Page 319 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

308 HARRIS AND SCOTT

Steele, & Walsh-Childers, 2002; Dorr & Kunkel, 1990; Wartella, Heintz,
Aidman, & Mazzarella, 1990). Relative to other sources, media are becom-
ing increasingly important (Check, 1995; Greenberg, Brown, & Buerkel-
Rothfuss, 1993; Gunter, 2001). The effects of this heavy consumption of sex-
ually oriented media is the topic of this chapter. We begin by examining
the nature of sex in the media, focusing on content analysis studies. The
rest of the chapter presents a review of the research on how consuming
sexually explicit media impacts sexual arousal, attitudes, and behavior.

THE NATURE OF SEX IN THE MEDIA

Taxonomy of Sexual Content

When people speak of sexually oriented media, they can be referring to a
wide variety of sources. Some classes of materials in magazines, videos,
films, and Internet Web sites have labels like erotic, pornographic, X-rated,
or sexually explicit. Pornography is big business; about 10,000 porno-
graphic videos were released in 1999 as part of what is an estimated $56
billion industry worldwide (Morais, 1999).
Most scholars distinguish between violent sexual material, which por-
trays rape, bondage, torture, sadomasochism, hitting, spanking, hair
pulling, and genital mutilation, and nonviolent sexual material. Further
classifying the nonviolent sexual material is more difficult. Some nonvio-
lent sexual material is entirely mutually consenting and affectionate
(sometimes called erotica), depicting vaginal or oral intercourse in a loving
or at least noncoercive fashion. On the other hand, some of it is sexually
dehumanizing, depicting degradation, domination, subordination, or humilia-
tion. This nonviolent, but dehumanizing, material typically presents the
woman with no human qualities other than body parts and sexual
appetite. She often is verbally abused and degraded, but appears hysteri-
cally receptive and responsive to men’s sexual demands. Also, the man
appears in the sexually dominant position, and the woman is far more
likely than the man to be more exposed or nude.
Sex in media is not limited to explicit portrayals of intercourse or
nudity but rather may include any representation that portrays or implies
sexual behavior, interest, or motivation. Sex also occurs in many other
places besides these explicitly sexual materials. Sex is rampant in adver-
tising, particularly for products like perfume, cologne, and aftershave but
also for tires, automobiles, and kitchen sinks. For example, one automo-
bile ad on network television featured two women discussing whether a
man’s choice of a car was related to the size of his penis (“I wonder what
he’s got under the hood”) (Leo, in Strasburger, 1995).