Researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System evaluated sexual activity and satisfaction as reported by 806 older women who are part of the Rancho Bernardo Study (RBS) cohort, a group of women who live in a planned community near San Diego and whose health has been tracked for medical research for 40 years.

The study measured the prevalence of current sexual activity; the characteristics associated with sexual activity including demographics, health, and hormone use; frequency of arousal, lubrication, orgasm, and pain during sexual intercourse; and sexual desire and satisfaction in older women.

The median age in the study was 67 years and 63% were postmenopausal. Half the respondents who reported having a partner had been sexually active in the last 4 weeks. The likelihood of sexual activity declined with increasing age. The majority of the sexually active women, 67.1%, achieved orgasm most of the time or always. The youngest and oldest women in the study reported the highest frequency of orgasm satisfaction.

40% of all women stated that they never or almost never felt sexual desire, and one third of the sexually active women reported low sexual desire. Lead investigator Elizabeth Barrett-Connor, MD, Distinguished Professor and Chief, Division of Epidemiology, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, comments, “Despite a correlation between sexual desire and other sexual function domains, only 1 in 5 sexually active women reported high sexual desire.

Approximately half of the women aged 80 years or more reported arousal, lubrication, and orgasm most of the time, but rarely reported sexual desire. In contrast with traditional linear model in which desire precedes sex, these results suggest that women engage in sexual activity for multiple reasons, which may include affirmation or sustenance of a relationship.”

Regardless of partner status or sexual activity, 61% of all women in this cohort were satisfied with their overall sex life. Although older age has been described as a significant predictor of low sexual satisfaction, the percentage of RBS sexually satisfied women actually increased with age, with approximately half of the women over 80 years old reporting sexual satisfaction almost always or always. Not only were the oldest women in this study the most satisfied overall, those who were recently sexually active experienced orgasm satisfaction rates similar to the youngest participants.

“In this study, sexual activity was not always necessary for sexual satisfaction. Those who were not sexually active may have achieved sexual satisfaction through touching, caressing, or other intimacies developed over the course of a long relationship,” says first author Susan Trompeter, MD, Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine. Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Staff Physician at the VA San Diego Healthcare System.

“Emotional and physical closeness to the partner may be more important than experiencing orgasm. A more positive approach to female sexual health focusing on sexual satisfaction may be more beneficial to women than a focus limited to female sexual activity or dysfunction,” Trompeter concludes.

In a study published in the Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, Emily Rothman, associate professor of community health sciences at BUSPH, and colleagues surveyed 328 females who had utilized a Boston-area community or school-based health clinic, to explore whether they had ever had sex with multiple partners — either consensual or forced. The authors call this sexual experience “multi-person sex,” or MPS, in order to underscore that it refers to any group sex experience on a continuum from gang rape to sex parties.

Of the 7.3 percent who said they had group sex, more than half reported being pressured to engage in the group-sex situation. Forty-five percent reported a lack of condom use by a male participant during the most recent group-sex encounter. Participants with MPS experience also were more likely to report cigarette smoking, dating violence victimization, or ever being diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease, the study found.

In addition, those who had seen pornography in the past month were approximately five times as likely as those who had not seen pornography to report ever having had a group-sex experience.

The average age of the first group-sex experience was 15.6 years old. The majority of those who reported such activity said it was a one-time experience; 21 percent had multiple group-sex experiences. One-third reported using alcohol or drugs prior to their most recent experience, but half of those girls reported that their alcohol or drug use was not voluntary, indicating that they were “liquored up” or drugged by their sexual partner.

Multi-person sex “appeared to pose a potential risk to sexual and reproductive health, as only 55 percent of participants reported that condoms were used consistently during their most recent MPS,” Rothman and colleagues said. “The majority of MPS-experienced girls in this sample reported being pressured, threatened, coerced, or forced to participate in MPS at least once.”

More than half (54%) of those teens were younger than 16 when they had a group-sex experience, which in Massachusetts would mean that their sexual partners were violating state law regarding the age of consent, the study found.

“Given the substantial proportion of girls who reported that their MPS was nonconsensual, additional research to understand more about the perpetrators, and how to prevent this particular form of sexual violence, is warranted,” the authors said. “Researchers and clinicians should pay particular attention to younger adolescents engaging in MPS. Given heightened concerns about potential consequences, information about how to address MPS with this subgroup is urgently needed.”

