Yashasvi Suroliyaa Student at Government Law College, Mumbai and a Contributing Author at Rightantra What do hit television shows like Riverdale, Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina among others have in common? Apart from being highly cringe-y and repetitive, it is that they all have a shared goal to overtly sexualise their teenage protagonists. Sexualisation of young teenagers is incredibly embedded and normalised in popular media today. Creators are partly to blame for this, as they hire adult age actors to play 16-year-olds and then promptly forget that the characters are meant to be children. Of course, modern media is less conservative and pushes for sex-positivity as the fact remains that is a part of life. However, this becomes problematic when we push ideologies and themes that are so heavy towards target audiences which are largely young. It pushes not for the realistic picture (which perhaps something like Netflix’s Sex Education manages to do) but an idealised version which strays further from the normalcy of it.
This ideology doesn’t only sexualise young girls but also contributes to the hyper-masculinisation of males. The sexual objectification of underage, non-consenting characters by creators who are definitely not high-schoolers, is not only paedophilic but also harmful to the mental health of the young viewers. It can cause body image concerns and affect the development of maturity towards relationships and sexuality. It can be argued that it is alright to portray young women who are confident and in touch with their sexuality as long as the characters are multifaceted as it propagates that young women should not be ashamed of being sexual humans, which is absolutely true. However, the message comes across more inappropriate than empowering, when 16-year-old Betty strips in a bar full of middle-aged men and 16-year-old Aria sleeps with her school professor. These shows not only objectify women but also men, having 16-year-old boys be portrayed as toned, muscular and sexually proficient, a standard for too unrealistic and slightly weird. When the audience in question is young, it is the creator’s responsibility to understand that this exposure of hyper sexualisation before the individual has developed the cognitive and emotional capability to understand what is occurring can be impactful with respect to internal beliefs on appearance, sexuality, identity and mindset.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
Archives
December 2021
|