Bianca Ontiveros | Contributing Writer
Luke Bryan’s “Country Girl” video shows women dancing provocatively for a music video audition. The video switches scenes to Bryan singing these lyrics: “Get up on the hood of my daddy’s tractor, up on the toolbox, it don’t matter, down on the tailgate, girl, I can’t wait to watch you do your thing. … Aw, country girl, shake it for me. Girl, shake it for me, girl, shake it for me.”
These lyrics have something in common with those by Lil’ Wayne’s “Lollipop” single from 2008. He rapped, “She licked me like a lollipop,” and although the genres are completely different, they both objectify women.
Misogyny has been criticized in pop culture due to lyrics, music videos, movies, television shows, advertisements and more. The female body is exploited as a sexual object for others’ pleasure and is frequently pacified with the statement “sex sells.”
Some women have spoken out against this “tradition” through feminism, using their voices to declare that women be treated fairly. Yet other women have attempted to beat men to the punch by exploiting themselves and their fellow females. Their efforts could be based on good intentions, but there has been opposition to the idea that women objectifying themselves is acceptable.
“Women Who Objectify Other Women: The Vicious Circle of Objectification?” is the title of a study done by Peter Strelan and Duane Hargreaves published in Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, which gives evidence for the negative effects of this type of objectification.
“Women objectify other women more than they objectify themselves, which suggests that, in relative terms, women place greater importance on other women’s appearances than they do on their own,” the study says. “That is, the practice of objectification of others may possibly lead others, particularly women, to internalize appearance standards for themselves, thereby increasing self-objectification.”
Seeing graphs, theories and hypotheses fleshed out helps form a foundation to the concept that women do objectify women. However, the voices of everyday women speaking on the prevalence of this problem seem to be missing.
“Although it is important to have conversations about how men (and essentially, the male-dominated and male-driven society we live in) objectify women, I also think it is important to not overlook how women can and have been objectifying other women, whether intentional or not,” Elayna Ah Puck, senior sociology major, said. “Actually, I feel that women objectifying other women is more detrimental because its oppressiveness is more masked.”
Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” speaks vividly about sexual experiences with men and dedicating the song to all her “b—-es with a fat a–.” Miley Cyrus has been seen on stage slapping women’s behinds. Beyoncé and Ciara dance provocatively, almost like strippers, to perform for men in music videos. There are countless examples of women widely acknowledged for their talent putting themselves and others on display for recognition.
Ah Puck used Meghan Trainor’s song “All About That Bass” as an example of women focusing on their bodies as a way to appeal to men, only continuing the cycle of objectification. “Self-love and self-acceptance can’t be any more clear than when she says, ‘Every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top,’ right? No. In her lyrics, self-esteem and worth becomes synonymous with physical appearance, and it ultimately implies that females should find acceptance in themselves through the way males perceive them,” she said.
Although it seems obvious that many women are focused on their bodies as objects, the article published in the journal Sex Roles reveals that women still do not objectify women to the extent that men do.
“A central tenet of objectification theory is that women are the main targets of sociocultural pressure to attain an idealized body, and a primary source of such perceived pressure is evaluation by men,” said Strelan and Hargreaves. “Accordingly, we found that men objectify women more than they objectify other men. In addition, and also consistent with objectification theory, we found that men objectify women more than women objectify other women.”
The argument could be made that it’s just a double standard; if men are praised for their sexual conquests, then women should be able to express themselves as sexual beings. There are studies and articles that claim some women, in trying to earn respect in a male-dominated society, decide to play nontraditional roles that turn their bodies into objects of desire.
“These artists use their fashion sensibility, lyrics and image content in the media to either differentiate from, or subvert the male-enforced sexual roles females are expected to play in hip-hop culture,” said Theresa Renee White in her article “Female Sexuality in Hip-Hop Culture” in the Journal of Black Studies.
Some women believe that recognizing themselves as sexual beings or flaunting their bodies is a positive action for the feminist movement. Columbia Journalism Review recently published an article on Playboy, a magazine often considered pornography, that quoted one of its senior vice presidents as saying his company wanted to be “inclusive” and “pro-women.”
Lisa Nena, a second-year APU graduate student in the college counseling and student development master’s program and graduate assistant for the Women’s Resource Center, said: “I think whenever you objectify a human being you are harming yourself and the person you are objectifying. Where does it end? It might seem easier to give in and just be what people want you to be but it’s a lonely road. It’s hard as it is to find a sense of self in this chaotic world. It takes courage to be yourself.”