Sexually Related Content on Television and Adolescents of Color: Media Theory, Physiological Development, and Psychological Impact*

Journal of Negro Education, The, Fall 2003 by Gruber, Enid, Thau, Helaine

Pubertal development-the growth of secondary sexual characteristics that herald the change from child to adult-can be a key factor in the way that the family and larger society respond to an adolescent. "Signs of physical maturation," according to Smith, Udry, and Morris (1985), "result in the individual being perceived as sexually attractive and as a potential sex partner. . . .For both males and females, the interpretation of physical maturation involves a social process in which the individual assumes sexual roles and develops sexual interests" (p. 184). Thus, this change is reflected in alterations in self-concept. When adolescents search for role models in their development of identity and social presentation, they look for qualities of similarity shared with influential others, such as common geographic origin, ethnic origin, eye or hair color, size, build, activities or interests, style of dress, etc. Another characteristic that may garner adolescent attentive-ness to media models may be one's physiological development, a self-assessment that the adolescent's pubertal growth gives him or her greater kinship with attractive, if older, social models. Work with White adolescents (Smith et al., 1985) has suggested that level of pubertal development may be a more reliable predictor of sexual involvement than is age. It would follow from there that the earlier an adolescent develops secondary sexual characteristics, the more vulnerable an adolescent may be to negative or potentially harmful sexual content espoused or depicted by attractive models.

Trends in Sexual Activity among American Adolescents

Examination of available data on American sexual behavior (Smith, 1998) indicates that premarital sexual intercourse became increasingly common over the 20th century, especially in the adolescent age group. By the latter 1980s, more than half of all females and 6 out of 10 males aged 15 to 19 had engaged in premarital sex. Along with increases in intercourse rates, there has been a parallel decline in the average age of first intercourse and a rise in the number of lifetime sexual partners. While some statistical reversals occurred in the 1990s, these small declines still appear to be sputters in the delineation of long-term trends.

When examining ethnic differences (CDC, 1998), African American adolescents are significantly more likely to be sexually experienced (72%) than Hispanic Americans (52%) or Whites (47%). Recent data from a population-based Los Angeles sample (Upchurch, Levy-Storms, Sucoff, & Aneshensel, 1998) also indicates that African American adolescents have an earlier median age of first intercourse (15.8 years) than comparable Whites, Hispanic Americans, or Asian Americans (16.6, 17.0, and 18.1, respectively). Adolescents who have dropped out or do not attend school are 1.5 times more likely to be sexually active than in-school peers and have an earlier age of sexual debut (CDC, 1994a, b). Other recent research (Gates & Sonenstein, 2000; Schuster, Bell, & Kanouse, 1996) suggests that even among adolescent virgins (i.e., those who have not engaged in vaginal intercourse) an estimated 19-39% have experience with other intimate sexual behaviors such as masturbation, fellatio, or cunnilingus that carry risks of sexually transmitted infections.