In Meyers’ article, she talks about the hyper-sexualization of women with its attendant mainstreaming of soft-core pornography within popular culture and the globalization of these images. The dissemination of these overtly sexual images within popular culture owes much to the proliferation and global reach of hard-core pornography – the “pornogrification” of society and the rise of “raunch culture” made more accessible alongside the rise of the Internet and new interactive media technologies. She argues that the rise of pornographic “raunch culture” reinscribes the traditional power relationships between men and women, with women reduced to viewing themselves and other women as primarily sexual objects for the gratification of men. Pornography is detrimental to other aspects of social life as well because even exposure to soft pornography can affect viewer’s perceptions about sexuality and violence against women since it leads to a sexual callousness about violence against women in addition to a loss of respect for the female sexual anatomy and the “disinhibition of men’s expression of aggression towards women”. The act of consuming pornographic images is, according to her, “more than a private pleasure”, instead, domination and submission are eroticized, sometimes in explicit representations of rap and violence against women, and such values get mediated and normalized into society.


This phenomenon that Meyers’ described in her article can be seen all around us in mainstream popular culture, one of which is the in(famous) Calvin Klein advertisements. One implication of the hyper-sexualization of women would be that young girls will come to see themselves and view their primary worth and life goals in terms of their sexuality. In fact, young Disney stars are also featured in magazines posing in risqué and suggestive poses as seen in the images below:






There is, also, the marketing component to the sexualization of children as discussed in Dr. Thompson’s lecture. Victoria’s Secret “Pink” line of underwear, Bratz Babyz dolls with their skimpy clothes and heavily made up faces, marketing slogan that teachers girls to “know how to flaunt it” are targeted at girls at young and younger age, with the promise of enhanced sexiness, leading and psychologically pressuring children to age prematurely, seeing themselves as sexual beings at a younger and younger age, all fueled by capitalism.