Sexualization in Racial Context: Sexualization, Skin Tone and Black Women’s Perception of In-Group Representation on Social Media

Black women sit at the intersection of sexualized gender and racial oppression which shapes how Black women are socialized and influences how their images are (mis) represented in the media. Guided by sexualization scholarship, the critical media effects (Ramasubramanian & Banjo, 2020) and intersectional (Crenshaw, 1994/2013) frameworks, this study investigated the impact of sexualized social media content on Black women. A sample of 872 Black women (ages 18–81) residing in the United States was recruited to participate in this study. Participants viewed sexualized (vs. non-sexualized) social media images of other Black women whose skin tone varied (darker brown vs. lighter brown). Results indicate that participants made less amiable attributions about sexualized (vs. non sexualized) and lighter brown (vs. darker brown) skinned women. In addition, findings revealed nuances in how Black women perceive representation across media; lighter brown skinned women were viewed as more prototypical representations of Black women in both traditional and social media. Sexualized women were seen as more prototypical in traditional media. Implications and future directions for more culturally sensitive technology research are discussed.