Mixed MessagesWhat does it mean to be truly liberated? “Liberation involves the freedom to do what you have already done or intended to do. It bars what is innate in you, free in terms of costs and freely in your possession, and removes the iron weight of social interdiction” (Greif), says Michael Greif author of “Afternoon of the Sex Children”. It suggests that I live without limits and ignore the judgments that will be made if I live this way. Unfortunately, society doesn't make it that easy. Everywhere I go, I am influenced by the standards that society maintains through the media. Currently, the media represents a huge contradiction. It stimulates me to do what I want, but then it also pushes me to conform to society's standards. During my freshman year of high school, I had to take a sex education class, and as a high school freshman, I felt uncomfortable and weirded out by the topic. I didn't want to hear an old man talk about sexually transmitted diseases and contraceptive methods. Sex was the furthest thing from my mind at that age. While growing up, my parents didn't let me watch all the latest TV shows and music videos, so at the time I wasn't influenced by the media compared to my peers who were already exposed to people like Trey Songz, who only ever sings about sex . It was clear that they had a completely different perspective on sex than I did. Greif in his essay briefly mentions how the media subliminally teaches children to become sexual children. In it he states: “Representatives of the sexual child in our entertainment culture are often 18 to 21 years old – legal adults. The root of their meaning is that their sexual value points backward to the status of the child, and not forward to the adult. So… middle of the paper… Witherspoon, and are labeled old fashioned and puritanical by the media. The media's view parallels the way society sets its standards. As a society, I believe we have been liberalized but not truly liberated. Compared to a few decades ago, society has come a long way in terms of accepting sexuality as part of our culture. It is acceptable for people to have premarital sex, but society is not as free as it should be. In the 1960s and 1970s, society began to move toward liberation during the sexual revolution, only to suddenly swing back in the opposite direction. I'm not sure why this happened, but our society has reverted to the mindset that sex and sexuality are okay but not acceptable to discuss freely. Technically, I'm free to do whatever I want, but the intense scrutiny I would receive limits how I think and behave.