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Larenz Johnson
Professor Melissa Sipin
English 110
12/1/14
Women Arent Barbie
In the United States, a blind eye is turned to the idea of women being seen as equal when
compared to their male counterparts, despite their work ethic or competence, due to the fact that
a large majority of the male population sees women as objects because of the implantation of
societal beliefs carried throughout time. Along with this is the media portrayal of women, in
which women are used as accessories to the men whether on film, in magazines, or in literature.
That is where many young girls learn ideals from in this day and age, leading to females learning
what it means to be the right female from the wrong source. No matter the time or money or
effort that women put in to achieve the goals set by themselves, they will always just be seen as
lower level beings or under the weight of a society controlled by men. It all goes back to the days
of women being seen as solely housewives, trembling to the whim of their husbands because
they were classified as their chattels. In the society Americans live in, there is a certain unspoken
importance of the gender roles of women, with them being seen as lower level beings when
compared to men and deserving of their objectifications. They are seen as property, tools at the
disposal of men to satisfy their needs, although actions towards women from men are often seen
as innocent in their attempts due to the subtle covering of eyes.
An outcry of an example of objectification in America is the video, 10 Hours of
Walking in NYC as a Woman, in which a young lady walked around New York City for ten
hours and was subject to over a hundred catcalls by male citizens on the sidewalks she occupied.

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This video uses a female to represent one problem (sexual harassment) but tackles something
much larger: how the way men perceive women leads to their oppression throughout American
culture. As she walks, a barrage of compliments are thrown at her, ranging from simple hellos
to exclaiming Damn, causing everyone watching to feel as violated as she does by this ordeal.
These men dont see that shes a human, to them she is just an attractive female, something they
always see on television but is now walking in front of them. The response to this video also
gave insight to how men think about women. In her article 7 Things Men Get Wrong About
Catcalling, Marcie Bianco, she replies to the male response of, its flattering, when it comes
to catcalling by saying, Catcalls do not make women feel better about themselves; just the
opposite: They make women want to hide under layers of clothing so as not to attract unwanted
attention. This shows that men literally believe that they arent at fault due to their title as men.
Because they identify and were born as males, they keep the notion that women should be lucky
to receive their attention, thus treating them not as women but as things.
To many, objectification isnt a serious thing with serious repercussions, because its not
called objectification. In this society it has no name at all honestly, its just there. Syzmanski,
Moffitt, and Carr state, Objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) postulates that
many women are sexually objectified and treated as an object to be valued for its use by others,
and later that, Fredrickson and Roberts (1997) asserted that women to varying degrees
internalize this outsider view and begin to self-objectify by treating themselves as an object to be
looked at and evaluated on the basis of appearance. This shows the full spectrum of
objectification. It leads to an acute emotional breakdown in which women conform to what men
expect of them in order to live what is believed to be a normal life, because women who dont
look as if they are or could be beauty pageant contestants are pushed into the corner as those who

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do are forerunners in the center of the floor. The woman who looks like what societal would call
a slut is more likely to get a job no matter her credentials, due to the male interviewer believes
that shell be willing to have sex with him. In a journal by Laura Vandenbosch and Steven
Eggermort, they state, Subsequently, these beauty standards guide the formation of an
objectified view of ones own body resulting in an increased monitoring of ones appearance.
The objectification we see on film, in magazines, etc., gives the blueprint for what females
believe they are supposed to be and furthermore what males believe females should be. Males
believe females should be these sexy models or strippers mainly because they are easier than
real women are. For instance the magazine Playboy, a NOMAS.com article by Phyllis B. Frank
notes, Magazines like Playboy claim to be "celebrating women's beauty." But Playboy doesn't
run pictures of... Women... Of female human beings of all ages and sizes, of the women who
make up more than half of our population. What Playboy does in fact is to "celebrate" one
minutely small portion of the female gender. Theyre right, but the celebration of this small
portion causes a bigger problem than one would think. With men seeing these women bearing it
all to them, they believe that these women really want them and are obtainable. This leads to an
overconfidence in males which goes back to catcalling, setting the way for objetifications
amplification in our society. Furthermore, if a young girl sees the response men have to these
photos, shell believe that this is what it means to be a woman, and this enables the aspect of rape
culture known as blaming the victim.
Blaming the victim goes back as far as the 1960s with the case of Kitty Genovese, who
was raped and murdered near her home as many of her neighbors listened to it happen only for
some to later chalk the assault up to her clothing or alleged promiscuity. Even closer to home and
more shocking is the 2011 gang rape of an eleven year old girl in a Texas town. In a New York

