The music industry has a ‘culture of demeaning women’ that forces stars to sell themselves as sex objects, according to singer Charlotte Church. Church said she was ‘pressurised’ into wearing revealing outfits in videos by male executives when she was 19 or 20. Now 27, the star said young female artists were routinely ‘coerced into sexually demonstrative behaviour in order to hold on to their careers.’ She made her comments during BBC 6 Music's annual John Peel Lecture. Her stinging attack on sexism in the music industry comes amid a heated debate over the sexual imagery used by pop stars like Miley Cyrus and Rihanna. The music business is ‘a male dominated industry with a juvenile perspective on gender and sexuality’ and increasingly wants ‘sex objects that appear child-like’, Church claimed. The star accused record labels of encouraging young singers ‘to present themselves as hypersexualised, unrealistic, cartoonish, as objects, reducing female sexuality to a prize you can win’.
Pray: against the sexualising of young women and for the protection of those at risk. (1Th.4:3)