We all know how objectification works, some men see women as an object for their sexual pleasure.
But, what happens when girls and women begin to see themselves as an object for men’s sexual pleasure?
The Association for the American Psychological Association (APA) calls this self-objectification and/or self-sexualization in the Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls.
There’s a host of evidence that when girls are exposed to too much media that they begin to view themselves less as three dimensional human beings and more as sexual objects. When this occurs, psychologists note the increase of:
* eating disorders
* low self-esteem
* depression or depressed mood
One interesting study noted that teenage girls from Figi had great body image and self esteem – until they were exposed to Western television. Once exposed, they became preoccupied with weight and body shape, purging behavior (throwing up) and body disparagement. Prior to television the Figian culture emphasized a robust body shape and based notions of identity not on body, but on family, community and relationships. The transition between healthy self-image to the increase of eating disorders was only 3 years.
Self-objectification is also directly linked to “diminished sexual health” among adolescent girls. One study found that when girls viewed their own bodies as objects for male pleasure condom use and sexual assertiveness, (saying “no”) decreased.
Another study found that “undergraduate women who frequently watched music videos or read women’s magazines, who attribute greater realism to media content, or who identify strongly with popular TV characters were also more accepting of sexually objectifying notions of women.”
Accepting these sexually stereotypical and objectifying views manifested in negative attitudes toward breastfeeding and negative attitudes about normal body functions like menstruation and sweating.
When I read the APA’s definition of self-objectification and self-sexualization it was like a mini-awakening for me.
That explains why, as a teen and young adult, I allowed boyfriends to treat me as their sexual object or plaything. It explains why I crossed many of my own sexual boundaries and didn’t want to object “for fear of being rude” on several occasions. It explains why I allowed boys and men to make inappropriate comments about my body and its development from even the earliest age – heck, I didn’t even know was “allowed to object.”
Do you think you’ve ever self-sexualized or self-objectified?
I am going to put a self-loathing sin piggy-bank (pardon the pun) on my kitchen table.
Naomi Wolf has a great quote which is taped on my bathroom mirror, “The mother who radiates self-love and self-acceptance vaccinates her daughter against low self-esteem.”
I accept this as a self-evident truth. In psychology circles I think they call it “mirroring” when our children look at us as a sort of reflection of themselves. A practical example would be, “my mother thinks she’s fat, therefore I too am fat.” A mother who is not actually fat, but repeatedly calls herself fat must then bear the responsibility when her daughter adopts an eating disorder like anorexia, bulimia or overeating. More posts on Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty Beauty & Reality Self-Loathing Sin Bank More posts on hair: Pink Hair Fiasco Pink Hair Fiasco Take 2 Curl Maintenance The Meaning of Hair
The child’s perception of herself is obviously flawed using this mirroring if she looks at her thin body in the mirror and sees fat. And it breaks any mother’s heart when she sees her child look at her own beautiful self with disdain, criticism or self-loathing. I think God put in us an inherent ability to see goodness and beauty in our children, whether or not they are actually beautiful.
However, I believe the function of mirroring can be done reversely with what is sometimes painful accuracy. I think when my daughter looks at her legs and says, “my legs are fat” she’s telling me in a very loud voice that this is a true reflection of how she thinks I feel about my own body image.
When I had my first baby I never lost the weight because I figured I would just have to lose it after the second one. On the second one I was in my 30s and my metabolism had slowed down and I was nearing the dreaded 200 pound mark. When I realized I was going to hit 200 in a couple of months and the doctor had me on a heart monitor because of dizzy spells I decided I had to make a complete and total lifestyle change. (My heart, it turns out is just fine.) The whole family was getting chubby and I decided we had to eat healthier and get more active rather than living the lifestyle of a Kobe calf (Tajima-ushi cattle reportedly receive regular massages with Japanese rice wine and are fed hops for a well-marbled texture and tenderness).
The weight is coming off at a slow and steady rate and the muscle is bulking up and I’ve never felt better. This is obviously a great example to my daughter, who is now 5 and, according to her pediatrician, in the “red zone” for her BMI (body mass index).