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Times article, James McKinley Jr. says, They said she dressed older than her age, wearing
makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage
boys at a playground, some said. These facts were stated as if they were appropriate
explanations for her assault. Setting aside the actual facts that she is not only eleven years old
and a female, clothing and the company you keep is not justification for action towards you. It
goes to basically paint her as the initiator of this assault. Because maybe her shorts were short,
her lips a bright red shade, her chest exposed, she was asking for it. The thing is, thats what
the media tells girls it means to be girls, and furthermore the male aggressors are aware of their
societal dominance and believe that this girl was asking for it, because its what they have
been conditioned to believe as their reality. Theyve been taught that they're superior and women
cant exist without them, so they feel they can abuse this supposed need to do and get what they
want, as that is one of many roles held by women in America.
Although gender roles are slowly but surely changing, many people still carry the
traditional idea of them. Basically men are the breadwinners and women are the housekeepers,
which upholds the analogy of men are to women as CEOs are to secretaries. Gender roles are
defined by Alice Dreger as, ...the parts males and females are expected to play in social
settings, in her Pacific Standard article. The key word is expected meaning that one could
easily stray from that expectation. She later goes to say, Butand heres a big butsocial
gender roles may very well be fuzzy manifestations of our ontogeny (individual development,
from conception onward) and phylogeny (the evolution of our species). In other words, the
plasticized gender role expectations we find in the toy aisles of Target may be like the end of a
telephone game where the start is our evolutionary history and our genes. Ironically, in a
Huffington Post article, Sara Boboltz says, The term "women's work" is based on the idea that

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women are intrinsically less qualified for all but certain roles in the workforce; but what those
roles are, exactly, has changed a bit over time. At the turn of the last century, an estimated 85
percent of clerical jobs were filled by men earning twice the salary of their female counterparts,
(in reference to how current gender roles arent consistent with the past). So for the longest time,
men have believed their roles have always been that of dominance, when in all actuality, they
have been in the same position as women were in.
Although these blind eyes throughout America are slowly enlightened, there are still
those chained in Platos cave resistance to change. Objectification will remain a problem until
the males of America acknowledge the harm that objectification really causes. It goes further
than empty compliments with darker meanings, saying a woman is beautiful solely so she knows
their opinion of them as they believe their opinion is truly all reigning. When objectification
leads to blaming the victim and the stagnancy of gender roles, thats when the problem needs to
talked about. Too often it is seen that things are swept under the rug due to societal beliefs that
have transcended from generation to generation, and thats why objectification leads to all the
aforementioned obstacles faced in overcoming the adversary set before women.

Works Cited
Vandenbosch, Laura, and Steven Eggermont. "Understanding Sexual Objectification: A
Comprehensive Approach Toward Media Exposure And Girls' Internalization Of Beauty
Ideals, Self-Objectification, And Body Surveillance." Journal Of Communication 62.5
(2012): 869-887. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 3 Nov. 2014.
Bianco, Marcie. 7 Things Men Get Wrong About Catcalling. Mic.com. Mic., 30 Oct. 2014.
Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

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Frank, Phyllis. Objectification of Women. Nomas.com. n.d. Nomas., Web. 11 Nov.
2014.
Szymanski, Dawn M., Lauren B. Moffitt, and Erika R. Carr. "Sexual objectification of women:
Advances to theory and research." The Counseling Psychologist (2010):
0011000010378402. Web. 28 Nov. 2014.
Jr., McKinley, James. Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town. NYtimes.com. 8 Mar. 2011. New
York Times., Web. 8 Mar. 2011.
Dreger, Alex. The Social Construction of Sex. Psmag.com. 21 Mar. 2014. Pacific Standard.,
Web. 28 Nov. 2014.
Boboltz, Sara. 9 Facts That Prove Traditional Definitions of Gender Roles are Bullshit.
HuffingtonPost.com. 16 Apr. 2014. Huffington Post., Web. 28 Nov. 2014.