“Like a virgin… touched for the very first time”—Madonna, 1984 “I knew a girl named Nickie, I guess you could say she was a sex fiend.
Met her in a hotel lobby masturbating to a magazine”—Prince, 1984 “Let’s talk about sex baby, let’s talk about you and me”—Salt-N-Pepa,
1990
“I can feel your body, pressed against my body, wrap yourself around me, love to feel your throbbin’”—Janet Jackson, 1993 “Flex… it’s time to have sex”—Mad Cobra, 1993
Adolescence is a time of passage characterized by change in every arena, biological, psychological, social, and sexual (Dougherty, 1993; Zas low & Takanishi, 1993). Parents and educators across the nation debate how to assist adolescent adjustment, which today is jeopardized by demands leading to risks of homicide, suicide, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), early unwed parenthood, school dropout, infection with the human im munodeficiency virus (HIV) that can lead to acquired immuno deficiency syndrome (AIDS), and substance abuse (Bearinger & Blum, 1987). Prevention advocates indicate that there are strategies for helping adolescents to manage their risks (Robinson, Ruch-Ross, & Watkins Ferrell, 1993; e. g., through the accessibility of condoms and sexual edu cation). Many parents fear exposing their children prematurely to graphic information about sex. In the MTV-music video generation adolescents not only have been exposed to the sounds and graphic lyrics about sexu ality, but they also have visual images. Children no longer need to fantasize about how sexual behaviors and sexuality look. They can simply turn on their television and see with their own eyes the messages of sex. How young women and men interpret these messages is not clear. For adolescent girls who are incorporating these vivid images into the rapidly changing social milieu that includes their maturing bodies, we can only hypothesize that their confusion is magnified.
Critics of a number of popular music groups denounce the content of a number of current songs as both racist and sexist. They further insist that the words and video images promote violence against women. Although some content analyses support these contentions (Sommers-Flanagan, Sommers-Flanagan, &. Davis, 1993), others are less judgmental (Tapper, Thorson, & Black, 1994; Zillman, Aust, Hoffman et al., 1995). Clearly, there are a variety of representations and images. The impact of music videos, particularly rap, was found to produce a negative view of African American women in one study (Gan, Zillmann, & Mitrook, 1997). Rap music, however, not only presents sexual messages; it also reflects the sexual world in which today’s youths live. These messages are juxtaposed with those derived from other sources, such as parents, school, church, and the highly sexualized environment presented in many other media forums from newspapers to movies.
Although adolescents’ sexual decisions reflect their individual psy chological readiness, personal values, moral reasoning, fear of negative con sequences, and involvement in romantic attachments (Masters, Johnson, & Kolodny, 1986), researchers note that the peer group provides a major source for understanding sexual roles among adolescents. Certain behaviors and conduct will vary along culture and class lines. Thus, what may be acceptable among middle-class youth may be derided in a working-class neighborhood, and vice versa. Similarly, practices common among White American adolescents may be unthinkable among Asian Americans or La tinos. In spite of these status and ethnic differences, we can identify cross cutting concerns for adolescent females. Among the issues that appear to crosscut ethnic boundaries in their importance to female sexuality are these: the issue of virginity, social messages and expectations, and the re lationship with one’s mother.