Sitting in the local movie theater this weekend, I couldn't help but notice that almost all of the previews pictured a half-naked woman or teenage girl.

The audience in the theater, most of them middle schoolers, got a good look at the high school sex kitten sporting a string bikini in Disturbia.

Not to mention Jessica Biel's barely-covered rear in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.

It seems media companies will do almost anything to create sex appeal.

And most of them don't seem to care about the disturbing images often making women nothing more than a good figure.

Women are exploited and eroticized in movies, music, television shows, radio programs, magazines, films and video games.

It's time the media moguls take more responsibility for the messages they convey.

One reason women are often misrepresented in the media is that women hold only a fraction of the decision-making and creative power.

In Hollywood, women accounted for only 17 percent of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors for America's top-grossing films of 2005, according to moviesbywomen.com.

The Women's Media Center also reports that women hold only 3 percent of the most powerful positions in mainstream media.

If the decision-makers in the media are mostly men, that gives us an almost exclusively male perspective on things like sex, relationships and gender roles.

As a woman, I can say that many times the portrayals of girls and women in the media are unrealistic and seem to cater to male fantasies and egos.

Even female characters who are supposed to be empowered are often portrayed with unrealistic expectations for beauty and perfection.

Take Desperate Housewives, for example. Though I applaud the program for showing that women in their 30s and 40s can still be sexy, all of the lead actresses have extremely thin, toned bodies.

And nearly every episode shows at least one of the women pictured in her underwear or lingerie.

But this example is benign compared to some of the immensely degrading repre-
sentations of women in the media.

Hip-hop and rap videos often show scantily-clad women dancing and moving provocatively around fully-dressed male artists, who often refer to women in their music as "bitches" and "hos."

And video games like Grand Theft Auto allow players to "use" prostitutes for sexual intercourse and then beat them up to regain their money.

Even the video game Lara Croft: Tombraider, which might seem empowering to women because it features a female heroin, can also be considered derogatory.

Lara Croft may raid tombs, but she does so with super short shorts and a tight shirt that accentuates her large breasts.

Some forms of media allow consumers to sneak a peak without even buying the product.

Just walk by the magazine rack in McLanahan's or CVS and you will be bombarded with pictures of women posing in bikinis, bras and thongs.

Even successful and well-respected pop singers like Beyoncé, Christina Aguilera and Michelle Branch have posed provocatively in the men's magazine Maxim to help their careers.

Why isn't it enough that a woman be talented?

Why must she feel pressure to take off her clothes to "make it" in the entertainment business?

It's rare that you see a male star sexualized in such a way. There is hope for change, however.

When Don Imus, one of the country's most popular radio hosts, referred to the Rutgers women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos" two weeks ago, NBC and CBS pulled the plug on his show due to the public outrage that ignited.

Still, for a great deal of progress to be made, more women need to take on roles as producers, directors, editors and screenwriters. As the saying goes, "It matters who makes it."

I would hope that if more women took on top positions in the media, we would see more realistic and empowering representations of women and girls.

That's not to say that the men who hold creative power can't make a change as well.

They should consider whether the images of women their companies produce are objectifying and reinforce harmful stereotypes that women have fought so hard to overcome.