WSU researchers Stacey J.T. Hust, left, and Kathleen Boyce Rodgers
PULLMAN, Wash. – If you’ve ever blushed while watching “Glee” on TV with your adolescent daughter, you’d probably blanch over what she’s been watching on YouTube or downloading from iTunes.
While the G-rated “Baby” by Justin Bieber is the most watched music video ever, the next most popular video is the explicitly sexual “On the Floor” by Jennifer Lopez, followed by Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” which takes things to a new level of weirdness. Lady Gaga says it’s all about “female toughness” but the voyeurism and crotch grabs look both kinky and violent.
The video has been viewed more than 440 million times on YouTube.
Good-bye MTV, hello personal computers – including laptops and hand-held devices, which means many parents have no idea about the music videos their kids are watching.
And that could be a problem, or at least a concern, said Kathleen Boyce Rodgers, an associate professor of human development at Washington State University.
Making unhealthy behavior seem normal
A new study by Rodgers, Thomas Power, professor and chair of the WSU Department of Human Development, and Stacey J.T. Hust, associate professor in the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at WSU, suggests that young women who watch music videos that contain violent or sexually stereotyped images – videos where women are objectified – could be at risk for entering into coercive, demeaning or otherwise unhealthy relationships.
Not only do the videos model unhealthy behavior, but watching them repeatedly, as many teens do, has the potential to normalize the behavior.
“We want our girls to develop healthy sexuality,” Rodgers said, but many young girls are spending a significant amount of time watching music videos that are purposely provocative. Teens watch or listen to music 14-21 hours each week, nearly all of it outside of their parents’ purview, Rodgers said, and very little is known about how adolescents and teens make sense of what they see.
Teen responses uncritical, positive
Using both focus group discussions and surveys to query middle school and high school girls, Rodgers and her colleagues discovered that girls who watch music videos seem to view the models or celebrities as role models and accept the worldview presented in the video uncritically – often drawing positive associations from behaviors their parents might view as a negative.
The message in many of the videos, Hust said, is that women are there to be looked at by men. Women are valued for their looks and their hyper-sexuality, but are not presented as fully developed human beings.
“Our study indicates the girls (who watch the videos) are getting the message,” Hust said.
In one focus group discussion, an older teen referred to scantily dressed women in one music video and said, “Yeah, if my body was a little more slender and stuff, I would def, like, I would definitely wear that stuff.”
According to Rodgers, younger participants also expressed admiration for the models and said they would dress similarly if they had the “right bodies,” but acknowledged that their parents might not like it. As one middle school participant said, “My mom says, if I wear those clothes, even if I was, like, the right size for the clothes and stuff, she would never speak to me for, like, ever because, like, she doesn’t want me wearing those clothes.”
Reconciling media and reality
Critics have long noted the disconnect between the way women are presented in the media and real life. Hust said this particular study adds the voices of young women to the research literature that explores the developmental effects of media images that objectify women.
The study also adds validity to the main contention in “Miss Representation,” Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s 2011 documentary that explores how mainstream media contributes to the underrepresentation of women in leadership roles. The film juxtaposes young girls talking about their own hopes and fears, particularly those related to body image, self-confidence and their future aspirations, with images of women as found in U.S. media.
According to Hust, the young women in the WSU study expressed similar confusion and ambiguity.
“The young individuals who are viewing these videos are having trouble reconciling how the girls (on the screen) are being treated with how they want to be treated themselves,” she said.
Videos replace personal memories
According to Rodgers, young people are socialized in myriad ways. Certainly their parents or other significant adults and peers have a huge influence, she said, but music is important. The music people listen to becomes part of their self-identity and often forms a soundtrack for their life story.
Just hearing the opening strains of James Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend” might transport you back to your first middle school dance, or perhaps “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynrd will forever be the anthem of your senior year of high school.
When Boomers think back to the music they enjoyed as young teens, the images that come to mind are typically from their own lives. For young people today, Hust said, the images that come to mind are likely from videos.
Parents’ misperceptions
Because parents don’t spend time looking at music videos, they tend to think their children don’t either, Hust said. Or, if they do, they assume the music videos their children find are benign. The WSU research suggests that’s not the case.
“There’s a misperception that kids aren’t seeing sexually provocative videos,” Hust said, “but I think they are.”
Earlier research: Media and self worth
Earlier research at WSU suggests that even relatively benign music videos may be a cause for concern.
In a 2009 project initiated by Rodgers’ former graduate student, Michelle Kistler, researchers surveyed more than 200 eighth grade students, about half boys and half girls, to determine how much time they spent listening to music, watching music videos or reading about music celebrities in magazines. The students were then queried about three aspects of their self-concept: their physical attractiveness, their romantic appeal and their global self worth.
The more time students spent consuming music media, or the more connected they felt to the music and the musician, the lower they rated their own attractiveness or global self worth. That held true for both boys and girls, Rodgers said, but girls consumed music media at higher rates and also judged their physical appearance more harshly.
Sex obscures other messages
The more recent study originally was designed to better understand how young people react to images of drug, alcohol or tobacco use in music videos. As part of the study, focus group participants were shown videos that included either explicit or implied substance use.
“We expected they’d talk about the substance use,” Rodgers said. But they didn’t: “The images of sexuality were so prevalent they couldn’t even see the other messages.”