Of women and sexual objectification

Sexual objectification of women is an age-old malaise that has become more widespread and intense with the advent of modern technology and civilisation. Once sexually objectified, the worth of a woman’s body or body part is directly equated to its physical appearance or potential sexual function and is treated like it exists solely for others to use or consume. This abuse operates especially in interpersonal sexual objectification encounters which manifest in the form of unwanted body evaluation, sexual advances, catcalling, sexually insinuating stares, leering and so on. However, the experience of sexual objectification is not limited to daily interpersonal interactions alone but strutted further by the media as they continually create contents that see and portray women only in regard to sexual objectification, being that more women than men are depicted in the media in a sexually objectifying manner. Yet, the media’s vast reach ensures that these fictions and negative depictions extend to all corners of the society and the constant exposure of women and girls of all ages to these negative images result in self objectification, as they are socialized to internalise society’s perspective of the female body as the primary view of their physical selves which is just as an object of desire for others.

Self objectification is characterised by varying thoughts of self-consciousness, beauty sick syndrome, body monitoring, surveillance, and comparison of one’s body or body parts to the societal standard. Amber captures it best in her piece on ‘redefining the red carpet’ when she asserts that, “women have always had to carry the burden of molding the shapes and sizes of our bodies to the trends and tastes of others, at any cost. We are assigned a look. We don’t get to choose.” As girls, we have  been raised to view our bodies as a project that needs to be constantly worked on and perfected for the adoration of others; we were taught that heterosexual male attention is our holy Grail before we were even conscious of being conscious. Pop culture as  well sells to women and girls a hurtful fiction that our value lies in how sexy we appear to others; we learn at a very young age that our sexuality is for others. We learn that men want and women want-to-be-wanted, hence It becomes so natural that females are supposed to continuously beautify their appearance just to be accepted by others.

As an undergraduate, severally I objectified myself without even realizing or knowing it. I always wore a  full face of makeup even for a class as early as 7a.m., had my hair done regularly and picked out a best outfit everyday. I snapped the best pictures and selfies for facebook to garner attention and seek validation through likes and comments. I also monitored my weight very closely and maintaining a flat tummy was very much on top of my to-do list. This continued for long and I went through a bit of an identity crisis because after being valued on my looks for so long, I didn’t and couldn’t know who I was any longer.  It was not until recently that I was able to realise this and how far I have come in this battle against internalised misogyny, and how much more work it requires. Even with this new positive consciousness and outlook, I confess that I am still healing from the self-objectifying behaviors that had shaped the way I used to see myself and this, without a doubt, must have played a major negative part in my life struggles to underline the depth of the effect and distortions of self sexual objectification.

As part of the internalised self objectification reality, quite often we see girls turn their heads and glimpse themselves in the mirror when they pass by one, even if they do nothing other than to adjust their appearance, like smoothing down the slightly tumbled hair, making sure the makeup does not crease and even checking to see if the water they just drank disrupted the sheen of their lipstick or not and so on. Most girls act this way even without thinking about it: they notice a mirror, they pass it, they turn and glance, then keep walking. Such behavior is much less likely to be observed among men. Sadly, this tells us that most women and girls of all ages are so slavishly entrenched in this consciousness that it has become so hard to reject this system of validation.

Notwithstanding, until the society evolves culturally for the better, the much we can do is to start from within to bring about the needed personal paradigm shift from viewing our bodies as objects to be desired by and for the benefit of others to seeing it as a tool to enact our own subjectivity. To achieve this would entail breaking the daily damaging self objectification habitude we engage in. Because we give our power away a thousand times when we engage in habitual body monitoring, hatred and meaningless beauty practices so we can be visually pleasing to others. It is this same mind set that is responsible for our seeking validation online or even from strangers on the streets and in vehicles. But pray what is the ultimate benefit of such validation anyway in the grand scheme of life that has more to do with concrete achievements and not necessarily the way we present ourselves!  Why then should we be bordered by what the next person thinks of our sense of style or how many likes we  garner on Instagram? After all, male validation through the gaze and likes on facebook and other social media  alone doesn’t provide anything tangible; rather it is fleeting much as it is meaningless.

The point here is not to indict personal hygiene, makeup or hair care but to propagate a woman’s right to choose what she wants to look like and what she wants to be, rather than obeying what market forces and a multibillion-dollar advertising  industry dictate. It is also important to embolden women to realise their self worth by choosing to neglect “beauty standards” as a guide and to view the world and themselves in a less sexually objectifying manner. We abuse and objectify ourselves when we cater to the heterosexual male gaze, when we tell ourselves that we are not looking good enough because of the perception of others and the society, when we treat sexual objectifying  comments from men as complimentary, when we become addicted to seeking approval through “likes” and other external accolades, when our lives are being driven by the dictates of trend, when we compete with other women to garner male attention, when we body-shame and criticize other women’s hair and clothing, when we try to fulfill the society’s unrealistic definition of ‘flawless beauty ‘ and as a result become engulfed in what the writer and journalist Noami Wolf refers to as the ‘beauty sick epidemic’ and so many other self debilitating attitudes and actions.

A feminist once wrote, “Don’t want to be objectified? Don’t objectify yourself.” And this means giving up habits such as: excessive mirror looking, frequent selfies, critiquing one’s appearance in the reflection and photographs, comparing oneself to images in the media and other women, slaying on social media for transient attention as well as giving up habitual body monitoring, body shaming and meaningless beauty practices. And instead, be devoted to pursuing goals in education, a career, family, or meaningful hobbies etc. Chances are that you’ll become a much more interesting person on the inside if you spend less time worrying about the outside.

However, just like breathing; it isn’t a one-time practice to quit daily self objectification habits. Let’s face it, a lifetime of self-objectification is difficult to suppress in a jiffy and it would be hopeless to expect us to immediately fully transcend the beauty culture game, since it is so pervasive and has overtime become part of our social DNA. So we should expect that even after making the decision to consciously change, we will no doubt sometimes still find ourselves falling into old habits of playing self-hating tapes, seeking male attention, or beating ourselves up for not being pleasing enough.  When this happens, its needless to subject oneself to unneeded guilt and instead move on through self forgiveness and realize It doesn’t have to change over night.

• Yakubu is with the Department of Mass Communication, Kogi State University, Anyigba, Nigeria.