To be clear, this does not make me happy. But it greatly affects happiness, so let’s discuss.
Both men and women see images of sexy women’s bodies as objects, while they see sexy-looking men as people, according to a new study published in Psychological Science. This gets me all kinds of riled up because it reveals so much about our society and women’s place in it. There’s a catch-22 no one is talking about: women try to be attractive and sexy, but when they are, they lose their value as human beings and as women.
Sexual objectification has been well studied, but most of the research is about looking at the effects of this objectification. This study was only preliminary; the next step is to study how seeing all these images influences how people treat real women.
As a real woman, I can tell you how people treat objectified women: exactly like it sounds. Like objects. Like their humanity has been stripped simply because they are attractive. I won’t say it always happens, and I won’t say it always happens to the extreme. But sometimes it does. In a dance club, in a conference room, in a grocery store, in a gym, attractive women are whistled at, groped, or worse. In a mild form, it’s flattering, or funny. But we can’t let ego-stroking faciliate objectification.
This is a small, preliminary study, but its findings are important. We need to make sure we as a society see sexy women as people, as women, instead of objects. But how?
Happy: is a new category of posts for this is life in austin & aspen. As I’ve developed DailyHap.com, which I encourage you all to visit daily, I’ve come across mountains of research, blog posts, articles, supportive pictures, and so on that can help lead to happiness but are not “filed” under that category. Here, I’ll react and discuss these gems, as well as talk more about my own experiences with the lessons presented.