Sexuality.
This is a daunting topic, isn't it? This article isn't about heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality or the multitudes of other sexualities out there. This article is about the ongoing sexual revolution in our media and in our lives. So many people are pro-sexuality and welcome this revolution with wide arms, and so many people are dead-set against it and, I'm sure, would take a fully automatic gun to it if it materialized into something. Personally, I find this revolution riveting as a teenager attending a public high school where the media, the main harbinger of this revolution, is front and center for most everything.


Everyday
Lately it has all been all about the body: boobs, butt, mid-drift, back, lips, high cheek bones, slender ankles and wrists, lean calves, upper thighs – all this is being used to sell products and make this revolution happen-. In the media people may be playing this up to its whole advantage, therefore urging it on. The media is a giant cycle that has been turning for a long time now, but has just started to pick up the pace around the 1990's and the 2000's. This includes The Spice Girls with the hoppy boppy songs of sex and love and the mega-controversial Brittany Spears with her hiked up school-girl skirt and knotted blouse. Things before this have spurred on the revolution, but with the coming of the Teen Pop Idles came the idea that if you have a body, then use it.

But back in the 1990's sex appeal was just starting to take the spotlight and it has already turned into a gigantic snowball taking down many people and other advertisement styles. Sex sells, and most everyone knows it. Most advertising companies are trying to appeal to the late teens, early twenty demographic; but really, if you’re a smoking hot 21-year-old, how much time are you going to spend in front of the TV watching other people be smoking hot? By default, the demographic falls upon the teens, and is starting to affect our tweens.

Too Far
Everyday we walk around our local malls and generally, we take a look at the ads displayed in the malls. For shoe stores, do you just see the foot and maybe a bit of the thigh? No, you see the whole body; a major shoe store (This may only be in Alberta, Canada) recently had an ad up for shoes, with a fully naked woman wearing them up in their store. My reaction was muted, because I've been desensitized by such media. This is a shoe store, and unfortunately, having a very attractive female wearing your shoes will increase the amount of people who buy from there.

Some people may be familiar with this commercial for motor oil, but it is using sex to sell its product as well. On day time TV, taking a break from whatever you're watching, these two peoples pop up, one blue and one red, you only see their outline, for they are made out of liquid. A song is playing and their dancing and suddenly they're dancing together. My first thought when I saw this ad was: "Oh, another booze ad", but it wasn't, it was for motor oil.

Barbie. Go take a look on their website. Mini-skirts that maybe make the 5 finger rule, deep V-necks to show off her bursting cleavage, tube tops for that plastic stomach of hers are all being used and sold to children and tweens. Barbie, for them, may or may not be a role-model, and if your role-model wears next to nothing, then how is our next generation going to be?

Sex sells, but when is it just too much, when do we put up a sign and say "Halt!"? I'm sure the line has been met and past in a series of events but maybe we've been blind-sided by the rather sudden revolution or we just don't care anymore.

Just Right
On the flip side of the same coin, when is a certain amount of sexuality just right? A nice fitting V-neck is defiantly encouraged, knee-length skirts that maybe are a little shorter than knee-length, but still respectable is very flattering and shows off your calves and ankles. In the top 10 most reoccurring kinks in society, nice wrists and ankles have made the top 3. I, personally, am guilty for having a kink for nice bodies in general.

People are sexy; it boils down to this fact of nature. It is human nature to be attracted to one another and the better someone looks the stronger that attraction will be. Being naked is sexy, yes, but that is for a more intimate sexy for people you know personally. Everyone has a different 'just right' mark inset in their minds so that's what they are attracted to. In general, not everyone is attracted to tiny tube tops and tiny Daisy Dukes. Justin Timberlake has realized this and is playing this up with well tailored suits and nice shirts and straight pants. As we're jumping forward into our own era of sexuality we're jumping back into the old days and taking our need for sex along with us. For good or for bad, we as individuals get to choose our 'just right' points, but unfortunately, we don't control the media demon.

All shapes and sizes
It isn't impossible to be big and sexy. This goes with our 'just right' policy, but if you know how to dress you body size, you can be one hot person. The media is using our skinny models that look a lot like their fading away. But we as a people are figuring out that we don't need to mimic the media to make a fabulous impression on someone you're attracted to. You can meet someone and they can say I care about your mind but that is a lie. Life is made of first impressions; and if you hold yourself in a confident manner while dressed to impressed then you are being part of the sexual revolution.

More and more plump women and men are finding their ways onto the front of our magazines and on our TV and you can tell they are healthy women. Being on the front a magazine makes you part of the media and being put on display in front of teenagers is turning them into a sex symbol. Talent is now making its way into the media, not just looks. The media will always flock to things beautiful, and them flocking to healthy sized women and men is a miracle and a recovery from my next topic.

One rib, two rib, three rib, four.
With the revolution has come the need to be 'beautiful' and the way some people think they can obtain this unnatural state of beauty is by being by our teen stars, half of which are underweight. It's understandable that Hilary was underweight, she was a busy woman and is currently running an empire; she probably couldn't always find the time to fit in a proper diet. Hilary has realized this and is working to put the weight back on. Some people are only famous because they are so skinny; and with those people being on the front page, other people who want to be on the front page are going to want to be like them.

Anorexia and bulimia are scary things. Anorexia is where someone just doesn't eat. In women, this causes dramatic weight lose, slight dizziness, lack of essentials of a healthy diet, and eventually your period will just dry up. In men it causes much of the same things without the loss of a period. The stomach shrinks to accommodate the lack of food and eventually, you can't even eat a pea. People have died because of anorexia and 1 in 3 people are affected with this. Bulimia is different, bulimia is where you eat and eat then throw it back up, either willingly or unwillingly. The effects are the same as anorexia, and just as scary knowing that someone is sticking their finger down their throat to making themselves throw-up to make themselves their kind of sexy. This shouldn't be the price of beauty and the obtainment of confidence which leads to a secure sexuality.

What's this got to do with dA?
Simply, what this has to do with dA is everything. dA is another form of media center, so they have a massive affect one what people think is sexy or not. Usually, unless you're a fan of dada art, the goal is to make any type of art or literature sexy. The goal of art is generally to appease, and to appease you have to first appeal to, and how does this tie in with the media? Sex sells. We've seen it all: not very well taken pictures making front or second page because they have breasts in them, not very well drawn pictures making front or second because maybe they have some bared skin. This happens all the time on dA and our dA mods can't do anything about it because they can't control people.

Nude photography is brilliant if cast in the right light and the right effects applied, but sometimes we find people just putting up nudes just to put up nudes or putting up nudes that should be under kinks to get away with it. But again, with nude photography, we're dealing with the same things that commercials and ads use to push their products out there; so nude photographers have to be careful with how they pull it off, because, whether they realize it or not, dA is a media center. So with people posting up bodies and people faveing, they are manually changing the 'just right' line, the 'too much' line and the 'scary' lines.

The aftermath
I've barely even touched the tundra that sexuality and the media monster. I haven't talked much, if any, about men and their sexual revolution; I've only just touched on how this affects dA, but this has to be brought to attention now, even if it is barley anything. Just by browsing the popular section in dA makes you part of the revolution because you're deciding what you think is sexy or not. A revolution isn't one person, and thousands and thousands of people. And daily, people fave what they are attracted to. As much as we can deny it; dA is a major media monster for many people, and as revolutionaries of our times, we have to harness this and not go overboard.