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Abstract
The media has the power to impact the way we formulate ideas and concepts. Music videos in
particular is a powerful medium that has been proven to alter thoughts and behaviors in
adolescents and emerging adults, even after brief exposure. In terms of sexuality, they typically
portray women as submissive and men portrayed as dominant. This study analyzed 25 trending
music videos for seven different overt sexual behaviors and sexual interactions between people
in the videos. The results showed that the majority of the videos featured sexual behavior, mostly
in the pop genre, and women were responsible for 80% of the overt sexual behaviors. Portrayals
of sexuality in modern music videos have the potential to alter the perceptions of sex consumers
Introduction
With the rise of streaming platforms, consumers can view exclusive videos on Spotify,
Apple Music, and Tidal. Even social media applications like Snapchat have premiered music
videos for artists. These platforms can be reached via cell phone, tablet, and computer which
makes this medium incredibly accessible (Sharp, 2008; Luckerson, 2013; Nelson Jr., 2016). This
means, thanks to the digital age, music videos are easily accessible to consumers which may
increase exposure.
Music videos typically have sexual content since sex sells (Cummins, 2007) and they
show dramatized ways in which we typically view men and women within society which further
confirms previous thoughts (Goffman, 1976). They have also been found to alter adolescents and
young adults perceptions of sex (Zhang, Miller, and Harrison, 2008; Wright and Rubin, 2017;
Kistler and Lee, 2010; Ward, Hansbrough, and Walker, 2005; Wright and Qureshi, 2015).
Identity development is dynamic which allows for people to change how they view themselves
and navigate the world as they mature. Various factors such as school, peers, gender, can play a
role in developing and altering these identities. The media can also be a large influence on
identity development. It is important to understand the sexual content of music videos and the
Literature Review
Formation of Ideas
Social scripting theory states that human beings follow certain patterns that help them
determine how to react and attach meaning to situations. They figure out these scripts through
the stimuli and society surrounding them and internalize their own script that instructs them on
how to behave (Tomkins, 1978). This theory can be applied to how boys and girls learn about
MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS 4
their sexuality (Simon and Gagnon, 1984). A closer review of this theory shows that there are
various factors that determine how men and women develop their sexual scripts from societal
pressures to biological differences. Men see sex as something that is open and directly about
pleasure where as women see it as something to be keep hidden and emotional. (Wiederman,
2005).
Maas, Shearer, Gillen, and Lefkowitz (2015) gave a 2-question questionnaire to 220
college students that asked them how their gender affected their thoughts and feelings on sex and
how being the opposite gender would make them feel. They found that women were more
focused on the risk of being sexually active while men were more focused on their libidos.
Women also focused on the emotional aspect of sex far more than men did. Internalized gender
roles did play a part in the sex lives of young adults since each were aware that sex was easier or
harder for the other gender. The older that the participants were, the less likely gender played a
The model of multiple dimensions of identity state that each individual has inner
attributes and values that are unaffected as a person ages and develop their identity but they have
different facets of their identity, such as gender, class and sexuality, that play a role in current
identity (Jones and McEwen, 2000). Abes, Jones, and McEwen (2007) suggest that individuals
have a meaning-making filter that helps control what messages from the outside world, such as
stereotypes and media, play a part in shaping their identity. An individual’s identity can be
shaped by these influences so the meaning-making filter allows them to deflect or absorb
With the amount of media people have access to, it would be impossible to consume it
all. Therefore, choices need to made. There are various different reasons that people gravitate
towards certain media. The media practice model claims one of the likely reasons is due to
confirmation bias. Teenagers will seek out media that matches with their ideologies. Gender,
race, and class also affect what type of media people seek out. Once they choose the media to
consume, it plays a role in how they act, think, and develop their identities (Steele & Brown,
1995). The media affects how emerging adults carry themselves as well. College students see
depictions of themselves in TV shows and if they idolize them, they try to emulate them in their
Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) suggests that people can develop inner working models
that influence how they behave based off what they see in the media. Whether or not the viewer
has partaken in certain activities, they might be influenced to do so in the future based off the
portrayal of observing others do them in the media. Therefore, it is theorized that if the
consequences of the action shown are negative, then people are less likely to do that action. It
also states that people are more likely to imitate those they perceive as similar to themselves
(Bandura, 2001), a concept that is related to Wishful identification (Hoffner, 1996). Wishful
identification means that people live vicariously through media personalities with perceived
similarities to themselves (Hoffner, 1996; Cohen, 2001). Hoffner and Buchanan, 2005 found that
young adults relate to personalities with who they believe they share similar thoughts and
consumers form with media personalities (Horton and Wohl, 1956). Together, this means that
MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS 6
media personalities and characters can play a role in consumers perceptions of sex due to lack of
Brown (2006) suggests that media literacy courses during adolescence can help people
select media without narrowing their views and be able to decipher what is realistic. Pinkleton,
Austin, Chen, & Cohen (2012) conducted a study with 655 adolescents on the role the media
plays on their perceptions of sex. Of the 655, 287 of them did not receive a media literacy course
while the others did. The course consisted of five 45 minute lessons taught by teenage peers over
five days. This lessons covered topics such as how sex is used to sell products, teenage
pregnancy and how young people can choose when they feel comfortable having sex. Through
questionnaires, they found that people who did not receive the media literacy course could not
tell when the media was manipulating their thoughts about sex.
