Pop, Porn & Male Sexual Arousal

by max blunt at 02:29PM (CEST) on April 5, 2007
I walked into Meredith LeVande's lecture, "Women, Pop Music and Pornography," Monday night in the Eynon Ballroom thinking that I had it all figured out.

I thought that I was going to be subjected to generic feminist rabble-rousing with the Indigo Girls playing in the background.

I volunteered to write about the event just so I could tear it apart.

An hour later, as the presentation came to a close, I realized how ignorant I was to assume how I would feel about the presentation before I even saw it.

Instead, I listened to a lecture that was insightful, concise and eye-opening.

There is no doubt about it, the media and popular culture as a whole has gotten, for lack of a better term, sexier. It's not a trend. At least not anymore it isn't. It's become an institution, an atmosphere.

I was incredibly skeptical going in. Pop music and porn aren't the same. Porn is porn. Jessica Simpson isn't porn.

Well, like most things in this life, it's not that simple. The objectification of women in the media is the rule rather than the exception.

Said objectification desensitizes us and makes us more accepting of pornography. Media conglomerates profit heavily from both mainstream entertainment and porn. Porn, by the way, is an industry worth about $13 billion dollars. LINK