Over the years, the trend of the exploitation of women through social media and history has been no mystery. And as we are re-entering this period of mass media encouraging the objectification of women, our society is now blinded by the normalcy of it.
The objectification of women is when a body part of a woman is “extracted” from their body and is seen as just an object. An objectifier’s physical attraction towards women goes to a different extreme, only picturing women’s bodies as objects that they desire to have control of. Examples of the objectification of women include sexist jokes targeting women, catcalling, whistling, and sexually harassing. The dehumanization comments like these are usually in common interactions or over social media/communication apps. Many news channels have been known to objectify and criticize women on live TV. Unfortunately, we let these producers and news sources take advantage of their physical power and influence, allowing them to tear down these women and have no consequences. Some common movies that objectified women were Baywatch, Transformers, and even The Wolf of Wall Street. The objectification of women leads to bigger systemic problems like the continuous violence against women and overall gender violence. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 1 in 5 women has been raped and in terms of gender domestic violence, 19% of the violence experienced involves a weapon.
The objectification of women has always been a problem in today’s society and now with perpetrators like Andrew Tate, Leonardo diCaprio, and politicians like Donald Trump and Cabonah continue to influence today’s generations. Andrew Tate continues to make comments that describe graphic details of Women getting raped, and disgustingly agreeing with these comments by calling rapists real men. Former President Donald Trump, has a history of participating in pageants around the nation. Witnesses over the years have repeated stories of him kissing contestants on the lips while still married to his wife at the time, but nothing has ever happened about it. In May, in a CNN town Hall, Trump joked about victim E. Jean Carroll, just hours after being found guilty of sexual abuse. Our society, although aware of these perpetrators and predators in specific, have continuously not done anything to “punish” these men for getting away with these horrific acts of sexual abuse. Although in my opinion there is no punishment to amass the hurt and damage they’ve caused, they are getting no sort of backlash. As an example, state governments chose to focus on passing anti-trans laws and ignore the ongoing-dehumanization tactic that the objectifayer’s use. This is astounding, especially that 18% of girls at the age of 17 have experienced some form of sexual adult and objectification.
The result of sexual objectification of women has been obvious due to data studies and research by psychology companies. Many companies have been studying how these acts have majorly impacted women’s mental health. Especially with this becoming more of a normalcy with people, women are taught to hide alone and console themselves. This dismissal of their feelings and emotions towards being objectified is completely covered up. Some of these feelings contribute to the skyrocketing amount of depression, eating disorders, suicidal tendencies found in young women’s lives. This disturbing statistic was proven by the CDC, “engulfed in a growing wave of violence and trauma,” after they did research on how violence against women affects their mental health. Also, these have been statistics that showed higher uses of drugs and alcohol abuse in women’s daily lives due to the objectifiers.
If this topic peaked any interest to you, please consider joining Viewpoint Feminism! The club is hosted by Coach K every Tuesday at Iblock, and everyone is welcome to join. This club is a diverse group of people who have a common goal of advocating for equality and justice for all women! If you are interested or have any questions, please feel free to email Coach K ([email protected]).
Looking towards the future, I encourage you to look out for the women in your life who are openly exposed to being sexually objectified. Although it might not be on your radar, the common theme of being sexualized is overshadowed by bystanders. I hope in the future our generation can strive to make changes and protect the women of our society from these disturbing acts. A massive push for women refusing to apologize for protesting back has been in the news recently, and fortunately I don’t predict this will stop. As a community, it’s key we can continue to recognize these systemic issues and hold people accountable for their disgusting actions, especially when it revolves making women uncomfortable and ashamed.