Music videos are appealing to most young adults and, typically, they contain sexual
imagery, as found by Hansen and Hansen (1990). They found that the more sexual content
displayed in a music video, the more appealing participants found it to be. Exposure to sexual
content may play a role in adolescents and young adults’ perception of sex. Young adults who
are exposed to sexually explicit music videos reported increased negative sexual cognitions, such
that men should be dominate and women should be submissive, and increased sexual risk, such
as unprotected sex (Wright & Rubin, 2017). Zhang, Miller, and Harrison (2008) found that
frequent exposure to music videos was positively correlated with the belief that casual,
noncommittal and unsafe sex are the norm and that men and women should behave differently.
Furthermore, college women who were simply asked about music videos and their thoughts of
objectification of women were more likely to be accepting of it than women who were later told
MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS 7
to watch music videos high or low sexual content. This potentially shows that women have
subconsciously accepted their sexual roles in a society that tells them to be submissive to men’s
sexualities (Kistler & Lee, 2010). It has also been shown that women who viewed videos that
heavily objectified women started to objectify themselves and struggled with a memory task later
on, suggesting that self-objectification uses a lot of mental resources (Aubrey and Gerding,
2015).
It is unclear if exposure to sexual music videos can alter peoples’ perceptions of sex or if
people seek out media that confirms their views. However, it was found that even a single
exposure to music videos with stereotypical ideas about sex influenced adolescents’ perceptions
of sex and gender. Increased exposure lead to even higher endorsements and a heavily affected
sexual schema (Ward, Hansbrough, and Walker, 2005). Race and gender also play a role in the
music preference of young adults. Depending on the genre, the increased sexual content in music
and music videos lead to people dating and having sex at younger ages and for young adults to
Current Study
In line with previous studies, this current study will be focusing on sexual content within
music videos. This study focuses on 5 genres that are usually studies. These are rock, pop, hip-
hop, r&b, and country music (Wright and Rubin, 2017; Kistler and Lee, 2010; Ward et al., 2005;
Wright and Qureshi, 2015). However, previous studies have looked at music videos on MTV,
what music videos they watched. This study determined popular videos using Vevo.com. This
study also looked at the whole video as one unit and rated each sexual gesture within the unit as
a new one. This study will be testing sexual depictions in music videos to see if they have the
MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS 8
potential to influence the sexual scripts of those that watch them and what type of influence,
Hypothesis 1: The music videos chosen will heavily display sexualized depictions of men and
women.
Hypothesis 2: These depictions will follow gender displays and roles thus potentially having a
This study will utilize the results to understand how depictions of sexuality in popular
music videos affects inner working models about sex and development of sexual identity based
well-established theories.
Methods
This study will be examining sexual content in music videos that are currently trending
on Vevo.com, a popular video hosting service. This service was chosen because its main purpose
is to host official music videos for artists. Other services host a variety of videos so trending
videos is not only focused on music videos. The top five videos from rock, pop, hip-hop, r&b,
and country music will be analyzed in order to get a diverse and representative sample. Overall,
there will be 25 music videos. Since the trending now can change at any moment, it was noted
what the trending videos were at 11pm on April 10th, 2018. A full list of the music videos
In accordance with Wallis (2010), the videos will be coded for overt sexual behavior
such hand gestures, body movements, face expressions, and clothing. Specifically, the coding
scheme will include hair touching, touching oneself, averting one’s eyes, finger to or in the
mouth, suggestive dancing, sultry look, and provocative clothing. Hair touching, touching
oneself, finger in or two the mouth are self-explanatory. Averting eyes was coded if the person
MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS 9
shifted their gaze whether from the camera or from someone they were looking at. Suggestive
dancing included anything that was intended to replicate sexual activity or focused on breasts,
buttocks, or the crotch. Provocative clothing was anything that showed off the body whether it
was full nudity, a tight dress, or a bikini. Each new outfit was a different coded variable.
