurs when a woman is portrayed in a sexualized manner. In contrast, objectification, characterized by an association with objects, occurs when a woman is portrayed with a focus on her appearance. Two studies were designed to test this hypothesis. Study 1 found that when participants were primed with an image of a sexualized woman, they were more likely to animalistically dehumanize her (which is consistent with likening to animals). Conversely, when participants were primed with an image of a "beautified" woman, they were more likely to mechanistically dehumanize her (which is consistent with likening to objects). Study 2 attempted to make this link more directly by measuring implicit associations between women, objects, and animals as a function of the image prime, but failed to find the hypothesized result. This research provides the first empirical evidence that different portrayals of women (either sexualized or with a focus on appearance) implicate different forms of dehumanization.

The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between music and the sexualization of women. The study focused on 450 participants, both male and female, belonging to various ethnic backgrounds, ages 18 and up. It was hypothesized that a participant’s exposure to sexually suggestive music would impact their views of women. Specifically, exposure to sexual explicit or suggestive music would relate to more sexist views towards women. Results indicated that there were relationships between music and the sexualization of women. The breakdown of each genre of music and the different measures proved to be surprising, as some genres had a very strong correlation, while others had none at all. Overall, the results supported the idea that media, specifically music, does certainly have an impact on listeners and viewers. This supports most previous research, and disproves the very few studies that suggest otherwise.

This study explored how system-justification theory may explain the mixed psychological outcomes of women's self-sexualization. Specifically, it was hypothesized that gender-specific system justification would mediate the relationships between women's intentions regarding and enjoyment of self-sexualization and (a) endorsement of benevolent sexist attitudes; (b) environmental mastery; (c) general positive affect; and (d) general negative affect. Participants were 190 heterosexual-identified women over the age of 18, surveyed through college courses, social media, and email advertisement. Measures included the Sexualizing Behavior Scale (SBS; Nowatzki & Morry, 2009), the Enjoyment of Sexualization Scale (ESS; Liss, Erchull, & Ramsey, 2011), a gender-specific system justification scale (as modified and used by Jost and Kay, 2005), the Benevolent Sexism subscale of the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick & Fiske, 1996), the Environmental Mastery subscale from the Psychological Well-being Inventory (PWBI; Ryff, 1989), and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule - Expanded Form (PANAS-X; Watson & Clark, 1999). Self-esteem was also examined as an exploratory criterion variable, using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Inventory (RSE; Rosenberg, 1965). Data were analyzed through path analysis, and results indicated a number of significant direct paths between variables; however, none of the indirect paths was significant, indicating lack of support for the general hypothesis that gender-specific system justification would mediate the links between self-sexualizing and the criterion variables of interest. Implications of this study include illuminating the role of societal context in shaping the function of marginalized individuals' behaviors, as well as advancing feminist scholarship by bridging the opposing views regarding women's self-sexualizing behaviors.

Advertising has a powerful role in today’s society, especially since we are constantly surrounded by it. Advertisement does not only encourage people to make decisions about their purchases but has a big impact on the culture (Lin & Yeh, 2009; Lindner, 2004). Hence, it is a big factor of creating norms and ideas of what is feminine and masculine; thus affecting the perception on gender within societies. Unfortunate is however that to be able to cut through the enormous advertising clutter that people are exposed to daily, advertisers tend to use sexual content and portrayals as tactic, leading to an obscure ideal (Dahl, Segupta & Vohs, 2009; Cortese, 2008; Connell & Pearse, 2015; Butler & Almqvist, 2007). This quantitative and qualitative study examines from a Gender and Feminist theory perspective how women are portrayed sexually and stereotypically in advertisements within Mexican fashion magazines. The advertisements found within the seven biggest fashion magazines in Mexico are being studied both through a quantitative content analyse and qualitative text analyse using a semiotic approach. The result of the study shows that the content of advertisements in Mexican magazines frequently portray females in a sexualised and stereotypical way. Within our qualitative result six different stereotypes could be found. Furthermore, our quantitative result shows that the most commonly portrayed female within the advertisements are White. Henceforth, our result shows that a female ideal where the most crucial attributes are: to be sexy, beautiful, obtain an attractive appearance and to be White.