Is it only me wondering about this sudden market upsurge in these so-called 'roots' and 'energy' drinks? Just the other day, a marketing agent at the supermarket offered me a sample of yet another new energy drink. I looked at the label, saw a half-naked blonde woman and 'hooters' emblazoned over her head.

"Shouldn't you be offering this drink to a man?" I asked the marketing agent. We both laughed. I drank the sample, it tasted okay but I can't report that it made me feel any better (or worse).

Then recently, I switched from my usual CNN and HGTV diet to one of the local television channels just in time to see a woman raising, rather seductively, an oversized butt off a sofa, then she sauntered to an oversized, elongated drink bottled (must be a phallic symbol) and began doing some kind of pole dancing on the bottle. (Well, so much for the post-modern feminist era.) That was yet another 'roots' and/or 'energy' drink.

Half-naked women

But I am knocking the drinks themselves because half-naked women are being used to sell everything from a pin to an anchor. I am knocking the raw, in-your-face public displays of sex and the negative imaging of women. All these half-naked women publicly pushing the sexualisation of themselves wouldn't matter to me except that these images continue to feed negative stereotyping of women as mere objects for sex. For heaven's sake, I have a brain and I use it to make a living! Women's bodies are being portrayed and dismembered as mere legs, bottoms, breasts or thighs introducing and reinforcing a view of them as mere objects rather than whole human beings who can think and feel.

And, if we continue to reinforce the stereotype that women's raison d'etre is attracting men and sexually satisfying them, then don't wonder at teenage girls pimping and prostituting themselves on the 'hip strips'. You see, life does not occur in neat little compartments but is quite complex.

Sex objects and violence

Violence is a major public-health concern. Some research shows that repeated exposure of audiences to the gendered images may contribute to a range of social problems, such as violence against women, sexual harassment and sexist attitudes and beliefs. Another thing that these highly sexualised images of women do is to make women appear powerless, subservient, passive and not in control of their lives and destiny. Made powerless and dehumanised, she is more open to abuse and violence.

With all the advancement in technology and in women's education and professional achievements, the dominant superstructure appears too stubborn to shift out of a sexist view of the roles of women and men. Research by Courtney and Lockeretz (1971) and Courtney and Whipple (1983) found four basic themes when images of women are portrayed in media: as traditional homemakers; as unable to conduct important business or make important decisions; as in need of a man for everything; and, viewed as sex objects and decoration with no personality.

These themes are still trenchant. Compare this to research showing that pictures of women's bodies and body parts ('body-isms') appear more often than pictures of men's bodies and men's faces ('face-isms') are photographed more often than their bodies.

Let's move forward

1. Continue to educate women to professional levels so that they have the option to make money based on the content of their brains and not on the size of their butt or breasts and their 'nice brown skin'.2. Continue to teach men to choose life partners based on the pooling of 'brain resources' and not based on the size of the prospective partner's butt, breasts or skin colour. This makes for more wholesome and long-lasting relationships.3. Continue to build good parents and solid families that can produce valuable citizens with high self-esteem and self-worth.4. Elected leaders continue to clarify and articulate a national value system. Nature abhors a vacuum and the vacuum in values is now being filled with values of pimping, prostitution and public displays of sex.

Eulalee Thompson is health editor and a professional counsellor; email eulalee.thompson@gleanerjm.com.