Caroline Heldman-Being a sex object is empowering. Oh wait, no it's not. Here's why.

I think this TED talk raises some really interesting points, especially about a woman's relationship and monitoring of her body.

Quotations from Heldman in blue

"we have lost the vocabulary to talk about it ...it's like being raised in a red room, pulled out of that red room and being asked to describe the colour red" This idea is really interesting, because we have been raised in a society in which the sexual objectification is the norm, we do not challenge it. It also makes me think of The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter which has a scene in which a woman is surrounded by mirrors, her reflections becoming sinister and mutilated. I need to reread this story as it is about female identity and sexuality being dominated by a man.

"8 hours a day on devices where advertisers can reach them therefore using hyper violence and over sexualisation to cut through the clutter" The statistic that we spend on average 8 hours a day on devices is pretty shocking and I had not thought about the effect this had on advertisers tactics. 

"object subject dichotomy:

even if you become the perfect sex object, you are perfectly subordinate because that position will always be acted upon, so there is no power in being a sex object" Between women there is this competition to change yourself to become sexually attractive but it is true that in this self objectification women reduce their power in patriarchal society.

"sex sells, but women make up half the population so surely we would be seeing half naked men everywhere, I would like to propose that something else is being sold here, to men they are being sold this idea constantly that they are sexual subjects and for women we are being sold this idea that this is how we get our value and this is the way to become the ideal sex object" I really like this attack on the idea that sex sells, woman are told through adverts that we must buy more products in order to make ourselves valuable. The idea is propagated that woman alone and unchanged are worthless and need to be added to and subtracted from in order to make them worthy of sexually attraction.

"habitual body monitoring every 30 seconds - takes up mental space cognitive functioning suffers" This is another shocking statistic, but it makes sense when I think about how many times I straighten out my skirt, rearrange my hair, check I have no makeup under my eyes. It is completely ridiculous. Do men have this same self-monitering? It would be interesting to talk to men about this.

"we see male attention as the holy grail of our existence by and large and so we compete with other women for our own self esteem because we see it as this finite resource" This is absolutely true, sexual objectification not only causes problems between the genders but also between women. Girls are raised to be continually judging themselves and others, we have all heard ourselves being talked about critically, and unfortunately I don't think any woman could say she has never judged another woman. All women struggle with self-esteem and it is due to the society we are raised in, women are seen as objects and so treat themselves and their bodies as objects, depriving them and punishing them in order to become this 'perfect object.' This creates a gulf between a woman's self and her body, the two are pulled apart, unable to fit together thus a woman's sexuality is hindered as she feels her body is not connected to her self, and not solely hers.

"we raise our little boys to view their bodies as tools to master their environments, but we raise our little girls to view their bodies as projects to constantly be improved" This is the main reason that sexual objectification occurs, is because of this early indoctrination and this is why it is so ingrained in our society. This is so important because how we view our bodies forms how we plan on using them.