I have never been the ‘lady like’ type of woman. That is to say, that I have never had the urge to dress how ‘women are supposed to dress’. Since I was small, my mom would dress me up with dresses all the time. I really prefer wearing jeans, shirts, and shoes. My hair I would have it in a pony tail or in a bun. As I became older, around age thirteen, I only used jeans even when we went to parties. I wouldn’t wear skirts, shorts, nor dresses. My mom would tell me that I needed to dress like a girl because if not, boys were not going to like me or be interested in me. I would ask “why?” do I have to dress good for boys? She just told me that that’s the way it is, women are supposed to dress good for men can like us. It was never a question of me liking the way I looked with what I wear, it was a question of whether men would find me desirable.
There has always been a strong domination of men over women. Women have been given the characteristics of weak, inferior, dependent, and submissive. In contrast, men are strong, superior, independent, and oppressive. Women have been controlled by men for a long period of time. The system that still dominates society right now is patriarchal. Everything women do has to be for the gaze of men. What do I mean by the ‘gaze of men’? It means that women must dress and act is certain manners that appeal to the view of men. That is to say, that women are objectify as sexual objects for and exclusively for men.
Here we can clearly see how the roles of men and women are displayed. The woman is under the man, leaving her in a complete place of inferiority and submissiveness. Furthermore, she is in a string bikini, laying down passively. In a complete different perspective is the male shown. He is standing above her, completely cover in clothes, and holding the Vodka tightly with his fist close. Giving the sensation of power over her. This Advertisement is meant to give men the illusion that by buying Skyy Vodka they will also obtain a beautiful erotic woman.
I thought it was pretty interesting how Joan Scott W. states, “Sexual objectification is the primary process of the subjection of women.” This is because women are not supposed to desire sex, so they are only used by men to satisfy male needs. That is to say, that by objectifying women, women are no longer seen as humans. Furthermore, it takes away their rights as a person. Scott goes on by stating “man fucks woman.” This sentence is the perfect example of how women are objectify even through language. In this sentence ‘man’ is the subject who is doing the action ‘fucks’ to the object, in this case woman.
There has been artist who have made videos which indeed make them look as a sexual objects because of what they are wearing, how they dance, and what the lyrics are saying. Especially, in the way they objectify themselves. Today, women fight the ‘objectification of women’ some through their music videos like: https://youtu.be/Mzybwwf2HoQ in this video Brittney Spears is touching her body in a sexual way; https://youtu.be/p1JPKLa-Ofc Beyonce is displayed in her bikini; https://youtu.be/LDZX4ooRsWs Nicki Minaj’s video has women looking very erotic with a lot of sexual movements. However, it is hard to say they are not objects when they are displayed showing large quantities of skin. These videos can be interpreted in two ways: one, they are being empowered because they have the control to embrace their sexuality; two, they are disempowering themselves because the first thing noticeable about these videos is all the sexy women in underwear and bra, which is interpreted to be for male gaze. In my opinion, they are empowering women because it shows that now women are able to show their sexual desires. In these videos we can see that women too have sexual requests.
