Striving for Pleasure Without Fear

Abstract

Contemporary women’s magazines are replete with scripts about sexual relationships and sexual roles for women. Our study used an experimental design to assess whether short-term exposure to a women’s magazine affected young women’s endorsement of sexual scripts commonly found in this genre, including scripts framing sexual intercourse as risky and portraying women’s sexual assertiveness as serving men’s sexual fantasies or women’s own sexual desires. Undergraduate women ( N = 160) were randomly assigned in groups to read articles either depicting scripts about sexual relationships in a popular women’s magazine (experimental) or containing no scripts about sexual relationships in a general entertainment magazine (control). Compared to women in the control group, women who were briefly exposed to a women’s magazine were less likely to believe that sexual intercourse is a risky activity and more likely to believe that women should be assertive in prioritizing their sexual desire for their own sake, but not for a male partner’s. Individual and cultural differences in women’s acceptance of magazines’ sexual scripts also emerged based on factors such as regular frequency of magazine reading, level of sexual experience, and ethnic background. Our results suggest that the complex and sometimes conflicting representations of female sexuality proliferating in the mass media and popular culture could potentially have both empowering and problematic effects on women’s developing sexual identities.