Embarrassment, Education and Erotics

Abstract

This article discusses parents' and young people's accounts of family television viewing, produced as part of a research project into responses to sexual content in the media. The analysis identifies how practices of media consumption, such as parents 'discussing' social issues in drama with their children, are gendered and gendering. These in turn contribute to young people's understandings of gender and sexual identities. The article argues that familiar anecdotes, for example, about the 'embarrassment' of communally watching sexual images on television, can be an occasion for challenging or reinforcing family power relations and making identity claims, both at the time of viewing and of retelling.