“What else could have been said?” I wondered, with a sense of satisfaction, after reading Joyce Garity’s essay “Is Sex All That Matters?” Able to identify with her in most of her views on the world we live in today, I felt a bit of weight lifted from my shoulders; relieved that I’m not the only human being in this world who looks at TV and magazine ads, with half-naked models posing as sexual exploits, brainwashing people’s minds.
We are influenced by our society, culture and, above all, by what we perceive. There isn’t a magazine, TV commercial, or billboard in Times Square that isn’t giving people a sexual message. These ads are meant to make viewers believe in their fantasies and promises 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 skinny and petite you won’t have a social life because being skinny is considered beautiful. In most American commercials, literally, a man and a woman are running after each other on a beach half-naked; they lovingly hug and kiss, implying “Forget reality, let’s make love. Forget the fact that you might have a disease and I have a strong chance of getting pregnant. Forget it.” The more people see these commercials, the more they believe these intended messages to be true. Forget everything, only love and passion matter! Wrong! Today, the statistics on people diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease are high, and the statistics on young teens becoming pregnant are high. And, because these teens have babies they can’t care for, there are millions of children in foster care right now with no real place to call home.
In her essay, Social Worker Joyce Garity tackles all the issues surrounding “sex in the media” and points out what negative messages the world is sending our youth today. She refers to one girl in particular. Elaine had come to live with her for a while. Troubled and almost alone in the world, she was pregnant again with her second child, while her first child had already been placed in foster care. When Garity asked her why she allowed herself to get pregnant again, she said that she thought birth control and condoms were unromantic and shameful; one couldn’t really be passionate about sex and worry about using birth control at the same time. In other words, Elaine was just another brainwashed person, lost in a fantasy where negativity doesn’t exist. Forget reality!
How can we deprogram the damage that the media has done? We can start by educating ourselves through self-help books. Through self-education, we gain knowledge and through knowledge comes a transformation of our way of thinking, acting and feeling. Let’s start drawing our own conclusions about how we should live based on fair standards and morals.
© copyright 2008 Viola Morgan. All rights reserved.