In fairness to Harington, he raised an interesting point: could it be seriously argued that male sexual objectification is in any way equivalent to the female variety? You have only to recall the infamous Diet Coke adverts where salacious female office workers objectified poor innocent topless construction workers. By contrast, female sexual objectification is an ongoing socioeconomic-cum-psychosexual epidemic, affecting the vast majority of women at some stages of their lives. How could a man begin to appropriate this gigantic, complicated, socio-historically entrenched mess as his own valid experience? It appears to be yet another low in the ever-continuing trend for specious gender-reversal — whereupon an issue in the realm of female experience is seized on and reversed, with a few arbitrary examples, to prove that men are suffering the same thing in the same way.

9 Subtle Ways Women Are Taught To View Themselves As Objects



How Our Brains Turn Women Into Objects - Scientific American
Recent reports of a mountain lion or cougar stalking the campus of the University of Iowa prompted campus jokesters to tweet their surprise that Michelle Bachman was in town. A cougar, colloquially, is an attractive older woman who seeks out trysts with younger men, and to some, it seems that Bachmann fits the bill. This emphasis on appearance is nothing new for high-profile women who are anything but homely, and feminist scholars are quick to point out its potential detrimental effects on perceptions of female competence. There is a well-known tension between seeing someone as, and appreciating them for, a body as opposed to a mind. Science has backed parents up on this. A recent study found that showing men pictures of sexualized women evokes less activity in areas of the brain responsible for mental state attribution—that is, the area of the brain that becomes active when we think we are looking at an entity capable of thought and planned action. Other studies have found similar results.


Who's to blame for turning women into objects? We all are
A ccording to a new study published in Sex Roles , some women see an enragingly sexist ad using hot women to sell a hamburger as a rallying call. This is the first study to examine the relationship between viewing media that portrays women as sexual objects and the desire to seek collective action afterwards. A team of researchers led by Francesco Guizzo at the University of Padova in Italy asked 78 men and 81 women to watch three different television clips. The first clip was an advertisement where women were sexually objectified; the second was the same clip with commentary that explains why the footage is objectification; and the third was of a nature documentary that served as the control condition.

Stock photos — generic images that appear in places like ads, billboards, magazines and blogs — reflect the culture at a moment in time. In , based on the Getty photos most chosen by marketers and the media, to be a woman is to be on your own, physically active and undeterred by either sweat or circuit boards. The 15 most downloaded images from the Lean In collection so far this year, including those below, are four of fathers playing with children; four of girls and women involved in science and engineering; three of women being athletic; and four of women in business or school settings.