Social Media Turned Sexual

When people think of social media , they usually think of apps, chatting with friends across the world, posting an artsy picture of an ocean shoreline. and tweeting at how frustrated “The Bachelor” makes them. But rarely do people consider the negative implications of social media and their impact on our generation. There are so many downsides to the use of social media that almost, if not completely do, outweigh the positives of it. For women, social media has created on overly sexualized atmosphere in which we are expected to bend to societal expectations in order to be viewed as attractive or worthy of a man’s time .

Here’s a story that I know countless women can relate to: I met this guy, let’s call him Bobby, at a party at my friend’s house. We hit it off, exchanged numbers and social media handles, and began talking more. We went on a date or two, had a good time — I liked the kid. Fast forward to three weeks into our flirtationship, and he started asking me to snap him nude pictures. Not being into that kind of thing, I said no. He did what any other sexually-minded 22 year old male would do and tried to convince me to send them anyway- telling me that no one else would see them, I should trust him enough to send them, all the typical responses a girl would normally get- but I stuck to my answer. So another two weeks pass by, and I’m over at his place when his phone rings while he’s in the shower. I told him he had a text, and he, for a reason I don’t know, told me to open it and tell me what it said. I did as requested, only to see a full frontal picture from a woman named Sarah. I was beyond uncomfortable & confronted him about the picture when he got out of the shower. I was expecting him to apologize, say it was a mistake, or make up some other bullshit as to why I had opened a picture of a stranger’s lady parts. Instead, his reaction was very calm, and he said to me, so matter-of-factly, “Well, you didn’t want to send them, so I had to get them from someone else.” Safe to say, I no longer speak to this kid.

The point of that story is that, like the Vanity Fair article “Friends Without Benefits” explains, if you don’t give a man what they want now, they move on to the next girl; this is all possible now due to social media. The article shares the story of young girls who are ditched by men they are talking to when said man finds another woman willing to expose herself for him more than the original girl was. Sadly, that kind of thing happens all the time. Before social media, if a man asked a woman for a nude photo in person, it would, firstly, be considered rude and boorish. And then if the woman said no, he would have to go out and search for a woman who was okay with it, and who knows how long that could take.

Now, that same man hops onto Tinder or Facebook, and messages a new girl within seconds. Being that I haven’t been on this earth that long in the grand scheme of things, I don’t totally know if there was another normal way to share nude pictures, aside from an older character on the show Blue Mountain State saying he used to mail polaroid’s, but I don’t know how accurate that is. Social media has made men somewhat expectant of receiving these kinds of pictures. It’s almost as if their mindset is, “If she is physically able to send me a nude, she should.” Yet women don’t have these expectations for men. In fact, the use of social media has only increased the double standard of what is sexually acceptable for men and women.

If you’re scrolling through Instagram and see a picture of nicely cut abs on a very attractive shirtless guy, the typical response is “Wow, do me.” But if you’re scrolling and see a picture of a girl in a bikini, showing off the girls, the typical response is “Slut”, “Attention-whore” or “That’s a chick with daddy issues.” Now, I’m not making those comments up; I’ve heard them all before in reference to those type of pictures. Granted no one actually posts those comments on the picture itself, unless they are the worst kind of human, but they’re spoken to other viewers constantly.

If these two people were seen in person, the reactions would most likely be the same in thinking that each person is attractive with a nice body. Further, if both people were in skimpy clothing at the beach, it is considered acceptable since that is what everyone wears in that setting. But that exposure doesn’t translate to viewership online for women. At the beach, people were just seeing her in a bathing suit in passing; once a picture of the same outfit in the same setting is posted, she is negatively considered to be seeking attention of her looks. On social media, it is considered trashy for a woman to post anything that can be seen in a sexual light, while it is considered sexy for a man to do so.

Social media also opens up a window for women’s sexually activity to be mocked, while men’s is praised. I have a group of friends, mostly male, who have a large group chat among themselves. Normally the purpose of a group chat is to keep in touch with multiple people at the same time; but theirs gets filled with photos of group members and other women (who aren’t in the group) hooking up with each other. To clarify, this is how it goes: A guy in the group chat, James, hooks up with a girl, Kayla, at the bar. One of the one guys in the chat takes a picture of the pair making out against the wall, and posts the pictures in the chat. The guys praise him for getting with this girl, and all the guys who weren’t there in person can comment on how hot she is or how nice of an ass she has.

But a few weeks later, if the guys see Kayla getting with someone else, they’ll take a picture of it and post it in the chat so that they can all say how much of a skank she is. The guys who weren’t there in person can openly thank the boys for letting them stay home that night so they could avoid “grenades” (skinny ugly girls) at the bar. Note that she’s only considered a “grenade” now because she’s not hooking up with the guys’ friend anymore; why this is the case, I’ll never know, but I digress. Social media allows for people who didn’t even see what happened to ridicule an innocent girl that they don’t even know, while they praise their male friend who did the exact same thing.

Social media also creates the idea that only provocative photos are considered attractive to men and therefore that is what women should post in order to be liked. If you look at the amount of likes on an Instagram photo, there usually will be significantly more likes on a photo in which a women is wearing revealing clothing with full hair and makeup than there will be on a photo of a the same women in sweats with no makeup and her hair in a bun. This makes young girls think that those are the types of photos they should post and that those photos are considered cute; when in reality, and legally, those types of photos are actually child pornography. Those girls end up growing up with the idea that those photos are acceptable, as do other young girls who simply just see the photos and get an impression from them.

Social media creates an overly-sexualized atmosphere in which women have new expectations of how to please men, expectations which they did not completely have to deal with before social media created this atmosphere. As a woman, before social media helped created this atmosphere, I did not feel a pressure to expose myself in any picture to any man. I did feel worried that a man would leave me because I refuse. I did not feel the threat of having my sex life publicized to a group of men I don’t even know. I did not feel like I needed to post provocative pictures of myself in order to receive likes. I did not have any feeling that my body was an entertaining piece for the male population. I didn’t feel any of this. I never should have, but I did. I do. I always will.