ABSTRACT
Hip-hop media and Black-oriented reality television play a notable part in depicting and shaping Black culture in the USA. However, these media also disseminate this culture to the larger society and serve as significant tools in socializing consumers to scripts of Black female sexuality. Unfortunately, the predominant media representations of Black women often illustrate racially-stereotyped, highly-sexualized images (Littlefield 2008; Wingfield and Mills 2012). The impact of these images on young adult African American women’s identity and sexuality has been largely ignored in the literature. Scholars (Coleman 2013; Stephens and Phillips 2003) assert that the available sexual scripts for African American women have a generally negative impact on the development of their sexual selves in that they include limited, racially-stereotyped and predominantly sexually-charged content. This qualitative study will serve to give voice to women reflected in and who are consumers of those media.
