Objectification Theory

Women are bombarded by images of a thin-ideal body form that is extremely hard, if not impossible, to emulate. Comparing themselves to these women can lead to feelings of inadequacy, depression, and an overall low self-esteem. (Expand on, need a good opening paragraph to grab the reader’s attention)

Objectification Theory

Objectification theory has been proposed as a standard for understanding the effects of living in a culture that sexually objectifies women (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Objectification occurs when a person’s body is treated like a separate entity and is evaluated on its own merit, without consideration for the rest of the person. When an individual is sexually objectified, they are treated like an object that exists only for the pleasure of others and objectification theory asserts that women are uniquely subject to these types of experiences, especially in Western culture. Self-objectification (SO) leads the individual to create a third person perspective in their minds that they use to compare their physical selves to and in turn causes them to see themselves as an object instead of a whole person. SO also creates a form of self-consciousness, causing a habitual and vigilant self-monitoring of outward appearance.

There are many cognitive and emotional consequences of SO. Among these consequences are increased body shame, increased appearance anxiety, and a decreased ability to reach high states of motivation. Many studies have shown that there is a positive relation between SO, body shame, and eating disorders (Mercurio & Landry, 2008). It can also be argued that depression, sexual dysfunction, and eating disorders are additional consequences. Depression is most often caused due to body shame an...

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...ly asked them to name the color of the ink in which the words appeared; and the rate of their responses were recorded.

The experiment completed by Quinn et al. reported that the women who wore the swimsuits rather than the v-neck sweater experienced feeling more defined by their bodies and increased feelings of body shame. It also took the women in the objectification condition longer to respond to the Stroop task, thus showing a decrease in performance. This split in attention could happen throughout the day with women in “real world” situations, thus hindering every day performance and possibly removing joy from their tasks due to a lack of complete immersion. It is also important to note that this experiment focused on a task that is in no way related to any gender stereotype, helping to rule out stereotype threat as an explanation for the results obtained.