The authors noted a “strong association between exposure to pornography, having been forced to do things that their sex partner saw in pornography, and MPS.” Even if participation was voluntary, they said, “it is crucial to know how this early experience shapes their sexual behavior trajectory and affects their lifetime risk for negative sexual, reproductive, and other health risk behaviors.”

The authors said that while there has been considerable research on adult MPS and its association with HIV transmission and sexually transmitted diseases, relatively little attention has been given to adolescent group-sex encounters. They cited a recent study of high-school girls in the Northeast that found that “sex parties” are currently an “accepted activity” of a certain subset of teens. Another study, in Sweden, found that 7 percent of female high school seniors who were sexually active reported having group sex.

“Group sex among youth is an important public health topic that has received very little attention to date,” Rothman said. “It’s time for parents, pediatricians, federal agencies, and community-based organizations to sit up, pay attention, and take notice: group sex is happening, and we need to be prepared to address it.”

She said the study was designed to estimate the prevalence and health correlates of adolescent multi-partner sex, in hopes of stirring further research.

Jean Malpas, the Director of the Gender and Family Project at the Ackerman Institute for the Family, explains how families of gender nonconforming and transgender children can benefit from a multi-dimensional approach to negotiating two understandings of gender: One being a traditional system of male or female which dominates mainstream society, which contrasts with a more flexible and fluid spectrum of gender being expressed by their children.

“Parents of gender nonconforming children often struggle with how to best protect their child from bullying and ostracism, while accepting and nurturing their child’s identity and expression.” said Jean Malpas. “This research shows how coaching, education, parent support group and family therapy can support everyone in the family in negotiating this dilemma.”

Jean Malpas’ clinical findings confirm that a normal diversity of gender expression exists among children and uses anonymous case studies to demonstrate the varied paths children take when developing their identity. Some nonconforming children will grow up to be transgender, others will eventually feel comfortable identifying with their biological sex, while others will continue to display gender nonconforming traits without requesting social or medical transition.

“Research on gender nonconformity also has implications for education policy,” said Malpas. “It is important that schools are aware and sensitive to the non-binary and non-biological aspects of gender, as it means gendered activities and segregation of students based on gender lines may no longer be appropriate if our children’s understanding of gender is expressed in more complex ways.”

Clinical approaches based on the non-pathologisation of gender diversity contrast with traditional psychiatric approaches, which have used cognitive-behavioral methods to extinguish atypical behaviours and reinforce traditional gender expression.

“Our clinical findings show that gender nonconformity in children is not a psychopathology but a normal display of diversity in gender expressions and identities,” concluded Malpas. “Providing multi-dimensional support to parents of gender nonconforming and transgender children allows them to accept and affirm their child’s identity while providing valuable protection at home, in school and out in the world.”

And the research discredits the persistent stereotype that men think about sex every seven seconds, which would amount to more than 8,000 thoughts about sex in 16 waking hours. In the study, the median number of young men’s thought about sex stood at almost 19 times per day. Young women in the study reported a median of nearly 10 thoughts about sex per day.

As a group, the men also thought about food almost 18 times per day and sleep almost 11 times per day, compared to women’s median number of thoughts about eating and sleep, at nearly 15 times and about 8 1/2 times, respectively.

The college-student participants carried a golf tally counter to track their thoughts about either eating, sleep or sex every day for a week. Each student was assigned to just one type of thought to record. Before receiving the tally counter, they had completed a number of questionnaires and were asked to estimate how often they had daily thoughts about eating, sleeping and sex.

Overall, a participant’s comfort with sexuality was the best predictor for which person would have the most frequent daily thoughts about sex.

“If you had to know one thing about a person to best predict how often they would be thinking about sex, you’d be better off knowing their emotional orientation toward sexuality, as opposed to knowing whether they were male or female,” said Terri Fisher, professor of psychology at Ohio State University’s Mansfield campus and lead author of the study. “Frequency of thinking about sex is related to variables beyond one’s biological sex.”

Correcting this stereotype about men’s sexual thoughts is important, Fisher noted.

“It’s amazing the way people will spout off these fake statistics that men think about sex nearly constantly and so much more often than women do,” she said. “When a man hears a statement like that, he might think there’s something wrong with him because he’s not spending that much time thinking about sexuality, and when women hear about this, if they spend significant time thinking about sex they might think there’s something wrong with them.”

The study appears online and is scheduled for publication in the January issue of the Journal of Sex Research.

