What is self objectification?
Women have to deal with non-stop objectification. We know this. Over the centuries, misogyny has reduced women’s bodies to mere ornaments for men to admire. However, what we aren’t quite so clued up on, is our subconscious internalisation of this objectification. An internalisation that results in viewing oneself as an object: self objectification.
Self objectification is looking at oneself with a view to answering the question: “Would I fuck me?”. (Click to read a guest piece I wrote for Heroica Magazine on this...) We don’t necessarily clock ourselves doing this, but sadly, the vast majority of us exist as if a pair of critical eyes float beside us, constantly judging our fuckability, be that on the way to the corner shop, to work, to school and even in our own homes. Self-objectification is what drives us to post pictures of ourselves, to feel insecure without make-up, to suck in our bellies and tightly cross our legs, all in the name of looking good for an audience. Beauty is sacred above all other qualities, and it is our duty, as women, to offer ourselves up in pretty, palatable packages, for whoever desires.
Everyone has an innate desire to be loved by those around them, and our beauty-obsessed world perpetuates the idea that our ability to be loved is dependent on how we look. We are taught that providing the male gaze with a pleasurable visual experience, comes under the terms and conditions of being a woman. We are governed by how we feel about our bodies, as opposed to how our bodies feel. When we view ourselves from the outside-in in the way that self objectification induces, and hold ourselves against a blanket set of criteria, we become disconnected from our bodies, which makes it even harder to trust, or respect them, and strips us of the the right to make a valid judgement of our own lovability. I don’t need the input of others to help me decide whether my best friends or family are good people, I know them well enough and have enough of a connection with them, to trust my own judgement of their characters, without seeking outside opinions. However, I would need some help forming my judgement of a friend’s work colleague, for example. Yes, I may have met them a handful of times, but I am too far removed to make my own definitive judgement of their character, so, I gather information from what my friend tells me about them, rather than what I know to be true myself. When we self-objectify, a kind of moat is formed between the brain and body. A vacuum that holds a wide, open space for the opinions and influences of others to be sucked in and dictate how we view ourselves. Because our bodies and us are so far removed, we feel we require external validation to form a trustworthy impression of ourselves.
This detachment holds further consequence; the more detached we are from our bodies, the less we feel we have ownership over them, and the less we can feel settled within ourselves. This makes it all too easy to become desensitised to having our bodies’ boundaries crossed and our power undermined. The dark crux of all of this is the belief that the female body is not ours to own. It is rather a walking piece of male sexual property, that we are expected to spend our time grooming and polishing for the pleasure of others. Tending to our bodies like a 1950s housewife.
How we think we look occupies far too much of our precious brain space. I emphasise the word ‘think’, because the answer to our internal question “Would I fuck me?”, actually has very little to do with our own opinion of ourselves, rather than what we are told our opinion of ourselves should be. When our loyal pair of critical eyes scan our bodies walking down the street, at a party, or in the mirror, there is a ceaseless comparison of our looks, to the looks of those presented to us as popular, attractive and loved; those who fit into the ideal mould of the moment. We don’t see our body, we see the gap between our body and the ever-present silhouette stood beside us, representing success, beauty and optimum fuckability. We are trained to see what we aren’t, rather than what we are. And even though we know that those displayed to us as the ‘epitome of beauty’, can’t naturally replicate the ideal they advertise themselves, our engrained self-loathing convinces us that they can. The sophistication of photo, and even VIDEO editing, is such that we are being made to pit ourselves against a simulation. A literal fantasy.
For those who represent the ideal, their appearance is their product. Therefore, they are heavily invested in ‘optimising’ this product in whatever way they can. Be that good lighting, certain angles, or filters, in order to monetise it. In a recent Guardian In Focus podcast, a young model preparing for a Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL) procedure, (a process where fat is sucked out of the body, and deposited around the bum and hips) stated that she had noticed increased interaction with her Instagram posts that she had edited to give herself a more obvious ‘hour-glass’ figure. Given that for Instagram models like herself, increased interaction = increased likelihood of modelling jobs, she said she had a financial incentive to edit her pictures, and that the BBL would only recreate this ‘hour-glass’ look in real life. A living, breathing, permanent filter.
The truth is, we all have this mindset to varying degrees. When a certain picture of ourselves gets more likes and comments, we go through a 3-stage response. First, a brief shot of satisfaction at our brief social media stardom, second, we frantically analyse the picture, collecting data on what made it so popular in the first place, and finally, we panic that we will never be able to replicate that ‘optimum’ version of ourselves in real life. This looming threat of being deemed a ‘catfish’ has only complicated the torrent of self objectifying thoughts in our head; look natural, so that you’re not falsely advertising yourself, but not too natural because then you’ll just look fucking ugly. Basically, no matter what we do, we cannot escape the sad fact, that Image. Is. Everything.
This brings me onto the paradox of body-positive accounts. It is no surprise that I have a lot of time for body positive/acceptance posts on Instagram. It is so important to normalise normal fucking bodies, cut through all the barbie-doll-bullshit, and to widen society’s narrow definition of beauty. However, whether we are flooded with pictures of washboard abs, or wobbly thighs, the posts still keep us sharply focused on our bodies. Their intention is to provide reassurance and proof that all bodies can, and should, be seen as beautiful, which is great, but the requirement of beauty remains. Even the pictures of stomach rolls and cellulite ironically support the rhetoric that being seen as beautiful is something all women should, or should at the very least, want to achieve. It keeps our brain hyper-aware of every inch of our figure, fixated on how we present ourselves to the world, rather than just living in it.
We are visual works in progress.
Always looking for ways to ‘enhance’ our image, in the learned belief that it will make us more loveable.
Mindlessly fake tanning, getting lash extensions, and attempting to shrink our bodies, to earn our right to be called beautiful. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with doing any of these things (apart from shrinking ourselves because that is just literal self-destruction, so fuck that), and I am by no means shaming anyone who does. The question I ask, is who you are doing this for. Is it genuinely for your own self-pleasure? In which case knock yourself right out. But if you are doing it because you feel you need it, that you have to do it in fear of the judgement of those around you, then it is probably just making your self-esteem worse.
The problem is, we are taught that priming ourselves for men’s pursuit of us is a necessary measure to achieve respect, regardless of whether or not we want to be pursued. Stay small, smooth, and sexually available. Yet this same mandatory priming, is used as justification for violence against us. Sexual assault is experienced by 97% of women aged 18-24 (2), a galling figure that has been flaunted all over social media in the past week (by myself included), as if it’s a surprise, as if we aren’t all taught that women are sexual objects...
Beneath this gross figure, is the real-life tight-rope women tread everyday; be fuckable enough to feel seen and obtain the external validation we require to piece together our patchy sense of self-worth, but not quite so fuckable, that we provoke male on-lookers into abusing our bodies. Pretty tricky I hear you say?
Yes, very tricky indeed.
