Objectification In Men And Women Essay

1212 Words3 Pages

There are different expectations for men and women and how they should and should not behave, this applies to many different aspects of life, one of them being the different genders relation to sexual encounters. When comparing the two different sexes, it is more accepted for men to be aggressive and assertive seekers of sex and to have more sexual partners. Women on the other hand are expected to be the recipients of the attention given by men and only value intimate situations when in a committed romantic relationship (Taylor, 2005, p.153). How people view sexuality with the two different sexes are contributing, if not the cause, to gender inequality. Making men appear as sexually dominant, and women as a sexually submissive object reinforces …show more content…

Objectification is being looked at as purely as an object, where the major purpose of the person is for the observer to stare (Stankjewicz and Roselli, 2008, pp 583-584). You belong to them, you are an object for them to gaze at - nothing more. This often occurs in men's magazines, where the women are oversexualised and deemed as purely a decorative object to please the readers and the audience (Stankjewicz and Roselli, 2008, p.582). Ward, Vandenbosch and Eggermont suggest these sexually objectifying depictions of women are frequent throughout men's magazines, featuring them only as sexual objects valued only for beauty and sex, are creating an unachievable expectation for men of 'normal' women (2015, pp.50-51). Further on, they went on to say that the more men and young boys consume these depictions of women, the more they assign the girls appearance to her value, over her characteristics and personality traits. This could over time create a cultural acceptance for these views of women, seeing as they are not provided with contrasting depictions, making them misinterpret girls' intention and therefore might lead to unwanted sexual attention or even harassment (Ward, Vandenbosch and Eggermont, 2015, p.55). Oversexualizing and portraying women as sex objects can construct a great array of consequences which …show more content…

Influencing them to be the way a woman should (Braithwaite and Barrell, 1979, p.21). Housewife magazines, such as Good Housekeeping, became a sort of 'bible' for the housewives, "pressuring women to expect fulfilment in the role of the homemaker and establishing impossible ideas for their performance of the role" ((ed.) Davis, 1998, p. 228). Collectively, Women's magazines share similar features such as addressing their readers as equals and friends, they are all organized around women's shared joy in femininity and the labour of being a housewife; they are organized around the opposition of masculinity and more on what women share with each other due to their sex (Gill, 2015, p.183). All this pressure on being a good housewife and mother by magazines could have been an interference within employment of women, because the prospect of having an actual job seemed so far-fetched (Tuckman, Daniels and Benét, 1978, p.

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