Except for one thing. The thinner I get, the more she seems to be focusing on her own perceived flaws. The other day she said she hated her legs because they were fat.
OUCH!! Like a knife in the gut I realized that I talk about my body in a negative way to motivate myself to get to the gym. Not only that, but I use self-deprecating humor to make people laugh and to illustrate that I have the ability to laugh at myself.
When speaking directly to her I use all the healthy phrases like suggesting she eat a healthy snack. Or explain that we’re eating vegetables and fish for dinner because it’s a healthier choice. Directly to her I am proactive about explaining that we’re off to the gym so that I can be stronger and have a healthier heart.
But to others. . . .
She has heard me call myself Kobe Beef. (Yes, I’m a fan of the esotericreferences to amuse myself.) She has also heard me complain about buying the “largest girdle underwear they make, only to find out it was too small.” I have bragged about going down in pants sizes, “it’s taken me 8 freaking months to make it down to a size 12.” I have touted the fact that I have lost “20 pounds of pure fat.” I have complained about how I simply can’t find shirts long enough to cover my stomach, “which wouldn’t be so bad if I weren’t so fat and no one needs to see blubber hanging out of my clothes.” I have touted my measurements, “losing 15 inches of ugly fat, back fat, flabby boob fat, thigh fat, belly fat.” She’s has heard me complain about my clothes that make me “look like a total cow.” I have complained that it’s going to take me “40 more weeks to get rid of my fat at the rate of a pound a week.” She’s heard me say how surprised I am that “my neck even lost an inch of fat allowing me to wear my pearl choker again.”
The thing is, I don’t loath my self or my body. I wasn’t even aware of how fat I was until I started seeing positive changes in my body. I still dream of myself as thin. I still think of myself as “the thin cute blond” one when I’m with my girlfriends. I have been blind to my own fat. Heck, I’m fairly sure my daughter was blind to my fat. I don’t look in the mirror and hate what I see, because I don’t even see what’s really there – I literally look in the mirror and see myself as I was in college.
Yet, I realize that my daughter can’t determine the difference between how I feel about my body and what I say about my body. To her, she will only internalize that I say I feel fat and that I say I hate my body. She only hears me criticize my looks, my self. And that is what is inevitably effecting how she will see herself for the rest of her life.
It’s tragic really. It breaks my heart. It feels like damage that can’t be reversed. It makes me loath myself.
My vow is to change this negative behavior. It is not worth a few laughs for the self-deprecating humor. I feel I have to hold myself accountable to her for this behavior so that she is explicitly aware that it is not okay for me to be unkind to myself, and therefore I can expect her to show her own self the kindness I want for her.
So, I’m going to put a self-loathing sin beauty bank on the kitchen table and deposit say, a quarter (hey, we’re on a strict budget around here) for every self-deprecating, self-loathing remark I make about my body or my self. I will ask her to catch me calling myself unkind names. I will require her to deposit the same when she makes negative comments about herself.
To avoid making it another exercise in self-loathing (I suck so bad, I can’t believe I said I’m fat again, I’m such an idiot!) it will be a requirement to write a positive attribute about our bodies to put in the bank along with the quarters. Then after a month we’ll take the jar of good thoughts and our quarters and we’ll go out for Chinese food and talk about our progress and how much we love our own bodies.
*42% of 1st-3rd grade girls want to be thinner. (Collins, 1991) * 81% of 10 year olds are afraid of being fat. (Mellinetal., 1991) * The average American woman is 5′4″ tall and weighs 140 pounds. The average American model is 5′11″ tall and weighs 117 pounds. Most fashion models are thinner than 98% of American women. (Smolak, 1996)
*51% of 9 and 10 year old girls feel better about themselves if they are on a diet. (Mellinetal.,1991) * 91% of women recently surveyed on a college campus had attempted to control their weight through dieting, 91% dieted “often” or “always.” (Kurthetal., 1995) * 95% of all dieters will regain their lost weight in 1-5 years. (Grodstein, 1996) * 35% of “normal dieters” progress to pathological dieting. Of those, 20-25% progress to partial or full-syndrome eating disorders. (Shisslak & Crago, 1995) * 25% of American men and 45% of American women are on a diet on any given day. (Smolak, 1996) * Americans spend over $40 billion on dieting and diet-related products each year. (Smolak, 1996)
I am deeply struck by this photograph which I found on About Face, a non-profit company which combats negative images of women in the media.
