The female body is represented in several medias in modern society. It is modelling clothing campaigns, beauty commercials, food advertisements and much more. We are being exposed to society’s interpretation of how a female body is staged to fit into a pre-defined norm set. That is problematic in several ways, in which I will elaborate focusing on objectification in this paper. Objectification of the female body has generated several debates over the last couple of decades – SlutWalks, Free the Nipple, ‘It’s Just a Stomach’ and many more. These are all with different focus, different cause, and different execution. I will however imply that these protests all are aspects of the objectification of the female body. Besides from these examples two psychologists have written a paper in 1997 that explains their research of objectification as a theory, a theory that has been elaborated by several psychologists later on. Caroline Heldman has among others held a TED talk with concrete examples of these incidents. The talk is described as follows:
“A leading advocate for spotlighting how the mainstream media contributes to the underrepresentation of women in positions of power and influence in America, Caroline Heldman offers straight talk and an often-startling look at the objectification of women in our society.”
This is my foundation for my argumentation in this paper.
A recent example
A common media exposure of female as well as male bodies are red carpet photos in magazines. New couples are being revealed, outfits are being discussed etc. This is found in an interest in celebrities that has a long history. Furthermore, it is a regular job for a journalist on most gossip magazines to do. There are however examples of this red-carpet scenario which have led to an unhealthy way of observing women. A recent incident was regarding Danish celebrity, Irina Olsen, which she brought to light on her Instagram account. The incident was a description of her outfit in a common Danish gossip magazine, made by a male journalist. The important part to notice was, that this description did not only describe the designer or the combination of her outfit – the description revolved around her body parts, more specifically her breast. Holding this incident up against Heldman’s argumentation about objectification in her TED talk, Olsen’s experience lives up to several of the questions Heldman is mentioning to classify situations as objectifying (Heldman, 2013) (bodyid3als, 2021). You can for example conclude that this is an example of an image with a text suggesting sexual availability as a defining character for Olsen.
Consequences
The reason it is important to draw attention to such incident, are the number of consequences it entails. As it is given words to in Objectification Theory, the objectification we are generating in society has an impact on girl’s self-esteem. It is expressed in the following quote:
“…theories of socialization would predict that with repeated exposure to the array of subtle external pressures to enhance physical beauty, girls and women come to experience their efforts to improve their appearance as freely chosen, or even natural.” (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997, p. 179).
This is indicating that such structures are affecting girls and women’s idea of body ideals and is with that brought to light very important to have a focus on. An increased focus on the structures creating girl’s perception of body ideals might be able to ease the psychical issues girls are having in their childhood and further on influence their self-esteem for the rest of their life.
Bibliography
bodyid3als. (2021, 11 16). Retrieved from Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bodyid3als/
Fredrickson, B. L., & Roberts, T.-A. (1997). Objectification Theory. Durham: Cambridge University Press.
Heldman, C. (2013, Januar 20). The Sexy Lie: Caroline Heldman at TEDxYouth@SanDiego. San Diego, CA, USA.
Author: Sofie Nørtoft Published: 17. Nov. 2021
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