Beyond Concern: The implications of sexualization for the study of sex, the media and culture

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This project examines the widespread interest in 'sexualization' in the media, popular books, government policies and academic research. Sexualization is often seen as indicating a problematic use of media and popular culture by young people and associated with permissive sex practices. Academics have noted that sex is more visible in culture than in the past, that there appears to have been a 'pornographication' of mainstream culture, and that pornography is now more diverse and much more accessible than in the past. It has been argued that all these developments can be understood as part of the development of a 'striptease culture' in which private life, intimacy, commerce and media are no longer understood or experienced as separate as they may have been in the past. In the last few years, sexualization has become a subject of real fascination - in the UK there have been no less than three major reports in the last two years - and it has become the focus of many campaigning groups who object to pornography and 'porn culture'. Sexualization is also increasingly a theme in academic work across a range of academic disciplines including law, sociology, psychology, media and cultural studies.This project seeks to investigate the phenomenon of sexualization and the concerns it has raised in more detail. It examines what the sexualized imagery found in contemporary art, pornography, 'shock' imagery, and other 'extreme' representations have in common. It considers how concern has increasingly focused on young people's use of technology. It explores the ways that ideas about gender, sex and age-appropriate behaviour are changing, and how these are related to the development of a range of technologies and to the changing nature of society in the twenty first century.