Without taking a right or wrong stance about plastic surgery, this photograph of a mother and her daughters speaks volumes about what self-hatred, self-criticism and self-loathing costs the collective conscience of femininity.
Remember when we found out on Friends that Rachel had a nose job? It seemed like a kind enough thing to do for herself when she was single and a completely autonomous person. But, then she had a baby girl and the issue came up again. It was quite funny to watch her consider, “What if the baby gets my old nose?”
Funny. But, in a practical sense what if she does? What if she gets your old nose? How much harder is it to learn to love yourself if you go through life with a nose even your own mother finds unacceptable?
Who then is responsible for the daughter’s self esteem issue about her nose? While many might come back to a post like this and say, “Well, just give the daughter a nose job.” Sure, eventually. But, she has to hate her nose until it stops growing in her late teens.
My hypothesis is that it’s much more effective to learn to love our own nose, face, and breasts than to combat poor self worth in our daughters, created by our own feelings of self-loathing.
It is also notable that the feelings about my own appearance have become significantly more positive now that I can look at my daughter’s face and see the beauty there. To me, she has not one single flaw. The features she shares with me have become more attractive to me by virtue of being on her.
That said, many women will get plastic surgery to fix what they perceive as “flaws.” I don’t want to argue the moral position that you shouldn’t, certainly you have to make your own decision.
That said, I do think it’s worth asking, what then do you plan to say to your daughter if she shares the same perceived flaw?
Read more about how our feelings about our own appearance deeply effect our daughters feelings about themselves in Self-Loathing Sin Bank.
Have you met Just Margaret? She’s a New England Mom and I thought she poses an interesting question – why are we being selective about what habits will be bad for kids? Perhaps because we have resigned ourselves to being non-smokers but we don’t want the kids nagging us about our cocktails? I quit smoking – it was one of the best things I ever did.
Last night, after getting the kids to bed, my hub and I snuggled into bed and popped in a DVD. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, though, as usual, I fell asleep about a half an hour into the flick (I’ll try again tonight!).
I didn’t miss the rating description though. Wow, they’ve gotten pretty damn thorough. Next thing you know, there’ll be a brief review of the plot in that little box. In any event, the movie was rated PG-13 for a litany of things, including “war violence” and “smoking”.
Smoking?
I mean, really. They don’t mention drinking. Now, remember, I only caught the first half hour, but I’m thinking that a cocktail or two was swilled in this movie–I very much doubt it was a ‘dry’ movie. In fact, if there was a libation enjoyed in the first half hour, I didn’t even notice.
Will watching a character in a movie really make someone say, “Hey, they look cool,” followed by their immediately springing up to damn near $10 for a pack of smokes, so they can ‘take up’ smoking? Are we really raising such hare-brained children?
And really, I suppose the real question is…
Will the fact that there is smoking portrayed in the movie truly be a
factor for parents struggling to determine if this movie is appropriate for
their child? Is the illicit smoking truly going to be the deal-breaker?
When are they going to add, “consumption of alcoholic beverages,” “reckless driving,” or “little kids chewing with their mouths open,” to the warnings. ‘Cause that last one? Yeesh…for me, that could be a deal-breaker!
Full Disclosure: I’m a smoker. The only reason I ever notice smoking in the movies is when I see a character up on the screen smoking. I notice because it makes me want to light up. Don’t worry, I don’t dispute that smoking is a horrible thing to do to yourself, and it’s smelly and icky and all that, to boot.
