Soft-Core Academic Analysis

Accuracy in Academia ^ | October 31, 2011 | Malcolm A. Kline

[Academiadotorg]

Here’s the thing about academic research: At its best, it reaffirms the obvious but at a much greater cost than casual observation entails. “A number of studies have found style of clothing and extent of nudity to be important markers of sexualization,” Erin Hatton and Mary Nell Trautner of the University of Buffalo wrote in a paper which appeared in Sexuality & Culture.

A number of people outside the academy have noticed the same trend, merely by walking down the street. Nevertheless, the sociologists from Buffalo sought to break new ground.

“A number of journalists and scholars have pointed to the sexual objectification of women and men in popular media to argue that Western culture has become ‘‘sexualized’’ or even ‘pornified,’” they note in Sexuality & Culture. “Yet it is not clear whether men or women have become more frequently—or more intensely sexualized—over time.”

“In a longitudinal content analysis of images of women and men on more than four decades of Rolling Stone magazine covers (1967–2009), we begin to answer such questions.” Believe it or not, Sexuality & Culture is an academic journal.

“ Using a unique analytical framework that allows us to measure both the frequency and intensity of sexualization, we find that sexualized images of men and women have increased, though women continue to be more frequently sexualized than men.” Hatton and Trautner explain of their research. “Yet our most striking finding is the change in how women—but not men—are sexualized. Women are increasingly likely to be ‘hypersexualized,’ but men are not.”

“ These findings not only document changes in the sexualization of men and women in popular culture over time, they also point to a narrowing of the culturally acceptable ways for ‘doing’ femininity as presented in popular media.” They developed a scale for measuring nudity

[mamelukesabre]

seems pretty obvious to me when you look at average teenage girls they seem to think their boobs and cleavage are fashion accessories not personal private parts. This is a major change in attitude that to me seems to have transpired around 10-15 years ago. They obviously consider clothing to be boob decorations rather than necessities of modesty and concealment.

[count-your-change]

The first step in producing a “study” is having the right vocabulary.
Terms such as, longitudinal, unique, ground breaking, cutting edge, controversial, first of its kind, are to be used at every opportunity.

This “study” appears to explain itself while saying nothing, for example, the rating of skin exposure on a sort of Skin-O-Meter scale.

Should we expect more detailed graduations of sexualization in the future? Say, 1/10th point for toes exposed and 1/10 more for each inch of skin to the knee? With regressive meta-correctional analysis for fat legs? Or was it retro-progressive Boolian Permutation Theory? Dear me!

One does have trouble when thinking about really important stuff.