News, Advice, and Tips for Parenting Teenagers

The "hip-hop" culture is about sexually suggestive music, dancing and videos. However, researchers at Columbia University believe that hip-hop does not necessarily encourage teens to experiment with sex. Factors that do influence early sexual expression are drugs, alcohol, peer pressure and "sexually degrading" lyrics in contemporary music. The Columbia group found that hip-hop lyrics are not always sexually degrading, but sometimes were actually sexually empowering for girls.

Dr. Miguel Munoz-Laboy, an assistant professor of socioeconomic sciences, and his colleagues studied more than 1,400 teenagers over a two-year period. They explored the hip-hop culture, and even went to dance clubs. They found that sexually degrading lyrics, as opposed to sexually explicit lyrics, negatively influenced young people. The worst were lyrics that portray women as sexual objects, men as insatiable and sex as meaningless.

Dr. Munoz-Laboy's work appears in the journal Culture, Health and Sexuality.

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Labels: sex, music, influences

Posted By: Aspen Education Group