The Sexualization of Women in the Media
In our culture, we are inundated with a very particular image of women. Whether it’s on TV, the internet, magazine covers, catalogs or billboards, women are portrayed as beautiful objects, as seductresses. Even the most wholesome images communicate this message, using a beautiful female face to draw one’s attention.
Exactly what this does to the brain is hard to say, but I imagine it is shaping our brains rather profoundly.
The category of “womanhood” as portrayed by the media is so powerful that when I look in the mirror, all I see is the ways I fall short. Clearly, those neural pathways for “woman” have been created and reinforced over and over again.
What’s more, when many men look at women, they are tempted to view them the way culture teaches men to view women—as sexual objects.
Of course, lust and the objectification of women is a matter of sin, period.
But, research into the brain also helps us to better understand the process. It helps to explain why men who look at pornography are more likely to view all women that way; they have literally trained their brains to do so.
Brain research may also explain why some men have trouble interacting with women in a manner that isn’t fraught with awkwardness.
Men who stay distant from the women they work with, the women at their church, etc., allow their understanding of women to be shaped by two or three primary influences: media, their wives and maybe their moms. This can shape one’s brain in a very particular way, and makes for a very lop-sided view of women and female relationships.
All of that to say, brain research sheds new light on verses like Philippians 4:8, which reads:
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
When God inspired these words, He knew exactly how our brains work.
What we put into our minds changes the very structure of our brains and shapes the way we engage our world. This reality has implications that extend far beyond the topic of lust, and everything I have here addressed to men is also true of women. Women are just as vulnerable to lust, in addition to other perverted ways of seeing the world and ourselves.
But there is hope.
With the help of the Holy Spirit, we can starve those negative neural pathways by creating and strengthening new ones. And as Philippians 4:8 teaches, we do this by focusing on the things of God. The less we feed ungodly mindsets, the less powerful they become in our brains, and in our lives.
Kind of brings new meaning to the phrase “food for thought.”
