Sexual Content Assignment

For this assignment, I tried really hard not to change my TV watching habits. The only problem with that is that I do a lot of “channel surfing” opposed to consistently watching or following just one show. Although I don’t have a favorite show that I follow, I do watch a lot of TV both in the mornings while I eat breakfast and in the evenings while I wind down from a hard day at school. So for this assignment I just went through and recorded a pretty typical day for me and the TV that I watched.

In the morning I watched VH1’s “Jump Start”. It is pretty much a morning show where they just play a lot of music videos in a row. This particular morning there actually wasn’t too many instances of sex. The few that were there, were just suggestive “making out” along with suggestive lyrics. There were a total of two instances that I found.

When I got home from school, I tossed off my backpack and took a seat on the couch. I immediately turned on the TV and went to my favorite channel—Food Network. There I watched two shows, “Throw Down with Bobby Flay” and “the Barefoot Contessa.” I LOVE cooking shows and am a bit of a Food Network addict. For both the shows, there was zero instances of sex. My downfall was, however, the fact the I hate commercials and always channel surf throughout the program I am watching. When I did this I ended up watching little fragments of Friends, a TLC documentary, and a dumb VH1 reality show. I didn’t see any actual instances of sex, but just during the commercial breaks, I heard 4 sexual references. On Friends, they were first talking about one of their mom’s boyfriends and him “giving her pleasure”. Later they were also talking about how one of the characters got “knocked up”. In the end, I've decided that Food Network really is the way to go!