Pornoficatie van de maatschappij:

This master thesis examines how women, aged between eighteen and twenty-five years, construct meaning of sexual images from magazines and sexual images from videoclips. Previous studys in the field of sexualisation suggest that women experienced negative effects of continuous exposure to sexual images. This thesis attempts to look at the meaning that women themselves give to these images. To investigate the process of giving meaning to sexual images from magazines and videoclips, we used two different types of qualitative research, namely moodboards and focusgroups. The participants have created a moodboard using pictures from magazines. The moodboard has created a context for the beginning of the focusgroups. The results of the research shows that there are three possible perspectives on sexualisation, namely gender stereotypes, self-objectification and discrepancy. However, it appears that these perspectives are dependent on two aspects which is medium and age. The meanings that women construct on the basis of images from magazines and video clips are different from each other. The participants experienced the medium magazines as much less realistic than the medium videoclips. Secondly, the older participants indicate to be less influenced by these images than the younger participants. The process of self-objectification and discrepancy plays a larger role by the younger participants because they see the sexual images as reality. According to the results of this research, the assumption that women who have been exposed to sexual media content for years should be completely sexualized, is not true.