“Shake It Baby, Shake It”: Media Preferences, Sexual Attitudes and Gender Stereotypes Among Adolescents

In this study exposure to and preferences for three important youth media (TV, music styles/music TV, internet) were examined in relation to adolescents’ permissive sexual attitudes and gender stereotypes (i.e., views of men as sex-driven and tough, and of women as sex objects). Multivariate structural analysis of data from a school-based sample of 480 13 to 16-year-old Dutch students revealed that preferences, rather than exposure were associated with attitudes and stereotypes. For both girls and boys, preferences for hip-hop and hard-house music were associated positively with gender stereotypes and preference for classical music was negatively associated with gender stereotypes. Particularly for boys, using internet to find explicit sexual content emerged as a powerful indicator of all attitudes and stereotypes