Letter

For the assignment, I sent this letter.

I am writing to you in your capacity as a member of  the Subcommittee on Children and Families. I am a junior at BYU studying in the School of Family Life. I have just finished a class on how media impacts the family and human development. As a resident of Utah, I wanted to contact you about a problem I have learned about. Media currently objectifies women to the detriment of the development of our children. My goal both is to provide research about the side effects of the objectification of women and to request legislative reform.

It is commonly agreed that sexual objectification is wrong, but what is not commonly understood are the negative side effects for children and family members. According to research found by Dr. Sarah Coyne, exposure to sexual media is associated with increased risky sex behaviors, permissive sexual attitudes, and a lower age in participation in sex. She found this was especially true for adolescents (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2018.11.016). In study done by Laura Vandenbosch and Steven Eggermont, they found that adolescent girls would objectify themselves because of sexually objectifying music and TV they consumed (https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01667.x). Other studies have shown that people exposed to sexual media will also objectify other people. There is more research I could pull from, but I do not want to go on for too long.

Women are often the subjects of sexual interest in the media. So most effects will impact women’s views on themselves or men’s views on women. 

For our children’s sake, I ask you to support the regulation of sexual objectification in the media children and families consume. I feel this would benefit our families in Utah and the nation.

 Thank you for reading, 

Connor Sorensen