Modern life is full of visual media. Magazines, newspapers, book covers, CD and DVD packaging, cereal boxes, and food products—even medicines are adorned with pictures of people, scenes, or products. Advertisements peer at us from billboards, buses, matchbook covers, and anywhere else that advertisers can buy space. Television, movies, computers, and other moving visual images surround us almost everywhere we go, and we will only depend upon them more as information technology continues to develop. We live in a visual culture whose images we simply cannot escape.
Many of these images are subtly or explicitly sexual. Barely clothed females and shirtless, athletic males are so common in ads that we scarcely notice them anymore. The majority of movies today, even some of those directed at children, have sexual scenes that would not even have been permitted in movie theaters 50 years ago. The humor in television situation comedies has become more and more sexual, and nudity has begun to appear on prime-time network television shows. American media are the most sexually suggestive in the Western hemisphere (Kunkel et al., 2005).
Sex is all over television today—from The O. C. to The Real World. Shows use sex to lure viewers in. The basis of “dating” reality shows, such as The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, is sex. Talk show hosts such as Jerry Springer and Maury Povich seek out unconventional guests, many of whom have sexual issues (common show themes include topics such as Don’t Deny It, You’re Sleeping Around or I Had Sex with Two Sisters, Am I Their Babies’ Daddy?). Other shows, like Real Sex, Taxicab Confessions, and even Sex in the City reruns, don’t beat around the bush—they talk about graphic sexual issues. A newer genre of reality shows such as The Swan, Extreme Makeover, or Dr. 90210 show us that we can achieve physical perfection through plastic surgery. What messages do these types of shows send? What do they teach us about sexuality?