Hollywood oversexualizes teenage girls significantly more than it does teenage males and even young adult females, a research report released Friday said.
"Almost 40 percent of teenage girls compared to 6.7 percent of teenage males are shown in sexually revealing clothing," said Marc Choueiti, co-author of the study by the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communications & Journalism.
"That's higher than the number (32.4 percent) of young adult females (ages 21-39) shown in sexually revealing clothing."
Looking at all speaking parts in the top-grossing 100 movies of 2008, the study suggests Hollywood could be sending a message that "teen girls are depicted as eye candy when it comes to cinematic content," he said.
Study co-author Stacy L. Smith said the research reveals a "gender disparity" across the sexual indicators found in films.
Smith was quick to point out that the research encompassed far more than counting high school cheerleaders. In fact, the study revealed some positive gender trends in the movies.
A third of all speaking roles in the films studied were women or girls which, though not up to the 50 percent found in the general population, represents the highest number of female film characters they've found in USC studies to
date.There were also more female speaking characters in films with women directors and writers on the team.
Of course, women remain a small minority in such key behind-the-scenes positions. And this study focuses on the year before the first woman to win an Academy Award for directing, Kathryn Bigelow, populated her war movie "The Hurt Locker" almost exclusively with men.
The USC team is currently working on its 2009 report - the year when Megan Fox in the biggest-selling film, "Transformers 2," certainly did more than her share to reinforce teen girl objectification on the screen.
Individual films' attendance is not considered in these studies. If it were, the top 10 films of 2008 would have looked remarkably non-sexist; in fact the one most focused on teens, "Twilight," had far more bare-chested boys than underclad girls in it.
Regardless, the four categories of what's called hypersexualization in 2008 movies broke down this way, gender-wise, according to the report:
In sexy clothing, female 39.8 percent, male 6.7 percent. Partially naked, female 30.1 percent, male 10.3 percent. With a small waist, female 35.1 percent, male 13.6 percent. And attractive, female 29.2 percent, male 11.1 percent.
Wait. Attractive? According to what measure?
"Multiple students judged each film, but we can't rely on their views of attractiveness because they're highly subjective," Smith explained. "But I think this is a conservative estimate, very much a low percentage, because the way that they're trained to evaluate attractiveness is that a character in the film has to verbally reference the desirousness of another character, or do it nonverbally, staring or gesturing, et cetera."
Fair enough. But if just being attractive in a movie is hypersexualization, then how is today any different from the silent film era, when both vamps such as Pola Negri and nice girls like Mary Pickford were cast for their good looks?
"I think you have to look at it within the context of the film, really - what is the reason behind how the character is depicted? - to say whether this is hypersexualized or not," noted Madeline Di Nonno, executive director of The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. "Clearly, swim attire is swim attire, and if people are swimming . . .
"What we look at, literally, is objectification, that the only value of that character is based on their physical attributes," added Di Nonno, whose organization has commissioned reports from Smith in the past. "There's nothing wrong with beauty, but what else is there? And how can you have a full slate of characters with different shapes and different sizes? Just sprinkle it, show the environment as it is, when you can, as long as it's organic to the storyline."
Smith hopes her USC reports raise awareness among Hollywood filmmakers who, somehow, haven't learned from "Sucker Punch's" financial disaster that hot young girls in lingerie are no guarantee of celluloid success.
Among, of course, other lessons.
"What we're revealing is the gender difference," Smith said. "That's what these data are speaking to, and in particular with one age group, the younger audience. What might these portrayals be sending to young males and young females about the value attached to their gender?
"There's an emphasis on how females appear, so this may be what is valued. And for young males, it may be thinking about how to value females in an appearance-centric light rather than for their intellect, the types of things that they like to do ... the whole multitude of things that a male or a female brings to the table."
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