Extra Credit: Youth Sexuality in Media

[http://current.com/items/89589757/teen_banned_from_wearing_christian_purity_ring.htm]

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1091901/Teenager-banned-wearing-Christian-chastity-ring-school.html]

Jonas Brothers were seen wearing purity ring making a promise to remain a virgin until they are married. At VMA award show,the host Russell Brand made fun of the Jonas Brothers for wearing the purity ring and he made the remark saying that "Well done the Jonas Brothers. Each wear a ring to say they are not going to have sex, I’d take them more seriously if they wore it around their genitals." He basically is poking fun at them for making the decision to remain a virgin and not having sex until they are ready. Media is the most influential way of communicating what is going on and sex is one of them. In the reading "A Content Analysis of Sexually Transmitted Dieases in the Print News Media," media educators see that mass media itself if becoming more and more effective on how audiences acts. "...media literacy is believed to lead not only to a greater understanding of the stories (including sexual scripts) that media tell and the sources they use but also may result in personal changes, such as improvements in self-esteem, taking responsibility..." The above image is a teenage girl wearing a purity ring. The article is about how her school have discriminated against her faith and banned her from wearing a purity ring. She was inspired to wear her purity ring after seeing the band Jonas Brothers wearing them. Media can be very effective when it comes to important issues like sex. When audiences look at different programs, it is for the entertainment but also for learing what is the norm. Especially the youth, they can be influence by seeing their favorite band wearing certain types of clothes, the way they talk and even be inspired by them to make a change, like the 12 year old girl that was inspired by Jonas Brothers.


[http://bookninja.com/magazine/winter2007/annickint.htm]

Teenagers at a stage where they feel like they are grown enough to make their own decisions but still need an adult guidance to fully understand the things that they are going through, an example of this is sexuality. It is at the age where they want to explore and understand what sex is but talking about with their parents is to them, "embarrassing" and little too personal to talk about. So where do teenagers get the information that they need about sex? They either talk to their friends or through media. This book, " The Little Black Book for Girlz: A Book on Healthy Sexuality" by St. Stephen's Community House, which looks at not only sexuality but also girl culture by teenagers. The book is a community youth project who had questions about sexuality where teenage girls got together and made a book on what sex is about. They collected poems, stories and art works to answer the questions that they had. The topics that they have are relationships, periods, sex, birth control, pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections/AIDS and sexual assault.


[http://www.newsweek.com/id/124098]

[http://www.psfk.com/2008/09/racy-chilean-teens-and-the-web.html]

This is an article from NY Times. It is talking about how Chilean teenagers are "not so quietly forming "sex rebellion" raging on among Chile's party hard youth." According to NY Times, Latin America are known for being sexually conservative is now becoming sexually open in public. The teenagers can be seen in sexual acts starting from making out to things that is too graphic to talk about. "...some doctors, academics and other experts are pointing to the rise of the popular website Fotolog as one of the movement’s main drivers/enablers (NY Times)." "Dr. Arias did a study of the Fotolog phenomenon, scrutinizing the kinds of photos teenagers are posting, even the angles and distances of the pictures — all of which are part of an “identifiable” language, he said. “The kids of today are expressing their sexuality in erotic ways for the whole world to see (NY Times).” Sharing photos at a website is only the half of the story. With the evolving culture, they do not provide the educations that teenagers need and to learn about sex.