Sex in American Culture

I've been wanting to post this for awhile. I'm hoping to have a very intelligent discussion about sex in American culture, but I plan on discussing other culture for comparative purposes.

I was a having a discussion with a friend the other day. She had spent last semester abroad in Italy. I spent my Fall 2011 semester abroad in India. We were comparing reverse culture shock experiences of coming back to the US. The most striking thing for me was the vast difference in sexual imagery. Yeah, I was on PMO while in India, even though it was harder to get it since the internet was slow and unreliable, but I never correlated PMO with sexual culture until later. In my mind, my PMO habit had nothing to do with the amount of sexual imagery in the US. However, it absolutely does. This Ted Talk by Ran Gavrieli illustrates why I'm talking about in case you're not sure what I'm getting at. It wasn't until I came back to the US that I realized how much sexual imagery there was. In India, I only saw it when I searched online for it. Here, I can't escape it.

It seems that American actresses, with very few exceptions (Ellen DeGeneres comes to mind), cannot succeed in Hollywood without being marketed in a sexual manner. They need to be arousing to make it at all. If you think about it, its very difficult to think of a successful actress who hasn't been marketed in a sexual way, whether its in her roles on screen, or more obviously, publicity photoshoots elsewhere in magazines and websites. Its like, if you're a female that wants to succeed in Hollywood, you need to be a de facto model too. Like Maxim magazine. Appearing in a bikini in Maxim is a sign that you've made in Hollywood. Only after that can an actress try to earn an Oscar or Grammy. A quick Google Image search for "Maxim" (WARNING: MAY BE TRIGGERING) will show you what I mean. It'll feel like you're looking for softcore porn. Meanwhile, successful guys that appear in magazines mostly appear in suits or powerful poses, which can be attractive to women and other men, but its not in a sexual way; its in an inspirational or motivational "look how cool I am" way. Most Gentleman's Quarterly magazine covers feature successful men in suits and the stories inside offer tips for success from those men, although occasionally they will have a sexy female on the cover. The stories on the women on covers focus on their physical appearance with sexy photos more than anything.

I'm interested in questions like the following.
~Is sexual appeal a requirement for female media success?
~Why is this so?
~How and when did it become this way? Was it always this way? How does the Feminist Movement play into this?
~How does this trickle into social interactions and personal lives?
Quick note about this. Young women everywhere turn to social media (mainly Instagram) to emulate these sexy celebrities. Seriously, how many young ladies in your life regularly post sexy selfies to their FB and Instagrams? And for what purpose??
~How can WE help to change this in the future? (Refusing to indulge in porn is a good start.)

I know this is a lot to process, and I don't expect anyone to address everything in this post, but little by little, I hope we can learn from one another.