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Hyper-Sexualization In Social Media Essay

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When talking about our world’s very serious issue of hyper-sexualization of children and teens we cannot discuss all of the main weapons in the arsenal of marketers in today’s contemporary consumer market without mentioning advertisements and commercials as two of the most influential modes for inducing a hyper-sexualized environment in which adolescences mature at an accelerated rate. Hyper-sexualization is defined as the accentuation of sexuality throughout adolescence. It’s very clear that corporate marketing using selective targeting and the influence of social media exposure has created somewhat of a cage used by advertisers to expose their young consumers to material that often times forces them to think in a perspective that is several …show more content…

As talked about in the second paragraph in the Sexualized Innocence article by Machia and Lamb, advertisements of girls are portraying them like sexy older women by showing more of their skin, dressing them with adult hairstyles and clothes with the addition of makeup, serious facial expressions, and suggestive body postures and gestures. Companies such as Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch have commercials featuring exposed teen bodies, such as the one we viewed in class that make the young audiences of magazines like teenVogue and Seventeen who are just becoming teens think they have to look more like 18-year-olds and like thats the normal or cool thing to do. As a result of kids doing anything they can to conform to unrealistic standards their self-esteems are being greatly affected as well as their outlooks on life turning very materialistic. In the third paragraph of the Sexy Dolls article it talks about how self-sexualization involves reducing one’s physical attractiveness ideals to sexy and seeing things only for their ascetics values rather than intrinsic

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