Author: Abinaya Sridharan, Evergreen Valley High School, '24
Warning: the following passage you are about to read has mildly mature language
What if I told you women are seen as objects...quite literally. That's right, we women are scientifically seen as objects in the male gaze. Studies have shown that when men identify a sexually attractive woman, they psychologically associate them with dehumanizing traits, perceiving that woman as inadequate and lacking thought and emotion. How is this possible, you may ask. Well, a study was conducted by a Princeton psychologist that showed the men’s brain did not perceive sexualized women as fully human. The experiment design utilized a FMRI machine, which is “a machine where it measures small changes of blood flow that occur in brain activity.”(radiology.org). After the men were hooked onto the machine, they were then shown pictures of both men and women. Some wore revealing clothes, others did not. When seeing most of these photographs, the men activated their (mPFC). mPFC is short for medical social cognition, and this is involved in social cognition such as recognizing two people’s faces from one another. However, the problem is when men were shown pictures of highly sexualized women, their mPFC did not activate, meaning these men did not see these women as humans. To build upon this, a study done by the University of Padova found that when women wore sexualized clothes compared to when they weren't, people associated them with animals, and multiple other studies have shown similar outcomes. In short, women who are portrayed in a highly sexualized manner are deemed as bimbos—attractive but lacking thought and morals. Why do men subconsciously fail to activate their (mPFC)? Well, let's find out!
Root cause of objectification in Women
Men fail to activate their (mPFC) simply because they are subconsciously taught that sexually appealing women are nothing more than mere objects. But where does all this stem from? Well there are multiple causes of female objectification, such as pornography, media, and harmful stereotypes that are implemented at an early age. My wonderful colleague Bhoomi Jain wrote a statement about this. She states, “from birth, many men are taught that women are there to fulfill any needs they have in life, which in many people's minds, gives women a lower place in society and in life in general. The media sexualizes women in all sorts of ways such as in many shows and movies women are only seen as the ‘love interest’ and there to make the man happy, nothing more nothing less.” Sadly, I would have to agree: women are often depicted as nothing more than a sexual filler in men’s lives. The media is one of the biggest culprits for this. Take a look at all of the movie tropes presented by the media: the bimbo, the gold digger. the whore, the spicy Latina, the dumb blonde, and the disposable woman—all tropes that usually include an attractive woman with superficial qualities. Why can't the bimbo have an actual personality rather than just being seen as a sex symbol? Why is the “spicy Latina'' seen as some sensual, exotic diva that binds men with her attractive body? And why is the dumb blonde depicted as a dumb materialistic girl just because of her hair color and her overlay feminine traits? All these tropes do is convey that sexually attractive women are cunning, money seeking, bitchy, dumb and most of all, only seize to exist for their body.
How do we stop men from objectifying women? To start off we need to teach men at a young age that it’s okay to find a woman attractive; however, we must also properly take into consideration the other parts of her, such as her dreams, aspirations, personality etc. Doing this may help men see that women aren't just a sexual filler, rather they are fully functioning people that have thoughts, emotions, and morals. We also need to inform men that the tropes displayed by the media are not reality. Not every attractive woman is a gold digger or a whore, we need to strongly imply that these tropes are for entertainment purposes only and not to be taken seriously.
Citations:
Graphic by Eshi Sharma
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