Objectify This

Pingback from Anonymous
Time May 18, 2007 at 11:05 am

[...] wrote a story about Barbies, boobs, boys and mutilation four five years ago. This brings back [...]

Comment from Anonymous
Time May 18, 2007 at 5:21 pm

‘Scuse me, but as I see it…women began objectifying themselves in the 1960s and the rest of this followed after. You see, guys have always chased girls…but it wasn’t until the 1960s that girls started to publicly allow themselves to get caught. This (objectification) seems to be the result of women lowering the bar long enough for objectification to take root.

Comment from Anonymous
Time May 18, 2007 at 6:00 pm

I as a youth, destroyed and hanged all my barbies, that was the last time I played with dolls.

Comment from Anonymous
Time May 19, 2007 at 11:12 am

random514:

Then I guess you don’t count a thousands of years of being sold off in trade, exchanged for favors, or, if not attractive enough for trade/favors, used for slave labor as part of the problem? Women have always been objectified, have always been told (and most bought into) the idea that Beauty (yes, with a capital B) was the only way out, the only way up, the only way in.

Women have been allowing themselves to get caught (and doing things to lure) for forever. Pre-60s you lured by being demure, by appearing helpless, by hiding your sexuality and your intellect, by keeping your opinions to yourself, and by agreeing with your father’s opinions and wishes. Women turned themselves into objects of desire be being what society demanded they be — helpless, brainless automatons who could cook, clean, and raise a kid. Why? To get caught.

In the 60s women decided to start trying life more on their own terms, an experiment which has sometimes gone wrong, but has, more often than not, gone right. Women still turn themselves into objects of desire (as do men) but there aren’t as many limits on what it takes to be an object of desire as there were pre-60s. Can’t cook? No problem, get take out. Have an opinion and a degree you use? Good thing, because he got laid off. Can change your own oil? Fantastic, because he’s busy changing a diaper.

Here’s to the continued evolution of what it takes to get caught…

Comment from Anonymous
Time May 19, 2007 at 7:04 pm

Men have been sold as slaves because they could work. Same sin, different reason. When I say get caught, I mean in the unchaste way, not through marriage.
A woman’ ability to cook, etc. aren’t objectifying anymore than a man working at a job is objectifying. It’s just the traditional role.
The actual objectification comes from the voluntary refusal to be a mere sex object.

Comment from Anonymous
Time May 21, 2007 at 11:07 am

Mutilating Barbie dolls? Done it!

I’d put one in the oven if it weren’t for the fumes…:(

Comment from Anonymous
Time May 21, 2007 at 4:00 pm

Correct me if I’m wrong: you are saying that it is womankind’s joining in with mankind’s openness about sex (in other words, willingness to have sex outside of marriage) that created the objectification of women. That, like Eve bringing sin into the world by partaking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, the women of the 60′s brought the objectification of women into the world by partaking of sex outside of marriage.

My point in counter was/is that women have been objectified since the dawn of time, sold into slavery because of lack of beauty, traded to powerful men as sex objects because of beauty, viewed (in our more recent past) as household appliances who could cook, clean, and keep children quiet.

And your counter to that is (in paraphrase) “Well, men have been slaves, and cooking and cleaning is just the traditional role of a woman.”

Your first point: I fail to see the relevance. Not saying there isn’t one, but I fail to see it. The fact that it is the “same sin” for a different reason is the point to me, because I’m not talking about the simple selling of slave labor, which is what the selling of a man was. The selling of a man usually had nothing to do with the man as anything more than an enemy [until the Euro slave trade, when it became about labor]. I’m talking about the selling of women for thousands of years for the simple fact that they were not attractive enough to be useful for anything else. They weren’t attractive enough to be used to barter as a wife for political favor [exchanged to the "king" of the next village, etc]. They weren’t attractive enough to be a feather in their father’s hat. That’s objectification in a way that being an enemy isn’t.

The second point you made: That’s the role of a woman? And, for almost 300 years (and some still think it), the traditional and acceptable role of a person of color was to serve white folks. And the traditional role of a poor man in England was to serve his Lord. And the traditional role of the lowest caste in a caste system is to keep quiet, keep poor, keep suffering, and die soon in the hopes of moving up. But, guess what, being traditional and acceptable to the majority doesn’t make it good or right.

And I agree that being the breadwinner has been the traditional role of men, sometimes exclusively. Men are put under great pressure to succeed at providing not only adequately, but for every need and want of their families. Again, though, tradition isn’t always good or right. And, being the breadwinner (except for the very poor who had no leisure time) did not exclude the man from other pursuits. Until recently, the woman was excluded from pursuits not directly related to the household (or religion — but only the sociable and charitable aspects of religion, not significant knowledge, deciding of one’s own path, etc).

Caught in the unchaste way? First, if women weren’t objects, men wouldn’t have been catching them “in the unchaste way” and then tossing them aside as whores for forever. If a woman was more than an object (a pure vessel to bear his children and tend his home), he’d have kept one he already done caught!

How chaste is it, anyways, to allow one’s self to be won as a prize in an arranged marriage designed to gain power or favor for your father and deflowered in a probably most aggressive fashion? Many if not most cultures, until very recently in history, have required the woman to be deflowered forcibly in neccisary and for blood to be shown as evidence, regardless of the woman’s experience, willingness, etc. In fact, she may not have even wanted to marry the man; our current manner of marrying whom we want is quite new. How is this chaste? Even if the woman went willingly to her a husband she did not choose (out of familial allegiance), why does that make it “chaste”? Because sex in marriage is condoned by God? I need a better reason to call forced marriage and sex with an unwanted partner “chaste”.

“Objectification comes from the voluntary refusal to be a mere sex object?” Did you misstate yourself or did you actually mean to say objectification is the result of a woman refusing to be only a sex object?

It is not her ability to cook, in and of itself that is the problem. It is that the value of a woman was tied almost completely to whether or not she could cook, clean, and keep children quite. Men have always been able to pursue knowledge or follow their interests to one degree or another (how many Renaissance women were there throughout history compared to Renaissance men?). This is not to say all men at all times have been able, but that women certainly have rarely been encouraged to do so. Men had to provide but, if they could also acquire knowledge or pursue other interests, fine. Women were to pursue only knowledge and arts related to cooking, cleaning, household duties, and keeping children quiet, because women weren’t persons, they were objects, automatons, designed by God to do only these things.