Why Does Objectification Occur?

What psychological and economic processes likely contribute to objectification?

All this attention directed toward women’s bodies is big business. As long as girls and women continue to experience self-objectification, companies can guarantee big payouts. For example, in 2016, more than $8.5 billion was spent on cosmetic surgical procedures and nearly $6.8 billion on non-surgical procedures, and approximately 91% of these procedures were performed on women (American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 2016; see also Table 6.2). In the feminist classic The Beauty Myth, author Naomi Wolf (1991) argued that as long as women focus on their bodies, they would have less economic power and less time to focus on changing sexism in society. She argued that the obsession with female beauty is actually a political weapon against women’s advancement. The stereotype of the ugly feminist is one example of this. In a more recent book, Beauty Sick, psychologist Renee Engeln (2017) argues that while young women are aware of the unrealistic nature of the images of women that surround them, they live in a “beauty-sick culture” (p. 8). She reinforces Wolf’s message that the cultural focus on girls’ and women’s appearance gets in the way of them living happy lives and continues to limit their options and govern their actions.

Another interesting theory is that society is obsessed with managing the female body because of a fear of death. Terror management theory states that because humans fear death, anything that reminds us that we’re mortal and will die needs to be managed in a way that reduces our anxiety (Goldenberg, Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2000). For example, the typical image of a model in a magazine is of someone young, beautiful, and hairless. She’s almost more like a statue than a person, and a statue is immortal! Also, the female body has many more reminders of mortality than male bodies do. Female bodies can menstruate; they can lactate; they can give birth. These are signs that women are living beings who will eventually die. Given this context, some scholars claim that the objectification of women may be a cultural practice to help protect against mortality anxiety (Goldenberg & Roberts, 2004).

TABLE 6.2 Most Common Cosmetic Procedures among Women in the United States in 2016

Note. Data from American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (2016).

The female body has been described as the “monstrous feminine”—something with messy, undesirable processes that need to be managed through social and medical practices (Ussher, 2006, p. 1). As we’ve discussed, idealized and objectified images of women are the norm, not the exception. For example, in the Dove ad campaign discussed at the start of the chapter, the women in the ads show no body hair below the neck. And none appear to be leaking menstrual fluid or breast milk, despite the fact that many women experience such leaks at one time or another.

Some researchers have explored the concepts of fear of death and the monstrous feminine. In one study, half of the participants were primed to think about their mortality by describing their emotional response to thoughts of their own death (Grabe, Routledge, Cook, Andersen, & Arndt, 2005). Women who were asked to contemplate their death subsequently reported higher levels of self-objectification than those who did not. They were also more likely to report objectifying other women. Other research has explored self-objectification in the context of pregnancy, breastfeeding, and menstruation (Morris, Goldenberg, & Heflick, 2014). In this study, women, but not men, who were both encouraged to think about death and shown images of pregnant women were more likely to self-objectify. This effect also occurred when they were instructed to think about death and then asked if they had a tampon (as opposed to a pencil). Evidently, thinking about death and being reminded of the humanness of the body have the potential to make some women desire to separate themselves from their own humanness and view themselves more as an object. Objects, after all, are immortal.