Sexual Objectification and Owning Your Sexuality.
How language can objectify women:
Sexual desire and sexual objectification are two very different things. Desire is a feeling someone has for a specific person, they are humanised more, not less, by being desired. Objectification is the opposite, it dehumanises. What's wrong with making a woman feel like an object? Why is that wrong? Because it implies ownership and control: objects are the things we own and control, not women. That's what sexual objectification against women does, it dehumanises and reduces her to her parts. An objectified woman is nothing but a collection of body parts, interchangeable with any other objectified woman. It's thought that a woman exists only to provide gratification to the man gazing at her. Sexual objectification defines women- all women- as a collection of desirable or undesirable body parts. It's not only about sex and sometimes it's not about sex at all. Sexual objectification of women supports male superiority (the patriarchy), it supports the idea that men are the actors that make things happen and women exist for the pleasure and gratification of men. Rather than for their own purpose and pleasure.
Men consider women’s primary function is to be sexually pleasing because they are women. They think it's normal, because society has taught men that women exist for their gratification. When women don’t fit the old white man’s narrative of womanhood, they are dehumanised by not being allowed to ‘exist’. For women, before we can have their voices heard, we have to fight to have our very own existence acknowledged. The debilitating exhaustion of that is unimaginable. However, if one person objectifies another that is not oppression. It's when the objectification becomes the primary way that an entire class of people are seen and treated, that it becomes oppressive.
Why is it wrong to stare at a woman's breasts? It's not wrong because you're having impure thoughts. It's wrong because it makes her feel uncomfortable. It makes her feel like an object, and people who feel like objects have reason to be concerned. In extreme cases, objectified women get raped. (I'm not saying objectification leads to rape. I'm saying rape generally involves objectification.)
Language and Women:
Sexual objectification isn't a ‘sometime’ thing. Women are, every day, treated as a commodity and nothing more and when using slang terms or phrases to describe women’s genitalia, people ask why that's not ok. It's not ok to invalidate the personhood of people because they have a vagina and breasts. When women are treated as sexual objects, they are socialised that they aren't good enough, that their "job" is to be desirable to men but not available to them (or at least not too "easily") because again, this drops her value.
The vast majority of all words we use for our female anatomy were determined by men, and often named after them. And plenty of people will claim it doesn't matter. That words are just words and cannot impact our thoughts, actions, or feelings." "WORDS MATTER. THEY DIRECT, DETERMINE, AND DEFINE THE WAY WE LOOK AT THINGS ON A CULTURAL LEVEL. EVEN OURSELVES.- Awkwardly Honest (Shannon Ashley.)
Through my work, I want to show how language can be used to objectify and dehumanise women. Language conditions society and leaves an imprint on us all. The words we read, hear, use and see all influence us in some sort of way. I will use my work to create visual images of the words / slang we use towards women or to describe their bodies. This will highlight the ridiculousness of them and how damaging they can be when understanding our own sexuality. I want to show that understanding/ having ownership of your own body and using the correct language to celebrate it, is powerful and it's something women can choose for themselves rather than have it imposed upon them.
Cheryl Donegan:
"Head" 1993 is a video depicting Donegan drinking milk suggestively from a milk carton. This is to show how women are objectified and over sexualised. I took inspiration from how this was filmed, the use of humour and music. I really like the way the camera is shot so only the side of her head and the milk bottle is in frame. I also really appreciate how she does not interact with the camera at all, it's as if she doesn't know it's there. In my video, I will consider the ways I film myself or anyone else, I think by only filming the body, it will emphasise how women are sexualised through the language I will be portraying. I could only film from the neck down wards? I'm unsure whether not acknowledging the camera would work in my film as I want it to be over-exaggerated and look highly sexualised to create a disjunction or parody between the language that is used and the visual representations I am displaying.
The music used in Donegan’s video is very upbeat, and the colours are bright, which conveys a fun atmosphere. It seems almost like a 90's workout video. Alongside, the use of a sexual innuendo conveyed through the milk bottle adds humour, but also a level of disgust. Similarly, I want to communicate a serious message about the ways in which language sexualises and objectifies women's bodies through the use of humour. So when someone views my film, their first reaction would be to laugh. However, after watching it again more closely, the viewer would have a different reaction. Ultimately, I am very interested in taking dark topics and stripping them from their depth through humour and film.
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