Oversexualised, or Over Reaction?

In my experience there is a lot within the media generally and social media specifically that promotes unrealistic and over-sexualised ideas of what it is to be a women. This puts pressure on some young girls and can undermine their self-esteem. This is because girls can take longer to mature emotionally than they do physically. Most older girls have had time to mature in both ways, and have learned how to resist pressure from the media to look a certain way. But most younger girls haven’t.

And there are so many images out there that they have to make sense of, not only in fashion and film, but also in music which has been sexualising females for a very long time, for example through the hip-hop ‘video vixens’ and lyrics that talk about females in vulgar and disrespectful ways.

 And some of the female artists don’t help either. Why? Because they know sex sells, and so to become a mainstream success a female artists might feel pressured to change their whole image. They begin to show more skin, talk more sexually in their songs, and before you know it their whole sound has changed as well.  Artists such as Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus, Fifth Harmony, and Demi Lovato have all changed their looks and music over the years rather than sticking to the artist they originally were. Their careers show that producing raunchy, explicit lyrics and videos gets the audience’s attention and brings the money rolling in.

While they claim they are in control, others accuse them of selling their bodies for money. Nicki Minaj’s stratospheric hit Anaconda used sexual innuendo to generate enormous profits. And yes it’s a funny tongue-in-cheek song, but is it appropriate for young impressionable girls to hear it, or to see what is basically its soft porn video on YouTube? Less successful but even more explicit examples of soft porn music videos are Rihanna's Pour it upand City Girls’ Twerk It, featuring Cardi B.

Even if most girls resist the lure of these exaggerated representations, some girls will not, and could well think that the only way to get attention in this world is by presenting themselves in a similarly oversexualised way. And that’s just the indirectporn you find in music videos. What about the real, straight porn that slips through the filters and lands on your Twitter or Snapchat feed? This kind of imagery used to be considered so sensitive it was out of reach and on a top shelf. But not any more, and why is that right?

But perhaps I am taking it all too seriously. After all sex is natural, and trying to attract the opposite sex is too, so the women in these videos are all empowered, and in a free world people should be free to consume whatever they want to consume. But it’s got more to do with a free market than a free world, and advertisers are free to try and help young girls cultivate their identities in a positive way if they want to - but they won't because it does not make money.

But isn't it unfair to make a young girl’s healthy emotional development the responsibility of advertisers and music video directors? Surely it’s up to the individual to take responsibility. So a responsible young girl might turn off the Nicki Minaj video for example, and decide to play sports instead, where images of the female body are surely treated less sexually. Well not on one cover of Sports Illustrated- that controversially featured Barbie on the front, who you could say is the epitomeof the over-sexualised young girl! So you see it’s not easy to escape the images, even if you want to.

The problem is that all these images are having a bad influence. And that sometimes goes for the influencers as well, particularly on Instagram. The platform has around 1 billion followers about half of whom are female, on which influencers can upload as many pictures as they please.

For an influencer to have influence they need to have enough followers for businesses to use them to promote their products. They can be makeup artists, hairdressers, photographers, YouTubers and even celebrities. One successful UK example is ‘Mya Mills’ who has over 276k followers on Instagram and models famous brands such as PrettyLittleThing. She’s got a great body, a pretty face, and thanks to all the free gear she gets looks perfect. But at the time of writing this she was only 18. That’s young enough for seventeen or sixteen or fifteen or even younger girls to be influenced by her. Only at 15 you should not try and look like Mya! As an expert quoted in the Daily Mail puts it, “ girls are growing up faster as they are exposed to porn and wear make earlier than previous generations.”

Anyway, these are some of the ideas that we had to think about when making our films for The Samosa. Some of us agreed that media was to blame for oversexualisation, and some of us did not. I guess you will also have different opinions as well, but what’s important is that you form an opinion, and if our films help you do that then great! I hope you enjoy them. 

Benedicty Sukama