Sunday, December 2, 2012

Unrealistic Body Expectations



“The 51 respondents who were asked about the effects of porn on their sex and dating lives; 51 percent said they felt advanced sexual expectations from themselves; 17.6 percent felt advance expectations from their partner(s); 33.3 percent and 2 percent, respectively, felt an increase or decrease in sexual frequency; and 23.5 percent felt “other,” encompassing responses varying from “unreal view of what sex is,” to “gives new moves to try, but doesn’t change expectations or frequency.”

Although Internet pornography is traditionally more popular among men, about forty percent of Internet pornography viewers are women. Pornography can have a negative affect on how women view their own bodies. Through media and advertisement and with the recent mainstreaming of pornography in our media, we are constantly exposed to the “ideal” thin body. Along with the thin “ideal” bodies that we see in advertisements, movies, television and magazines, we are also seeing an “ideal” body type in the pornography industry. Pornography and the “ideal” body in media create unrealistic expectations of bodies, pleasures and desires. Pornography also increases sexual expectations, causing people to feel the need to live up to higher standards. In the article below, Whitney Strub, GLGBTQ advisor, explains that anti-porn feminists’ central argument is that pornography does not express sexuality, but illustrates a construction of sexuality. Anti-porn feminists argue sexual construction is a patriarchal influence upon women, persuading their understandings of themselves, their bodies, their sexuality, their desires and their pleasures. Pornography can encompass an unrealistic expectation of the body, sexual roles and abilities. With the constant publicity of all different bodies in media, it is inevitable that people in society are going to compare themselves to what they see. Comparison between bodies can lead to a distortion of the body image that they have already created for themselves.

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