Sexual Self-presentation Research Articles

A Narrative Critical Review of Research on Self-Sexualization

Self-sexualization is an emerging area of research relevant to clothing researchers as evaluations of sexual appeal often stem from specific items and uses of dress. Our research purpose was to systematically review the available research on self-sexualization. In our review we focused specifically on three topics: what precedes self-sexualizing? What outcomes are associated with self-sexualizing? And how has self-sexualization been operationalized? The time frame for this review was 2007–2020. To locate the 31 journal articles that supplied the data for this research, multiple data bases were searched using the following search terms: self-sexualization, self-sexualizing, and sexual self-presentation. Important precursors to self-sexualization include exposure to media and social media, self-objectification, internalization of sexualization, and desiring attention from others. Empowerment has been studied as an outcome of self-sexualization along with negative inferences concerning both young women and girls that self-sexualize. Operationalization of self-sexualization is varied and likely contributes to inconsistent findings.

‘Detached Desires’ - Resituating Pornographic and Celebrity Persona Online

Celebrity and pornography are dominant features of late-capitalist consumption, and both serve to influence and bolster the performance, curation and construction of a sexualised and/or sexually explicit persona online. More so, a range of social and networked spaces such as Twitter XXX, Instagram, JustFor.Fans and onlyfans.com have enabled ‘ordinary’ subjects to assimilate and adapt elements of celebrity and pornographic representation in ways that have permitted them to explicitly and publicly present (and profit from) their private sexual persona. Individuals create and sustain their individual profiles through boundless processes of self-branding, self-promoting, self-objectifying, and the self-management of their sexual personas as “an ideal typification of the neoliberal self, emphasising how demotic neoliberalism, with the aid of celebrity role models instructs” not only their own, but also their viewers desires (McGuigan 2014, p. 224). This enigmatic discourse of sexual self-presentation as a form of empowerment, entrepreneurialism, and an aesthetic mode of influence may well function as an apex of neo-liberal and late capitalist ideology. It is here that the meticulous construction of sexual authenticity and tropes we connect to the banal and everyday are refined and embodied to tactically produce amateurish porn content that followers and fans identify with, algorithmically rate, consistently follow, prolifically share, and (of course) economically subscribe.

Sexting: Motives and risk in online sexual self-presentation

Sexting: Motives and risk in online sexual self-presentation

Sexual intensity of adolescents' online self-presentations: Joint contribution of identity, media consumption, and extraversion

Adolescents produce and distribute a vast quantity of digital media content. A growing literature examines the sexually explicit (i.e., nude) content that adolescents share online. Because adolescents' sexual content need not be sexually explicit, however, this study examined the sexual intensity with which adolescents choose to present themselves in the context of a social media platform. Exemplifying the variability of adolescents' online sexual self-presentations, survey participants (N = 265; age range: 13–15 years) constructed social media profiles using components (e.g., photos, fashion brands) that varied in sexual intensity. In accord with predictions drawn from the Media Practice Model, the study found that the sexual intensity of adolescents' online self-presentations is a product of the sexual self-concept, a relationship that is partially mediated by sexual media diet and moderated by extraversion. This study bridges emerging research on sexual self-presentation with established literature on adolescents' sexual media uses and effects.

The Relationship Between Sexual Content on Mass Media and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study.

The goal of this study was to investigate whether exposure to sexual reality television content and Internet pornography (IP) is related to sexual self-presentation on social media. Based on a two-wave panel survey among 1,765 adolescents aged 13-17 years, we found that watching sexual reality television content stimulated adolescents to produce and distribute sexual images of themselves on social media. In turn, sexual self-presentation on social media led adolescents to watch sexual reality television content more frequently. These relationships were similar among boys and girls. No reciprocal relationship between exposure to IP and boys' and girls' sexual self-presentation on social media was found. The results suggest that sexual content in mainstream mass media may predict adolescents' sexually oriented behavior on social media and vice versa. Moreover, adolescents seem to differentiate between types of sexual content (i.e., mainstream versus more explicit sexual content) when incorporating sexual media content in their sexual behavior online.

Sexual self-presentation on social network sites: Who does it and how is it perceived?

The aims of this study were to investigate (a) the role of peer factors in adolescents’ sexual self-presentation on social network sites, and (b) how adolescents who present themselves sexually online are evaluated by others. 238 high school students (aged 12–18) evaluated either a sexual or non-sexual online presentation of same-sex and opposite-sex peers. Moreover, they filled in a questionnaire about their own self-presentation behavior. Findings showed that peer norms played a crucial role in whether adolescents posted sexual pictures of themselves online. Moreover, need for popularity was a strong predictor for posting such pictures. Girls who presented themselves in sexual ways were evaluated more negatively by other girls but more positively by boys. Similarly, boys who presented themselves in sexual ways were evaluated more positively by girls but not by boys.