The study involved 163 female and 120 male college students between the ages of 18 and 25 who were enrolled in a psychology research participation program. Of those, 59 were randomly assigned to track thoughts about food, 61 about sleep and 163 about sex. Most students were white and self-identified as heterosexual. The college-student sample made it comparable to previous research and involved an age group at which gender differences in sexuality are likely at their peak.

Before the thought-tracking began, the participants completed a number of questionnaires. These included a sexual opinion survey to measure a positive or negative emotional orientation toward sexuality (erotophilia vs. erotophobia); a sociosexual orientation inventory measuring attitudes about sex and tracking sexual behavior and levels of desire; a social desirability scale to measure respondents’ tendency to try to appear socially acceptable; and an eating habits questionnaire and sleepiness scale. They also were asked to estimate how many times in an average day that they thought about sleeping, eating and sex.

Researchers then gave each student a tally counter device and told those assigned to the sexual thoughts condition to click the device to maintain a count their of thoughts about sex. They were told to count a thought about any aspect of sex: sexual activity of any kind, fantasies and erotic images, sexual memories and any arousing stimuli.

Others were instructed to use the device to record thoughts about eating that included food, hunger, cravings, snacking or cooking, and thoughts about sleep that included dreaming, sleeping, napping, going to bed or needing rest.

The questions about food and sleep were designed to mask the true intent of the study’s focus on thoughts about sex, Fisher said. However, the results about these additional thoughts provided important information about differences in thinking among males and females.

“Since we looked at those other types of need-related thoughts, we found that it appears that there’s not just a sex difference with regard to thoughts about sex, but also with regard to thoughts about sleep and food,” she said. “That’s very significant. This suggests males might be having more of these thoughts than women are or they have an easier time identifying the thoughts. It’s difficult to know, but what is clear is it’s not uniquely sex that they’re spending more time thinking about, but other issues related to their biological needs, as well.”

And when all of those thoughts were taken into account in the statistical analysis, the difference between men and women in their average number of daily thoughts about sex wasn’t considered any larger than the gender differences between thoughts about sleep or thoughts about food.

In raw numbers, male participants recorded between one and 388 daily thoughts about sex, compared to the range of female thoughts about sex of between one and 140 times per day.

“For women, that’s a broader range than many people would have expected. And there were no women who reported zero thoughts per day. So women are also thinking about sexuality,” Fisher said.

The questionnaire data offered some additional clues about the influences on sexual thoughts. When all participants were analyzed together, those measuring the highest in erotophilia – or comfort with their sexuality – were the most likely to think more frequently about sex.

But when the analysis considered males and females separately, no single variable – erotophilia score, unrestrictive attitudes about sex or a lack of desire to be socially acceptable – could be defined as a predictor of how often men think about sex.

But for women, the erotophilia score remained a good predictor of more frequent sexual thoughts. On the other hand, women who scored high on the desire to be socially acceptable were more likely to think less frequently about sex.

“People who always give socially desirable responses to questions are perhaps holding back and trying to manage the impression they make on others,” Fisher explained. “In this case, we’re seeing that women who are more concerned with the impression they’re making tend to report fewer sexual thoughts, and that’s because thinking about sexuality is not consistent with typical expectations for women.”

The participants’ estimates about how often they thought each day about eating, sleeping and sex were all much lower than the actual number of thoughts they recorded. This suggested to Fisher that previous research in this area – especially on thoughts about sex – was weak because almost all previous studies were based on participants’ retrospective estimates about how often they thought about sex.

“There’s really no good reason that our society should have believed that men are thinking so much more about sex than women. Even the research that had been done previously doesn’t support the stereotype that men are thinking about sex every seven seconds,” she said.

Fisher conducted the research with undergraduate Ohio State-Mansfield students Zachary Moore and Mary-Jo Pittenger. Both have since graduated.

Most people like to look at pictures of nude or scantily clad human bodies. Looking at nude bodies is sexually arousing, and a nude human body is a classic subject in art. Advertising, too, has harnessed half-clothed models to evoke positive images about the products advertised. Brain imaging studies have localized areas in the brain which are specialized in detecting human bodies in the environment, but so far it has been unknown whether the brain processes nude and clothed bodies in different ways.

Researchers at the University of Tampere and the Aalto University, Finland, have now shown that the perception of nude bodies is boosted at an early stage of visual processing.

In the study, participants were shown pictures of men and women in which the models wore either normal everyday clothes or swimsuits, or were nude. At the same time, visual brain responses were recorded from the participants’ electrical brain activity. This method allows researchers to investigate the early stages of visual information processing.

