Assignment 4

In this post, I will be discussing various media representations of sex in the U.S. It seems to me that sex is often portrayed in U.S. media as separate from love; that is, it is more often discussed as "lust" or as less than actual love. For instance, in the popular books/movie series Twilight, Bella Swan and Edward Cullen's love is deepened and given more respect because they resist their sexual impulses until after they are married. We as the readers/viewers are supposed to know that because Edward will not allow Bella to indulge her sexual desires and thereby sully herself, he actually loves her more than other men who might take advantage of a woman who "doesn't know what she's doing". 

Further, we see the obvious example of sex portrayed as separate from love in reality television. Often, on shows such as The Real World, we see young adults "hooking up" and then we see testimonials of how although this hook-up was nice, neither is looking for a "serious relationship". This is something that has even spawned new phrases such as "friends with benefits" or even more crass examples which I will not list here. 

All of these representations seem to fly in the face of what religion teaches us, which is generally that sex is a sacred part of love, that indeed, sex and love are inseparable parts of the same intimate relationship that human beings have both in this life and the next. In Catholicism, sex is something that is limited only to marriage, and that only serves to deepen love and serve God. For buddhists, sex with the correct partner is a step towards Nirvana. Though these religions do value monogamy, just as Twilight does, they all see sex as something that is spiritually intertwined with love, and that love is something that helps one fulfill one's obligation to worship a god. With these contrasting representations of love, the louder or more available message is bound to win cultural importance. Still, never do either of these representations allow for the fact that sometimes sex is more relevant to love than other times; that, in fact, there is actually a gray area which it would not serve either popular media nor religion to tell the public about.