Increasingly Sexy: Sexuality and Sexual Objectification in Music Videos Across Time.

Watching music videos is one of the key media activities for young individuals and there are widespread concerns that especially music videos frequently depict sexualized content. Against this background and based on objectification theory, this study presents a longitudinal visual content analysis of male and female artists in music videos from 1995 to 2014 (n = 420). Specifically, depicted sexuality and sexual objectification were investigated. Furthermore, we included the genre of the music video as well as the race of the artists. Our findings indicate that depictions of insinuated rather than explicit sexuality have increased over time. Furthermore, depictions of sexual objectification have increased in the investigated time period. This is specifically true for female artists, which are more likely to be portrayed as sexual and are more likely sexually objectified over time compared to male artists. We also identified several differences in regard to the artists' race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]