“It’s not just practice or ideas, these messages are informing us how to react,” she said.
Chapman, is a family violence assessor for Hospitality House, which provides shelter and services to adult and child victims of domestic violence.
Chapman spent most of last week and will spend part of this week speaking to teens about dating violence and culture and how the media portrays gender roles.
“As teens, they’re learning ideas. One of the things we tell them is not to blindly follow,” Chapman said.
She spoke to kids at the South Rome Boys & Girls Club, as well as the College and Career Academy and the Floyd County Transitional Academy.
Chapman said she is concerned with the fantasy and sexualization of dating and domestic violence.
As one example she uses the song “Love the Way You Lie,” performed by rapper Eminem and pop artist Rihanna.
The song, which was an international hit last summer, Chapman calls disturbing.
At times the lyrics talk about beating each other up, and Chapman finds one line particularly disturbing, “If she ever tries to (expletive) leave again I’m gonna tie her to the bed and set this house on fire.”
She also uses the video as an example, which gained massive popularity with more than 390 million views on YouTube.
The video features two young, attractive actors, one of them Megan Fox, who at points engage in hitting each other and in the middle of a fight make out in their underwear.
“It looks attractive. It sexualizes the violence. These guys are watching it blindly and thinking, ‘If I want a hot girlfriend like Megan Fox, that’s the way I treat her.’ We see this more and more, violence being portrayed more and more,” she said.
Chapman said teen-dating violence is becoming evermore present.
“Teen dating violence presents the same issues as domestic violence,” Chapman said. “Some of these kids might be growing up in homes where there was domestic violence.”
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