Sexualizing Females in Hollywood

Here is an interesting article that I found on how Hollywood continues to sexualize female adults and teenagers, and the research was done by USC's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. This article talks about the statistics of female roles in film and how females continue to have less speaking roles than males, which suggests gender imbalance. Also, I found it interesting that the sexualization of women caused "males viewing girls and women as "eye candy" at younger and younger ages". Additionally, the fact that these sexualized images leads to the increase in "body shame" and "appearance anxiety" in others strikes me as society's way of oppressing women. However, I wonder if it is Hollywood's conscious decision to do so - and if so, why? Why are powerful females in Hollywood not doing anything about it?

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/usc-annenberg-study-hollywood-hooked-on-sexualizing-women-and-teen-girls-2011-11-21

- Merry Chin