Parents' constructions of the sexual self-presentation and sexual conduct of adolescents: discourses of gendering and protecting

In this paper, we explore the discourses on sexuality that a sample of parents drew upon when they talked about teenage sexual self-presentation and conduct. The sample consisted of 43 parents (32 mothers and 11 fathers) of young people aged 10–19 years. Data were gathered using in-depth interviews and were analysed using a strategy known as modified analytical induction. Findings indicated that while an acceptance the traditional heterosexual script permeated participants' accounts, and protective discourses in relation to young women were brought to bear, so, too, were protective discourses invoked in relation to young men. On the whole, young women tended to be cast as sexual subjects who chose to self-sexualise and this was sometimes seen by participants as a threat to young men. We argue that the discourses that parents connoted were multiple and sometimes contradictory, and our analysis problematises the notion that conventional discourses singularly cast women as objects of male sexuality. However, the overall picture indicated that in parents' narratives, young women tended to be more heavily regulated and either viewed as needing protection from male sexual advances or castigated for encouraging them.

Dressed for sex: red as a female sexual signal in humans.

BackgroundIn many non-human primate species, a display of red by a female serves as a sexual signal to attract male conspecifics. Red is associated with sex and romance in humans, and women convey their sexual interest to men through a variety of verbal, postural, and behavioral means. In the present research, we investigate whether female red ornamentation in non-human primates has a human analog, whereby women use a behavioral display of red to signal their sexual interest to men.Methodology/Principal FindingsThree studies tested the hypothesis that women use red clothing to communicate sexual interest to men in profile pictures on dating websites. In Study 1, women who imagined being interested in casual sex were more likely to display red (but not other colors) on their anticipated web profile picture. In Study 2, women who indicated interest in casual sex were more likely to prominently display red (but not other colors) on their actual web profile picture. In Study 3, women on a website dedicated to facilitating casual sexual relationships were more likely to prominently exhibit red (but not other colors) than women on a website dedicated to facilitating marital relationships.Conclusions/SignificanceThese results establish a provocative parallel between women and non-human female primates in red signal coloration in the mating game. This research shows, for the first time, a functional use of color in women's sexual self-presentation, and highlights the need to extend research on color beyond physics, physiology, and preference to psychological functioning.

Feminism, Neoliberalism, and SlutWalk

Feminism, Neoliberalism, and SlutWalk KathyMiriam By now many of us know the Toronto police officer's comment that sparked the wildfire called SlutWalk. This set of events has been lauded as "bold" and "original" by feminist columnists such as Katha Pollitt in The Nation.1 The most common defense of the name SlutWalk—when the event has been often debated—is that it attracts attention and that it is a brand that travels well. But does it really take media savvy (as Pollitt attri butes to the protestors) to utilize the same currency of patriarchal fantasy that makes mass media everywhere go round: the figure of the sexual ized, young, thin female? The idea that media savvy is praiseworthy in and of itself indicates a puzzling lack of critical analysis and an obviously instrumentalist approach to politics where the means of doing something displaces reflection on the ends. What does it mean when activists trade on the very semantics of rape culture—male fantasy—to relay a message against rape? What does it mean when the branding of a message assumes greater importance than the message, with the message itself off the table for any serious deliberation or theorizing? SlutWalk, at its core, is an example of a kind of feminism that has effectively supplanted a collective world-changing project with individ ualized empowerment. Feminism here is converted from a term refer ring to a political movement to an identity term with no content save whatever empowers the individual woman who chooses the identity. It might sound gutsy to shout along with Jaclyn Friedman, the celebrity femi nist who led chants in Boston, that we're here to demand a world in which what we do with our bodies is nobody's business. But what women actually do with our bodies is, in reality, majorly big business. Indeed, to the tune of billions, corporate investment in branding female sexuality is obvious; ever-new body-modifying and mutilating procedures are promoted as necessary for women's "self-esteem." The structural causes of how women dress Feminist Studies38, no. 1 (Spring 2012). © 2012 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 262 Kathy Miriam 263 and adorn ourselves as a class are obfuscated by the emphasis on individual self-determination. Thus a main slogan of SlutWalk—most often trum peted by women dressed in Victoria's Secret lace and stilettos—is that women should be free to choose how they dress, and it's not an invita tion to rape. While rape is of course never invited, this statement only makes sense from the most one-dimensional, flattened perspective — one that removes the individual woman from the matrices of social rela tions through which our choices are structured. If the choice of sexual self-presentation for women were such a free, unconstrained choice, why does it seem to come in only one flavor, namely, some preconceptual ized variant of the patriarchal construct of "slut"? And why does corpo rate patriarchy have such a mammoth investment in this construct? In light of these questions, a main claim of SlutWalk, "I have the pussy, so I make the rules"2 seems more like a declaration of self-deception than — as intended—self-determination. SlutWalk has been hailed as a practice of female self-determination. The problem ignored is that how a woman or girl dresses and/or sexually self-presents is more of an obligation than a choice — or it is a choice that is obliged. As so many feminists have argued, from early in girls' lives, femi ninity consists in learning to fulfill the obligation to signal sexual availabil ity to the male. Yet in a situation defined by women's sexual exploitation, sexual self-presentation is a double-bind since, whatever choice of presen tation is made by a woman, she will be punished — or sometimes both rewarded and punished.3 Women are both exhorted to self-present as sexy and yet are punished as sluts: failure to self-present as sexy is punished as prudish or as lacking worth within a system that bases women's value — and indeed very visibility — on competency in displaying sexual availabil ity (aka "sexiness") without falling into the "slut...