“What else could have been said?” I wondered, I was left with a sense of content, after reading Joyce Garity’s essay “Is sex all that matters?” Able to identify with her in most of her views of the world we live in today, I felt some of the weight lift off my shoulders; relieved that he is not the only human in this world who sees magazine and television ads, with half-naked models posing as sexual feats, like brainwashing people’s minds.
We are influenced by our society, culture and especially what we perceive. There isn’t a magazine, TV commercial, or billboard ad in Times Square that isn’t giving or sending a sexual message to people. These ads are intended to get viewers to believe their fantasies and promise that if you don’t buy and wear a certain pair of jeans, you won’t look sexy, or if you don’t buy and wear a certain cologne or perfume, no man will ever love you, or Even if you don’t look slim and petite, you won’t have a social life because being slim is considered beautiful. In most American commercials, a man and a woman literally run chasing each other on a beach half-naked; They affectionately hug and kiss, which implies “Forget reality, let’s make love. Forget the fact that you could have a disease and I have a great chance of getting pregnant. Forget it.” The more people who see these commercials, the more they believe that these intended messages are true. Forget everything, only love and passion matter! Wrong! Today, the statistics on people who have been diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease are high and the statistics on young adolescents who become pregnant are high. And, because these teens have babies they cannot care for, there are millions of children in foster care right now with no real place to call home.
In her essay, Joyce Garity, a social worker, addresses all issues related to “sex in the media” and points out the negative messages the world sends to our youth today. It refers to a particular girl. Elaine had gone to live with her for a while. Worried and almost alone in the world, she was pregnant again with her second child, while her first child had already been placed in a foster home. When Garity asked why she allowed herself to get pregnant again, she said she thought birth control and condoms weren’t romantic and embarrassing; one cannot be passionate about sex and worry about using contraception at the same time. In other words, Elaine was just another brainwashed person, lost in a fantasy where negativity doesn’t exist. Forget about reality!
How to deprogram the damage done by the media? We can start by educating ourselves through self-help books. Through self-education, we obtain knowledge and through knowledge we arrive at a transformation of our way of thinking, acting and feeling. Let’s start drawing our own conclusions about how we should live based on morals and fair standards.
© Copyright 2008 Viola Morgan. All rights reserved.