When someone did these actions, their gender, ethnicity, and role in the video were also
recorded on the coding sheet. The role was categorized by lead, actor, or background. Lead was
considered to be the artists who sing or play the song. Actor were people who helped move the
story along. Background were extras. If there was a lot of people in the scene (more than 5), than
background extras who were focused on were noted. A tally was taken for each time there was a
sexual interaction between two or more people in the music video such as kissing. If there were
people dancing on each other, that counted for both suggestive dancing and sexual interaction.
Finally, a tally was taken to get an idea of how many people were in each video based on gender
Each video was watched two or three times. The first view was to get a feel for the music
video and take notes for obvious sexual gestures and provocative clothing. The second viewing
was to note the less obvious gestures and anything that may have been missed the first time. This
included pausing the video or rewinding when needed. The third viewing was to get the general
demographics of the video for how many people were in the video. This means the video may
not have been watched in full if there weren’t any new people being introduced. An example of
Results
Data
MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS 10
There were 377 instances of overt sexual behavior. Of all the videos, 20 out of 25 videos
contained overt sexual behavior. Specifically, two country, two hip-hop and one rock videos did
not contain any overt sexual behavior. Therefore, pop and r&b contained the most sexualized
content. Pop had the most sexually gestures, accounting for 30.5% of all overall sexual gestures.
R&b had 27.85%, hip-hop had 20.69%, country had for 11.94% and rock accounted for 9.02% of
sexual gestures. There were 36 instances of sexual interactions, all of which featured a
heterosexual relationship.
Overall, there were 220 men and 187 prominently featured throughout all 25 music
videos. The pop genre had eight total lead singers, six being women. R&b had nine total lead
singers, three being women. Rock had 16 lead singers, all of which were men. Hip-hop had ten
lead singers, all of which were men. Country had five lead singers, one of which was a women.
Therefore, of 48 lead total lead singers, 10 were women. All videos featuring a woman as the
lead included sexual behavior from the lead and from the background characters and actors, if
applicable. Most sexual acts came from the leads, 58.62%, and it was about equal between
Of these instances of overt sexual behavior, 82.49% of these were done by women.
Suggestive dancing, provocative clothing, and touching oneself were the most popular for
women, in that order. For men, suggestive dancing, sultry look, and provocative dancing were
the most popular. In terms of race, most of the leads were white, 26. The second most leads were
black, 19, and third was Latinx, three. In total, there were 195 white people, 173 black people, 24
Content Analysis
MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS 11
In songs that were sexual by nature, women in the videos were sexualized but the gender
of the lead singer determined whether or not they were sexualized in the foreground or the
background. For example, “Me So Bad” by Tinashe, a woman, featured 5 women in total and
they were all wearing revealing clothing such as short skirts and bra tops. The dancing was
suggestive throughout the whole video. One r&b video, “Love Lies” featured Normani, who had
lingerie on, and Khalid, who had a suit on. Another video only featured Camila Cabello, one of
three Latinx singers on the trending page, and the video featured her in 5 different provocative
outfits and showed overt sexual behavior, especially touching oneself and sultry look.
“Powerglide” by Rae Sremmurd ft. Juicy J, all men, featured the lead singers relatively clothed,
Swae Lee was shirtless but wearing a jacket, and the women in the background wore leggings
For songs that were not sexual by nature, as in a song about getting through the hard
times, the women were still sexualized to some extent. A rock video by Godsmack had only two
women in it and both were in tight clothing with cleavage showing despite the fact that they nor
anyone in the video did not do anything sexual. On some occasions, women were even used
more so like props. A hip hop video by Rich The Kid featured two women that were only
wearing a bra and underwear, dancing suggestively, and even shown doing sexual acts with a
puppet. They were never in the foreground of the video. When women were in the lead, they still
displayed sexual gestures. “No Excuses” by Meghan Trainer featured only her, in mostly neutral
clothing with no suggestive dancing. Yet when the camera focused on her face, she would show
a sultry look, touch her hair, and look away from the camera. However, in videos that were led
by men and did not feature any women, all but one video had no instances of sexual gestures.
The one video that did was for a country video and the lyrics were very sexual therefore, the
MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS 12
music video depicted some of what he was singing about. Still, he was not sexualizing himself
In terms of race, black men were rarely sexualized but black women were heavily sexualized.
