Communicating Inadequacy

The media not only distorts sexual realities, but it also cultivates feelings of inadequacy among young viewers. When judging the value of a person, tremendous emphasis is placed on the physical. The media communicates that the value of a person is primarily his or her physical attractiveness. We are blitzed in the media with an endless parade of beautiful women, which gives teenage girls a very unrealistic standard by which to judge their own attractiveness.

I hope you know that the media’s standard for beauty is not realistic. What’s more, it is constantly changing with regard to which body types, hair styles, fashions, etc. are “in.” Think what that does to the average young woman. For many of them, it has totally distorted their sense of self-worth. If by comparison to the latest standards of physical beauty she is not attractive, she sees herself as without worth or value, which results in tremendous feelings of inadequacy.

The Deception of Distorted Values

For years now we have allowed the media to misrepresent casual sex and free love. Young people have been shown that the cure for everything is to jump into bed. Sex is proclaimed as a cure-all. It’s the remedy for emptiness and loneliness. It’s the answer to a lack of significance. All lies. Sex is not a cure-all. There’s no such thing as casual sex. There’s no such thing as free love.

For the most part we have allowed our young people to determine who they are as sexual beings on the basis of these lies propagated by the media. This deception is crucial, because our sexuality affects everything we say, hear, think and do. Sexuality is at the core of our human existence. And we have allowed our young people, who are growing up right now, to base their sexuality on lies.

Enticing, erotic scenes on TV and in the movies communicate to our teens, “Be sexually active.” The focus is on immediate sexual gratification. Yet the concerned parent says “Wait” and promotes abstinence as the standard for young people. Our kids are getting mixed signals about sexual behavior—no wonder there is so much confusion.

Guarding the Mind

Our society has been spared the work of having to create evil thoughts. We just buy a magazine, go to a porn theater (and hope no one sees us), pay for a sexually-explicit channel on the cable or dish, or log on to a XXX website that brings degradation and exploitation into the comfort of our living room or bedroom. It all looks so professional and nicely done that we forget what we are really seeing: a gift of God being perverted for profit. And our kids have greater access to these evils than we want to believe. You may have the sex networks blocked on your television system, but the parents of your child’s friend may not.

When our thoughts are out of sync with the truth, our actions will be also. That is why the Bible tells us to guard our minds, not to tempt ourselves, not to be conformed to the garbage the world offers us, but rather to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, that we may understand God’s good, pleasing and perfect will. And when we get a grip on His will, we can act in accordance with it.

What’s on Your Mind?

When a teenage boy sees a scene of tender, casual sex in a war movie, he may consider it innocent and relatively harmless. The sex is great, and the characters go on with their lives (and subsequent loves) enriched from having met and mingled bodily fluids. The boy is left with the subtle impression that casual sex isn’t so bad. But that’s not real life. In real life, such encounters often end with the participants diseased. But we almost never see that in the movies. No wonder boys have begun to question God’s prohibitions on premarital sex. They are falling under the influence of the lie.

It is not unusual for a teenage girl to read a secular novel portraying a young woman “coming of age” in the arms of a dashing, romantic man who introduced her to the glories of sex in the bedroom of a romantic Victorian mansion. But books like that rarely describe the guilt and emotional trauma many young women suffer after being conquered and eventually discarded. So when the girl’s boyfriend stirs up her passions with his loving words and tender kisses, what reason does she have to delay the bliss she expects from yielding to his advances?

Our actions are the result of our thoughts, and our thoughts are the result of what we have put into our minds. If someone had never seen pornography, would he be able to conceive it and dwell on evil thoughts? Possibly. But if all he had ever heard of sex was how it forms a beautiful bond in a marriage, he would be hard-pressed to warp those thoughts.

No One Pays for Sex on TV

You may say, “Yes, excessive examples of illicit sexual activity on television, in movies, in music lyrics and videos, on the Internet, etc. is undoubtedly a bad influence on our young people. But in a society as sexually permissive as ours, where’s the lie?”

You can see it yourself by answering this question: In all the casual sex you have seen portrayed in the media, how many times has a character contracted a sexually transmitted disease? You are unusual if you can think of at least one occurrence. I often ask that question of the audiences to whom I speak. Even in crowds as large as 5,000, I rarely find someone who can remember even one bad outcome from casual sex.

Here is my point in bold letters to underscore its importance: Hardly anyone on TV or in the movies pays a price for illicit sex. But in real life, people often pay dearly.

