Stopping Sexual Objectification

[yellowraincoat]

Just thought I'd post the link to a series from Sociological Images (my favourite site ever) about how we can recognise and stop sexual objectification.

I found it really interesting and enlightening.

Here's part 1 , mostly about recognising, other parts go into how you can stop it.

By the way, the posts are definitely not without their problems, there is a lot that I disagree with there. But there are definitely some good tips and things to think about.

Thanks for the link to that site yellow

I find it really difficult to define concepts like this - am glad someone has done it for me

It's a good site, plenty of thought-provoking stuff.

As long as there's money to be made, this is like Queen Canute (I just invented her) telling the tide to turn. It just isn't going to happen.

The examples show sexualized images of women being used to sell stuff to men, and it's obvious enough why. But American Apparel and Victoria's Secret are selling to women, and they do it too. I assume it's "sexy babes = women being attractive because of our merchandise and of course you want to be attractive = you are getting into a mood to buy from us".

TeiTetua, just because not much is ever going to change, we can make ourselves aware of it and change it in ourselves.

Personally I'm much happier since I stopped reading fashion magazines.

There was a good summation somewhere in those links

'we are taught that Men want, and Women want to be wanted'

Your comment above TeiTetua is an illustration of that dynamic.

Go on the Object website.

Thing is, objectification isn't necessarily bad. To sell gloves, rings, hand lotion or indeed things that need delicate fingertip manipulation, an advertiser will often depict hands, without showing the rest of the person whose hands appear in the picture. This isn't a bad thing.
The trouble is with the 'anti-sexual-objectification' argument is that you end up insisting that no pictures depicting people, or parts of people, are acceptable, there will always be another whinyarse who wants to take it a step further and ban something else.

Not neccessarily SGB - the argument is that no sexualised pictures depicting parts of people are acceptable. That's the argument and for good reasons. I don't know where you are getting the idea that whinyarses will want to ban handlotion ads

But there is not, actually, anything inherently wrong with a sexualised picture depicting part of a person.
Procensorship activists are such fucking miserable, intellectually dishonest and fundamentally stupid creatures that I just have no patience with them.

There is something wrong when the vast vast majority of sexualised pictures in display in public are of women / parts of women, and children are exposed to them constantly from the word go.

I would just rather images in public of women were toned down, less objectified, and that images of men and women were on the same level IYSWIM.

Should we all cover ourselves from head to toe? What about eyes? They can e very sexual.

Yes, what SQ said. I have no problems with sex, sexiness, nudity...I'm not anti-porn (if it is regulated)...it's that women are almost always sexualised and men rarely are.

No of course not eclectic there's nothing wrong with sexualisation per se - it's just the proportion of it, imo. It'd be great if 5% of aspirational images of both men and women were sexualised and the rest were of people getting on with other human pursuits. Much less confining, much less damaging, much broader.

I think when it comes to objectification, people use the term to critique the offering up of a female body for the gaze and consumption of a view (perceived to be male). Yes, a hand and wrist shown in a wristwatch ad is 'objectified' to sell the watch, it does happen but I don't think that's what we find so annoying, pernicious and damaging to women's lives. I think the half-naked woman draped on a car, the half-naked woman eating a burger, the half-naked woman lying on a carpet ... these are the weird moments of objectification that say: Here is a woman. Her body is for you. Want it? Right, now buy this carpet.

I mean, why? Women's bodies don't belong to anyone but themselves. But if you looked pretty much anywhere in the street, online, in the magazines, just in a shop ... you wouldn't think that. A martian landing on the high street would think that women's bodies came free with whatever is purchased, be it strawberries or engine oil. And that affects how women perceive their bodies (eg: not their own, not good enough, for others to view and discuss and criticize).

I don't have a plan, I don't have a call for censorship - but I don't think it's boring and I don't think it's unimportant. I am not calling for everyone or anyone to cover up.

I do think that it makes women unhappy and (mentally, socially) unwell and unequal to have women's bodies on display everywhere as if they existed for display and not because all people have bodies.

Blackcurrents makes a point where I think most traction can be made - the use of sexualised women to sell unrelated items.

Case in point - "Stuff" magazine is all about gadgets, yet every month its front cover has a swimsuit model holding said gadgets. It even irritates some of the readers, who occasionally write in and complain about this (and they aren't necessarily female - there's quite a few men who object to being manipulated in this way).