Hannah Hoggarth

English 1102
Professor Eaker
3/30/14
Voice your Opinion on Objectification
When researching the objectification of women in the media I found that there were
many different viewpoints of this subject some that I agreed with and some that I disagreed with.
A small majority of people thought that the objectification of women in the media is just an
everyday thing and something that we shouldnt be worried about; whereas a larger portion of
people believes that objectification has many harmful effects. Many groups of people felt that it
lead to depression, eating disorders, and other harmful mental disorders in women and caused
society to have less respect of them. Every different voice that I found had a slightly different
viewpoint of what they thought about the objectification of women. Three voices that I did a lot
of research on were feminists, psychologists, and the media advertising.
The majority of the feminist voices that I found from my research believe women are
only valued for their physical attributes and not whats inside. They believe in the overall
wellness and respect for women wanting them to have equal opportunities as men.
Objectification causes a back step in female rights and women empowerment; it gives men a
feeling of entitlement and presents women as attainable. Feminists argue that sexual
objectification can lead to negative effects including depression and hopelessness.
Objectification can give women self-image issues and cause others to look down at them. Dawn
M. Szymanski, Lauren B. Moffitt, and Erika R. Carr feel that objectification can lead to
mental health concerns, .objectification of females is likely to contribute to mental health
problems that disproportionately affect women (i.e., eating disorders, depression, and
sexual dysfunction).. (7). All of the feminist voices had the same feeling that
objectification is extremely harmful to the female population. They had the strongest
viewpoint than all the other voices I found. According to a feminist, Immanuel Kant,
objectification involves the lowering of a person, a being with humanity, to the status of an
object (4). A very strong feminist viewpoint says that women start to see themselves as just a
beautiful object for modeling and people to look at and use for their pleasure. After a Vogue
Paris modeling picture of a seductively posed nine-year-old girl went wrong the French Law
swooped in banning the modeling of children under the age of sixteen. In an Aeon article about
the incident the describe objectification as turning girls into something of use rather than a happy
healthy young lady. Objectification has been defined in feminist literature to include
several elements, including the denial of autonomy and the denial of subjectivity we see
the person as lacking self-determination and feelings. He or she becomes, in the viewers
mind, an object, a piece of meat, devoid of any internal life (4). The feminist voice is an
important one because they are the group that has the best intentions in mind for women they are
invested in this cause.
The viewpoint of psychologists brought up a slightly different proposal on the
objectification of women. They took more of an approach to find a cause and possible fix to
objectification and to figure out how the brain and society as a whole views it. Psychologists did
research and analyzed the thought process that goes into the objectification of women. Some
psychologists believe that objectification in the media is the picking apart of female body parts
and turning them individually into objects. This causes womens body parts to not appear as
perfect as a whole but instead to pick apart and analyze every section of the body; further
causing problems where people judge girls by how skinny their waist is, how thick their butt is,
or how big their boobs are. According to the counseling psychologists Dawn Szymanski, Lauren
Moffitt, and Erika Carr Objectification occurs when a womans body or body parts are singled
out and separated from her as a person and she is viewed primarily as a physical object of male
sexual desire (3). Men have started to label themselves as a butt girl or a boobs girl meaning
that they either look for a girl with extraordinarily large boobs or a perfectly toned thick butt.
Psychologists do a great job of pin pointing the reasons why objectification of women in the
media is appealing to the sexual side of the human mind and finding how it affects women. In
my opinion, the voice of psychologists compared to other voices I read was educated and
unbiased. They based their thoughts off of research and their findings rater than emotion. Most
of the articles and papers I read from the psychologists talked about objectification being the
body thought of in parts instead of a whole. This breakdown of the female body makes it seem
less important. Psychologists voice on this topic is one of logic and makes a lot of sense
regarding problems that objectification arises.
Advertising is one of the main areas where you see female objectification in the media.
You will see advertisements from women in compromising positions with a man powerfully
standing over her to a womens legs turned into the legs of a table. With the amount of thought
that goes into making advertisements the companies are fully aware of what they are doing when
they put these images out in public. From an advertisers viewpoint; they are simply supplying
advertisements that society responds to and grabs their attention. Of course a skimpy dressed
beautiful blond with a mouthful of a McDonalds burger is going to grab peoples attention over
the straight facts of their food. The goal of these companies is money, money, money and they
have decided that in order to achieve this they need to make their products seem as sexy and
desirable as possible.
There are two different sides to the debate of whether objectification in the media is fair
or not and a debate on the International Debate Education Association states that the discussion
to this issue has started to be a much more prevalent discussion topic around the world in courts,
industries, etc. These opponents argue stereotypic images are contributing to harmful effects
such as eating disorders and violence against women. One primary focus in this dialogue is
whether responses should be made which interfere with business practices (1). These types of
advertisements are known common practices of the media industries so people are starting to
discuss whether advertisements should be banned/monitored. Advertisers are extremely clever in
a way that they make it seem like they are promoting a product towards women whereas in
reality they are using women to get to men. Commercials like these would typically be seen on
the night of a big sporting event aiming for the group of men gathered around their TV to be
enticed towards. Who can forget the gorgeous blond standing next to the green Geo Storm,
proudly exclaiming, A man likes a woman who knows how to drive a stick!? Advertisements
like these, though seemingly aimed towards women, are actually exploiting them en route to
their actual target; men (1).
After reading though an expansive amount of voices and groups of people I found that
they all had the same general feeling, maybe some not as extreme as others, that objectification
of the female body wasnt a good thing and it was even harmful to our society. The three voices
that really stuck out to me were the feminist, psychologist, and advertisers voice. They all agreed
that objectification wasnt necessarily a good thing. And that it sends negative messages to our
society.


Table of Contents
Papadaki, Evangelia (Lina). "Feminist Perspectives on Objectification." Stanford University.
Stanford University, 10 Mar. 2010. Web. 02 May 2014.

Szymanski, Dawn M., Lauren B. Moffitt, and Erika R. Carr. "Sexual Objectification
of Women: Advances to Theory and Research." The Counseling Psychologist. The Authors
2011, n.d. Web.

Racism and Sexism in Advertising. Rep. Vol. 10. N.p.: n.p., 1997. Delta Winds. Web. 04 May
2014. <http://www.deltacollege.edu/dept/english/documents/racismandsexism.pdf>.

"Objectification Of Women | NOMAS." Objectification Of Women | NOMAS. N.p., n.d. Web. 03
May 2014.