Sex Trafficking is used dominately throughout the media. There are stories covered all over the world on the news, high-budget films are made, documentaries are made, television shows are based off of it, and celebrities use their talents to spread awareness of the topic.
One of the most well-known, and recent films is Taken, which was released in 2008 in the United States. This film is about an retired CIA agent, and his 17 year old daughter goes on a trip to Paris with her friend. The two girls arrive in Paris, and share a cab with a man, and the man discovers that they are traveling alone. This information allows an Albanian gang of human traffickers to kidnap these girls. They kidnap the girls, and the father begins his search to save his daughter (IMDb, 2011).
Plenty of other fictional films about sex-trafficking have been made, include Slumdog Millionaire, Holly, Trade, and EndSexTrafficking.com has even featured a trailer for an upcoming short film on sex trafficking from an organization called Stop the Candy Shop, the trailer depicts the dark message that the film will create. The film is a 30 minute film shot in protest of sex trafficking in Atlanta, which is one of the cities in the United States with the highest rate of sex-trafficking.
Celebrities also work to do their part. For example, MTV has an organization in the fight against sex-trafficking called MTV EXIT. Their website features many music videos that pertain to the harsh lives of the victims of sex trafficking. They have been featuring musicians, videos of celebrities support (for example, Angelina Jolie is featured), and personal testimonies. In this particular video, done by musical groups Black Iris and Best Coast Bethany Contantino, and it depicts the distressing struggles of a victim of sex-trafficking.
Along with MTV, celebrities Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore have created their own foundation against the trafficking of humans, and have recently released this viral campaign. It has gone viral through twitter, facebook, and youtube, and has suggested to their audience to make videos depicting what a real man is, and that "real men don't buy girls" (DNA Foundation, 2011). The original videos had celebrities who supported the cause, such as Justin Timberlake, Drake, Isaiah Mustafa, and Bradley Cooper.