The results showed that, in less than 0.2 seconds, the brain processes pictures of nude bodies more efficiently than pictures of clothed bodies. In fact, the less clothing the models in the pictures were wearing, the more enhanced was the information processing: the brain responses were the strongest when the participants looked at pictures of nude bodies, the second strongest to bodies in swimsuits, and the weakest to fully clothed bodies. Male participants’ brain responses were stronger to nude female than to nude male bodies, whereas the female participants’ brain responses were not affected by the sex of the bodies.

The results show that the brain boosts the processing of sexually arousing signals. In addition to the brain responses, the participants’ self-evaluations and measurements reflecting the activation of the autonomic nervous system were in line with expectations, showing that nude pictures were more arousing than the other types of pictures. Such fast processing of sexual signals may play a role in reproduction, and it ensures efficient perception of potential mating partners in the environment.

While the research used laboratory animals, the findings provide information that may be applicable to understanding human sexual development.

Researchers paired adult female hamsters with male hamsters when the males were 40 days old, the equivalent of a human’s mid-adolescence. They found that these male animals with an early-life sexual experience later showed more signs of depressive-like behaviors as well as lower body mass, smaller reproductive tissues and changes to cells in the brain than did hamsters that were first exposed to sex later in life or to no sex at all.

Among the cell changes observed in the animals that had sex during adolescence were higher levels of expression of a gene associated with inflammation in their brain tissue and less complex cellular structures in key signaling areas of the brain.

They also showed signs of a stronger immune response to a sensitivity test, suggesting their immune systems were in a heightened state of readiness even without the presence of infection – a potential sign of an autoimmune problem.

The combination of physiologic responses in adulthood don’t necessarily cause harm, but do suggest that sexual activity during the nervous system’s development might be interpreted by the body as a stressor, researchers say.

“Having a sexual experience during this time point, early in life, is not without consequence,” said John Morris, a co-author of the study and a doctoral student in psychology at Ohio State University. “It could be affecting males’ susceptibility to symptoms of depression, and could also expose males to some increase in inflammation in adulthood.”

Morris presented the research Tuesday (11/15) at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C. He conducted the study with Zachary Weil, research assistant professor, and Randy Nelson, professor and chair, both from Ohio State’s Department of Neuroscience.

Previous research has most often examined the effects of adolescent sex on young women, and for ethical reasons must be done in humans as retrospective explorations of behavior. The Ohio State scientists used hamsters, which have physiologic similarities to humans, to learn specifically how the body responds to sexual activity early in life.

“There is a time in nervous system development when things are changing very rapidly, and part of those changes are preparations for adult reproductive behaviors and physiology,” Weil said. “There is a possibility that environmental experiences and signals could have amplified effects if they occur before the nervous system has settled down into adulthood.”

The scientists worked with five groups of male hamsters: two groups that had sex at age 40 days and were assessed at 40 days and 80 days after exposure to sex, two groups that had adult sex at age 80 days and were assessed at the same time intervals, and hamsters that had no sexual experience. Male hamsters reach puberty at age 21 days.

The researchers placed the adolescent and adult males in environments with in-heat female hamsters for six hours and recorded their encounters to ensure that sexual activity occurred.

The animals were subjected to a variety of tests when they all had reached adulthood. They were placed in mazes with options to explore open areas or hide in isolation; those that chose not to explore were showing signs of anxiety. Animals placed in water showed signs of depressive-like behavior if they stopped swimming vigorously.

“Both groups of sexually active hamsters showed an increase in anxiety-like behavior compared to the control group, but the increase in a depressive-like response was specific to the adolescent sexually paired group,” Morris said.

A test of immune system sensitivity suggested that the hamsters with adolescent sexual experiences were at risk for excess inflammation as part of an enhanced immune response. In addition, these same hamsters had higher levels of a pro-inflammatory cytokine called interleukin-1, or IL-1, in their brain tissue than did the other hamsters. IL-1 is one of several chemical messengers that cause inflammation, most often to fight infection or repair injury; when it circulates without an infection to fight, the body experiences excess inflammation.

This elevated gene expression was seen in areas of the brain known not to reach maturity until well into adulthood – including the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and striatum. In some of these same areas of the brain, animals with adolescent sexual experience also showed less complexity in the dendrites, the branching segments from nerve cells that house the synapses, which carry signals to the brain from the rest of the body.

Without further research, the scientists don’t know exactly what these brain differences mean. But because they are seen most prominently in the animals that were exposed to sex in adolescence, the scientists say, there is a clear association with that activity. “Sex is doing something physiological that these cells are interpreting and responding to with shorter dendrites,” Weil said.

