“Pop culture commodities express personal taste, even identity and identification with a subculture. No one needs to sell young people on the key role of fad and fashion in designing their identities, indeed, channeling such information to them provides a service welcomed for its news and of what’s happening” (Aufderheide, p.60).

Studies were conducted to discover why adolescents watch music videos. Most commonly, viewers watched MTV for their love of music. Secondly, many stated that they watched for entertainment or enjoyment, expressing that “it’s just entertaining” (Sun and Lull, p.121). The visual aspect of watching videos ranked third among reasons for watching music videos. Viewers felt that the videos help interpret the songs and that some videos show how the musician interpreted the song. (p.121). While many viewers watched MTV to learn about fashion, dances or other reasons of information, one viewer responded that he watched MTV to “know what is happening in the United States” (p.122). This is disturbing for an adolescent to turn to music videos to understand what is going o in the United States considering MTV creates an unrealistic view of the world we live in. Aufderheide notes “with nary a reference to cash or commodities, music videos cross the consumer’s gaze as a series of mood states” (p.63).

Studies cited by McLeod and Signorielli (1994) on MTV commercials found that men appear 54.4% more often than women. More than 75% of women are considered to have their bodies in better shape than men. Men were found to be less attractive than women who were rated as being attractive 77% of the time. About 58% of women wear more revealing or sexy clothing whereas only 7% of men were considered to be wearing sexy clothing. Women were also found to be the objects stared at 75% of the time compared to only one out of five males being the object of admiration. McLeod and Signorielli state “if adolescents utilize MTV as a source of social learning about gender roles, then they recieve warped views of the roles and responsibilities of women in society... MTV commercials in no way contribute to a reduction of misconceptions about women and women’s roles in society” (p.7).

In another study, several researchers (Boruszkowski, Davis, and Vincent, 1987) analyzed sex roles on music television as to how they are presented and their relation to women. Their findings showed that 56.9% of women were seen as condescending and presented as to not having a mind of their own and 17.1% of the videos observed emphasized the woman as being submissive. Surprisingly enough, the videos in which women were said to be equal (13.8%) rated higher then the contradictory role in which the woman has a certain amount of independence second to her subservience (12.2%). Their research concludes, “sexism is fairly high in music videos” (p.754).

Although the majority of people insist that advertising/media does not influence or affect them in any way, companies continue to spend large amounts of money on advertising and if they believed it wasn’t affecting consumers, they would not waste that money. Videos create a world where money is not an issue, even though these videos cost a large amount of money to produce. Kilbourne says, “We believe we are not afected by advertising because it is so often silly, trivial, and something we don’t pay conscious attention to. However, advertising’s influence is cumulative and primarily unconscious. The less consciously we watch the ads, the more deeply we are affected” (Knutsen, p.1). Girls are especially more prone to be affected by advertisements when their personal image of themselves is i

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