When black men were sexualized, they shown in dominate ways while women were shown as
props, as shown in “Powerglide.” Another hip-hip video, “Walk It Talk It” by Migos featured
only black people. The lead singers themselves were shown in low cut shirts surrounded by
women. There “band” consisted of actors playing instruments and all but one were men. In the
background, they had both men and women dancing suggestively but the men were in suits while
The results indicated that women are more sexualized than men. This confirms part of
hypothesis 1, which stated that men and women would be heavily sexualized, and hypothesis 2,
which stated that the depictions would be done in gendered ways. This was proven to be true
since women accounted for over 80% of the overt sexual behaviors. Even when women were in
the lead role or the song did not contain sexually suggestive lyrics, women still showed
submissive sexual behavior by looking away from the camera or touching their hair. This was
true across all genres. This relates to previous literature that states the media often utilizes gender
displays and that women are typically presented in submissive ways (Ward et al, 2005; Zhang et
al., 2008; Wright and Rubi, 2017). Men were occasionally sexualized but it was done so in a
different way. Some men were not wearing shirts but it is questionable whether that it sexual
since men are typically sexualized for being topless; moreover their lack of clothing was not
accompanied by other sexual gestures. When it was, it was an aggressive sexual behavior such as
pelvic thrusting that shows men in dominant sexual positions. Therefore, women and men were
MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS 13
sexualized, but women were more so than men. However, since men accounted for less than 20%
of sexual behaviors yet they accounted for 79.17% of lead roles, they were not depicted in sexual
ways. All five videos that did not contain overt sexual behavior were for songs by men.
Other interesting findings show that women in the background, often black women, were
likely the ones to be sexualized, regardless of the gender of the lead singer. They were wearing
little to no clothing and dancing suggestively. Ethnicity may also play a role in the sexualization
of women. Even when black women or Latinx women were in the forefront, they still showed
heavy displays of overt sexual behavior. There was a very small amount of Latinx or Asian
women in the videos so there was a lack of representations for these ethnicities as a whole.
As stated before, these videos were trending at the moment which means they were
popular and viewed by many. It is important to understand the nature of these videos in order to
understand what people are being exposed to. These videos may suggest that women are to be
seen as sex objects which may influence how people act to women in their day to day lives. It
can be argued that, in some instances, especially if the woman was the lead singer, women may
just be expressing their sexuality in a way that they feel comfortable. It is hard to understand
their true motives since audiences prefer sexually explicit videos (Hansen and Hanse, 1990) but
Previous literature shows that consumers have the potential to be influenced by media,
especially if they lack experience or these actions are done by those they idolize (Bandura,
2001; Hoffner, 1996; Cohen, 2001). It is possible that these videos mimic the gender displays of
society that they further condition the consumers to believe in gender roles (Goffman, 1976).
These videos have the potential to affect the way they view sex and it is important to make sure
young adults have a healthy perspective of sex. This could be done by teaching media literacy
MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS 14
and including media in sex education classes so they can understand that these are fictional and
not realistic depictions of women, men, and sex (Brown, 2006; Austin et al. 2012).
While this study was thorough and representative of genres, it only looked at a small
amount of music videos. Other studies looked at dance and rap music (Wright and Rubin, 2017;
Ward et al. 2005). The study also featured one coder while all previous studies mentioned in the
literature review utilized more than one coder. It is possible that while watching the video and
coding, some gestures were missed. It would also be beneficial to code for neutral and non-
sexual behaviors to see if most of the gestures were sexual or not. Future studies should feature
This study focused on trending music videos from Vevo.com which offers a modern
perspective to how consumers are currently viewing music videos. Since this content is so easy
to seek out, it is important to understand the types of depictions of sexuality that are being
communicated to consumers and the potential consequences of these messages. It will likely be
impossible to stop artists from producing sexually explicit videos or to hinder consumers from
being exposed to them but it would be beneficial to alter how consumers view these videos to
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Appendix A
Appendix B
Coding Sheet for “Alone” by Halsey featuring Big Sean and Stefflon Don
Suggestive Dancing 2 2 1 1
Sultry Look 7 7 6 1
Provocative Clothing 1 5 4 2 3 3
Sexual interactions - 5
MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS 20
Appendix C
Demographics Coding Sheet for “Walk It Talk It” by Migos featuring Drake
Walk It Talk
Men
Background Actor Lead
White White White
Black 10 Black 4 Black 4
Latinx Latinx Latinx
Asian Asian Asian
Women 15
Background Actor Lead
White White White
Black 12 Black 3 Black
Latinx Latinx Latinx
Asian Asian Asian