Finally, the hamsters that had adolescent sex had a smaller total body mass as well as a decrease in accessory reproductive tissue, including the seminal vesicles, vas deferens and epididymis, as adults.

“This suggests to us that maybe this process is causing the animals to have a maladaptive response reproductively, as well,” Morris said.

Numerous images of women appear in Roman mosaics. The majority are inspired in mythology – goddess, heroines and other protagonists of countless legends – although other flesh and blood women, probably dominae, their daughters, handmaidens and servants, are also documented. “The most significant aspect of these images is the different roles they reflect and their contribution to the construction of certain stereotypes, not just in the Roman world, but also throughout history and up to the present”, points out Luz Neira, Associate Professor of Ancient History in the Department of Humanities: History, Geography and Art, and a researcher at UC3M’s Institute of Culture and Technology.

Bisexual women also are at greater risk to smoke and be victimized, the research finds.

“Why?” Lindley wonders. “That’s what we keep asking.”

She has some theories. “Bisexuals are often invisible,” she says of bisexual women. “There’s a lot of prejudice against them. They’re told ‘You’re confused — pick one.’ There tends to be this expectation or standard that a person picks one sexual identity and sticks with it. I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about bisexuals. I think their risk has a lot more to do with stigma.”

The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, uses three different dimensions of sexuality — identity, behavior and attraction — and links them to a variety of health outcomes, says Lindley, an associate professor in Mason’s Department of Global and Community Health within the College of Health and Human Services.

Looking closely at the survey data, Lindley notes, both bisexual girls and boys were more likely to be high-risk for depression, stress and alcohol abuse when they were teenagers. She found that the odds dropped for men as they got older, but not so for women.

In addition, women who were strictly identified as straight or gay didn’t have the same risk factors that bisexual women had, Lindley says. More studies are needed to understand what is going on with these young women, she adds.

Lindley’s research builds on new information. Until now, few national studies have asked about sexual attraction, behavior and identity, Lindley says. Some think bisexuals are increasing the risk level reported among the overall lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, she says. Researchers need to learn more about the individual communities.

“They’re not all troubled,” she says of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. “They’re not all high risk.”

Discordance could be at the heart of the issue for bisexual women, Lindley says. “They’re saying, ‘I identify one way, but I behave in a different way and am attracted in another way,’ ” she says.

They may be more isolated and may not feel as if they have someone to talk with who understands what they are going through, she adds.

More young women than men reported that they were attracted to both sexes and that they were “mostly” straight or bisexual.

“Women are more likely to have sexual identities that fluctuate over time,” Lindley says. “Whereas with men, it tends to be either ‘I’m straight’ or ‘I’m gay.’”

Men didn’t report feeling as depressed or stressed as women did. They also didn’t binge-drink or smoke as much as bisexual women.

So why are men better off?

“I don’t know is the honest answer,” Lindley says. “Perhaps it’s because men, if gay or straight, have a stronger connection to their community. Bisexual women may not feel as if there is a community for them.”

Lindley and her co-authors Katrina M. Walsemann and Jarvis W. Carter Jr. of the University of South Carolina used a nationally representative sample of 14,412 people — 7,696 women and 6,716 men — in the survey. The survey first was given in 1994-95 when the respondents were enrolled in grades 7-12 and given again in 2007-08 when they were 24 to 32 years old.

The reported need for privacy, because of the perceived stigma and lack of acceptance in both homosexual and heterosexual communities, is so pervasive that bisexual men often do not feel comfortable accessing sexual health-related services, even those targeted toward “gay and bisexual men,” because of a concern over what others would think of their bisexuality. A more general approach to providing services, framed as “men’s health” or “men’s sexual health,” will most likely be more effective, researchers learned.

“In terms of designing a specific program for behaviorally bisexual men, we’ve learned it will not be effective to openly advertise about it or put it on billboards; we have to be more discreet,” said Brian Dodge, associate director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at IU. Dodge’s research for nearly 10 years has involved bisexual behavior and associated health needs, yet these findings from his recent study were “surprising.”

“The fear of disclosure, desire for privacy, and anticipation of stigma are even more problematic than we anticipated,” he said. “The reasons for these issues eventually need to be addressed not only with bisexual men but also at the societal level if we are to increase participation in effective health services without operating in stealth.”