Pornography: Media At Its Worst

The darkest lies about sex told in the media are found in pornography. Pornography promotes sexual promiscuity, incestuous sexual relationships, marital infidelity, sexual deviancy and “no-consequence” sex. Social scientific studies indicate that pornography is also progressive and addictive. Pornographic videos, magazines, web sites, etc. arouse aggressive sexual feelings and they graphically demonstrate the “how-to’s” of sexual acts and perversions. Soft-core porn has been termed the “marijuana” of pornography that leads its users to desire harder, more bizarre “heroin” versions of sexual explicitness.

It can be tenably argued that increasing occurrences of date rape are linked to increasing exposure of males to non-violent, soft-core pornography. I am convinced that the attitudes, perceptions, values and sexual aggressiveness of teenagers are altered in the same or in an ever greater way than those of adults as a result of their exposure to pornography. It is reasonable to assume that soft-core pornography and its themes would be especially appealing to adolescents discovering their own developing human sexuality. However, teenagers are less equipped and less experienced than adults to understand and properly control their developing human sexuality and related sexual drives.

Degrading or Dignifying

Frank Zappa wrote an article on the role of rock in the socio-sexual revolution. His conclusions were that rock music is sex. The big beat matches the body’s rhythms, and the lyrics reinforce it.

A teenager’s world view, his value system and his attitude toward human dignity will determine the role music plays in his life. If he knows the effect the lyrics have on him, he must make a choice about which music he will allow to influence him. If he chooses to listen to music that degrades rather than dignifies men and women, he is not only showing what his true worldview is, but which influences he wants to shape his future actions.

Sex and Music Top the List

The music kids listen to today conveys another strong message about sex. Popular music on the radio and CDs bombards them with explicit lyrics of sexual invitation and conquest. And as if hearing the words were not enough, cable networks like MTV and VH1 provide the suggestive images through their music videos. Kids don’t just hear and see the music; they feel it through high-tech sound systems and booming speakers. They are persuaded by what they hear through constant repetition. Studies show that teenagers who listen to hard rock and heavy metal music are more likely to participate in high-risk behaviors, including drug use and sexual intercourse without contraception or with casual partners.

When the music that teenagers find most appealing contains a barrage of encouragement toward sex, it is no surprise they are affected by it. Psychologist Abraham Maslow researched what he called “peak experiences” in human lives. He pointed out that of hundreds of cases studied, there were many different experiences which people singled out as their life’s highlight. “Peak experiences” involving music ranked second in the list— surpassed only by sex. From such a statement one can deduce the dynamics when sex and music are combined.

The Influence of Television

What impact does the deluge of television viewing have on kids? It is anything but neutral, as several studies have documented. Television can and does influence behavior, often in a bad way:

· Adolescents who watch a lot of television consistently score lower on academic achievement tests. Researchers have found that high levels of television viewing have a negative impact on school performance.

· Adolescents who were sexually active or used alcohol, tobacco or other drugs listened to the radio, watched music videos, and viewed movies, cartoons and soap operas on television more often than other teens who did not participate in these behaviors.

· Those fifth and sixth graders who had a greater awareness of alcohol advertisements in the media than their peers intended to drink as adults, had positive associations with drinking, and were more aware of beer brands.

Television Says Yes

When was the last time you saw anybody on television say “no” to sex? Think about it. You can see why a sixteen-year-old girl who had just lost her virginity wrote me to say, “Mr. McDowell, I couldn’t compete with television.”

And not everything we see on television is make-believe. Young people see glamorous actresses talking about having a big rock star’s out-of-wedlock child and saying what a wonderful life she has. And there seems to be an endless procession of unmarried media stars living together and boasting about great sex. The line between their own lives and the characters they often play on the screen is hard to distinguish.

Doesn’t the portrayal of sex on television seem seriously overbalanced to the permissive side? This is the message our kids are receiving from the hours and hours they spend watching. No wonder they go out and experiment with sex.

The Message About Sex (Part 2)

What is the damaging message about sex so frequently communicated through the media, either directly or indirectly? Abbylin Sellers, author of The Sexual Abstinence Message Causes Positive Change in Adolescent Behavior, identifies six media lies about sex. For each lie, Sellers gives us the truthful message our kids need to grasp:

Lie #4: If you don’t express your sexuality freely, you must be repressed, sick or prudish. This can be a very intimidating lie, but the facts are that premature sex is bad for your emotional, physical and cultural health.

Lie #5: Sex is freedom. Young people who become sexually active in response to peer pressure to be sophisticated and independent are actually becoming victims of current public opinion. No one is really free who engages in any activity to impress the majority.

Lie #6: Surely God understands that this is the twentieth century! God did not give these rules because he is a spoil-sport. Quite the contrary. Because He is God and because He loves us more than we can ever know, He has told us how to have the best, most satisfying sexual experiences--in the context of marriage.