Sex, Power, and Women: Female Viewers’ Perceptions of Popular Music Video Themes

Abstract

Research has linked viewing highly sexual music videos with increased gender role acceptance, and concern over personal physical appearance. However, very few studies have assessed individual differences in how music video sexual content is perceived, and no studies to date have addressed non-objectifying sexual content. In the present study, fifteen college women were exposed to 21 pop music videos and asked to categorize each video on the basis of whether it depicted women a) as sex objects, b) using sex as a source of power, or c) non-sexually. At least one video achieved perfect consensus amongst the participants for each category of sexual content, indicating that not all highly sexual portrayals of women are seen as objectifying by college women. However, the participants did not categorize the remaining videos in a uniform manner, indicating that there are considerable individual differences in the perception of music video sexual content.