This and three other studies discussed at the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting are part of a larger study by Dodge and his collaborators, who are looking at health issues specific to bisexual men. This research approach is unique because most studies have combined bisexual men with gay men in previous behavioral science research.

The IU research involved 75 men in the Indianapolis area who had sex with at least one man and one woman within the previous six months. The participants each underwent in-depth interviews, 15 of which were conducted in Spanish. Of the participants, 25 were black, 25 were white and 25 were Latino.

Dodge’s study “Administering Sexual Health-Related Services to Bisexual Men: Privacy, Trust and Appropriate Messaging” was the recipient of the annual Excellence in Abstract Submission award from the HIV/AIDS Section of the APHA. Dodge is delivering oral presentations about this, as well as “Community Based Research in ‘Hidden’ Communities: Understanding Individual and Social Health Concerns among Bisexual Men” and a poster presentation, “Sexual Behaviors and Experiences among Bisexual Men in the Midwestern United States.” Co-investigator Omar Martinez is also presenting on issues specific to Latino participants in his talk “Sexual Health and Access to Care: Voices from Bisexual Latino Men in the Midwestern United States.”

Dodge, an associate professor in the Department of Applied Health Science in IU’s School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, will discuss “Administering Sexual Health-Related Services” Tuesday, Nov. 1, at 10:30 a.m. in the Washington Convention Center. Co-authors are Phillip Schnarrs, Gabriel Goncalves, Michael Reece and Omar Martinez, all with the IU School of HPER; David Malebranche of Emory University School of Medicine; Ryan Nix of Step Up Inc. in Indianapolis; Barbara Van Der Pol of IU School of HPER; and J. Dennis Fortenberry of the IU School of Medicine.

Branded alcohol references are most common in rap, R&B, and hip hop songs, and they are commonly associated with a luxury lifestyle characterized by degrading sexual activity, wealth, partying, violence and the use of drugs.

This analysis of 793 of the most popular songs in the youth market between 2005 and 2007 found that about 25% of the songs that mention alcohol also mention a brand name. This represents about 3.4 alcohol brand appearances per song-hour. Given that the average adolescent is exposed to about 2.5 hours of popular music per day, young people’s annual exposure to alcohol brand references in popular music is substantial. The consequences that these songs associated with alcohol were more often positive than negative (41.5% vs. 17.1%). Alcohol brand appearances were commonly associated with wealth (63.4%), sex (58.5%), luxury objects (51.2%), partying (48.8%), other drugs (43.9%), and vehicles (39.0%).

The investigators note that frequent exposure of young people to brand-name references in popular music may constitute a form of advertising and could contribute to the early initiation and maintenance of substance use among adolescents. Typically, brand-name references to alcohol are strongly associated with positive feelings and associations, which are often the goal of advertisements. The brands found in music, such as Patron Tequila, Grey Goose Vodka, and Hennessey Cognac, represent the same distilled spirits brands that are increasingly named as favourites by underage drinkers, especially women.

The authors suggest that the relatively high level of brand-name alcohol appearances in popular music may be a consequence of strengthening ties between the alcohol and music industries. Some alcohol companies have formally entered the music industry, such as Seagram’s ownership of Universal and Polygram between 1995 and 2001. And individual artists, particularly those in the rap and hip hop communities, have begun to establish and promote their own alcohol lines, including Lil’ Jon (Little Jonathan Wineries, 2008), Ludacris (Conjure Vodka, 2009), Jay-Z (Armadale Vodka, 2002), Snoop Dogg (Landy Cognac, 2008), TI (Remy Martin Cognac, 2010) and Sean “P. Diddy” Combs (Ciroc Vodka, 2001).

According to the authors, most instances of brand-name references in song lyrics seem to be unsolicited and unpaid for by advertising companies.

However, the line between paid advertising and brand references is difficult to distinguish because advertising companies have begun retroactively to reward artists with product, sponsorship, or endorsement deals after a song containing their product’s name becomes popular. For example, when Busta Rhymes and P. Diddy’s hit “Pass the Courvoisier” was released in 2002, the cognac’s sales jumped 18.9% and Courvoisier’s parent company, France’s Allied Domecq, subsequently reached a lucrative promotional deal with Busta and P. Diddy’s management company, Violator.

Alcohol trade associations such as the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) have developed self-regulation codes that specify inappropriate marketing practices, such as a guideline forbidding marketing to audiences below legal drinking age. However, because rap music is popular among high school students, the authors suggest that advertising campaigns that focus on rap artists are not consistent with the alcohol industry’s stated intent to avoid marketing to underage drinkers.