It’s high time that we stop objectifying women
From cars to photocopiers, bicycles to bread, sex is the popular marketing ingredient with the sexual invitation- buy me!
“Sex today is slimed over with the thought of pleasure”. For today’s concept of society are based on the sensual. ‘Feeling good’, ‘Do as you please’, ‘Let yourself go’, ‘It’s your life!’, ‘I do what I like’, it’s a free country’. The individualistic, pleasure-seeking philosophy in which self is number one.
Therefore, we are led into the search for physical excitement as the answer to our aching emptiness. Sex is wonderful but it can’t be a life philosophy. Why is it that the highest compliment is to be sexy? How come so many guys spend hours fantasizing about sex? Why is reality so different from sexual expectation? Where do all these sexual thoughts come from? How can such blatant approaches be avoided?
So many questions! Now more than over sex is at the top of the agenda and people need to be dealing openly and honestly with the queries that are raised.
We think particularly of a friend of ours who had experimented early with casual sex. He’d tell stories of what happened with all kinds of girls –and of course was generally admired for his sexual abilities. He’d done from ‘being in love’ to ‘having sex’ and jumped from one bed to the next like some sex-crazed butterfly.
“The sexual ideas demonstrated in films and videos provide a distorted and dishonest view which has become accepted as normal behavior”. It is incredibly harmful to only view sexual intimacy as the height of romantic affection.
What Raymond Chandler wrote about alcohol is also true of sex: ‘Alcohol is like love: the first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that, you just take the girl’s clothes off ‘.
“One of the effects of the sexual ‘revolution’ has been the use of women as objects for sexual exploitation”
Terrible proof of the casual and superficial attitudes to sex which treats women as objects with which to satisfy desire, as a collection of body parts, as some kind of mechanical device to please your sexual urges.
"When you're objectified, you can start to confuse your value with your sexuality," Dr. Susan Edelman, psychiatrist and author of Be Your Own Brand of Sexy, says. "When you see so many beautiful faces and bodies in media, you often wonder, 'What’s wrong with me that I don’t look like that?' It can be hard to see the value in your inner beauty when the pressure is on. Not only are you shamed for how you look — as in fat-shaming — but your culture also profits from your insecurities. We're trying so hard to meet impossible beauty ideals that now 90 percent of women aren't happy with how they look. Unhappiness is not empowerment. Trying to meet other's ideals of beauty is more like people-pleasing. People-pleasing often doesn't work out, because you can never make everyone happy."
Sexual objectification involves viewing and treating another person's body as an object valued based on its sexual appeal, usually to the neglect of other aspects of the person, such as their thoughts, feelings, and desires.
If we look at the world of advertising, a new type of woman has been created for consumption of desires of the society because this woman (created by the advertising world) has no wrinkles, blemishes, or scars, and her skin is totally perfect. Her eyes are splendidly bright and her bounteous breasts and buttocks are defying the ‘law of gravity’. Her teeth are white beyond imagination, flawlessly straight, and appear unreal. The problem is that it is very hard to find this woman in the real world as they do not really exist. She is the product of hours in the makeup chair and days of photo retouching.
Then we have Jadavpur University professor, Kanak Sarkar who compared a virgin woman to a "sealed bottle" on a Facebook post. In his post, Sarkar said, “Are you willing to buy a broken seal while purchasing a bottle of cold drink or a packet of biscuits? A girl is born sealed from birth until it is opened. A virgin girl means many things accompanied with values, culture, and sexual hygiene. To most boys, virgin wife is like angel.”
Though he has been taken off duties but he later said it was intended for "fun" among a group of friends on social media and "not for public consumption".
Modern men are programmed to view women as sexual objects which has led in part to the way men view women as objects at work. The extent of this reappeared in the year 2017-2018 with the birth of the #MeToo and TimesUp movements birthed by sexual harassment claims made against Hollywood's Harvey Weinstein when actress Ashley Judd gave her story to major news outlets. We have to move away from typical images of perfection by accepting "Photoshop-free," women and celebrate the real-diverse women around us.
Gender inequality, sexual objectification, and sexist attitudes should become a remnant of the past. The worth of an individual, to any extent or aspect, should not be determined by their physical being.
Featured Image Source: Getty Images
