The first person who introduced themselves as a
feminist to me was my father. He likes strong, intelligent, funny women, so
much so he married such a woman. His daughters have (I like to think) inherited
those qualities. He genuinely thinks
that men and women are equal, a belief that he has passed down to me without my
even realising this was a ‘belief’ to be held. While he thinks my mother is a
wonderful woman in many ways the first thing he noticed about her was her legs.
They chose to have a relationship and a family because of the people they were
but it started because of physical attraction.
Why am I talking about my father’s first response to
my mother? Because I fear that objectification has had a negative impact on
attraction. When men or women treat you like an object it is uncomfortable and
often threatening; I think all women have probably experienced this on some
level. Like seeing a woman ahead of you walk by a table of men and the men
shout at her. They don’t shout particularly nice things and sometimes there’s
even an aggression to their tone. Before you even reach the table your defences
are up, you just want to get past them without incident, you may even consider
a retort but you don’t know whether or not to do so in case it insights further
response, or puts you in danger. This is normal, day to day objectification and
it is horrible. I don’t think the men
who do it find it particularly enjoyable and I know the women who experience it
don’t.
Now to take an example from my own life; years ago I
walked past a group of young men. One of them said “nice bum” far louder than I
think he intended to. I turned to look at him and all his friends roared with
laughter and I have honestly never seen anyone go that shade of purple. As I
walked away I gave a little wiggle and could hear his friends almost crying
with laughter. This was not a threatening situation, he made a comment but
didn’t intend me to hear, it wasn’t disrespectful or hurtful and when he
realised I had heard he responded as anyone would. He found something about me
attractive and I decided to take it as a compliment, especially as it was also
funny. All in all it is a nice memory and most importantly at no point in that
situation did I feel uncomfortable. The difference between the two situations
is both tone and intent, one is aggressive and scary the other is warm and
nice. This is a subtle difference but it is important. Feeling objectified is
horrible, feeling attractive is lovely, simple as!
When a man looks at a woman and thinks she’s beautiful
and he’d like to have sex with her, this is not objectification, it is
attraction. Sexual desire is not based solely on intellectual compatibility. In
fact when you see someone across the room it is not based on anything other
than the fact that you’d like the way they look. This is an important part of
humanity, it keeps our species reproducing and it makes us feel all warm and
fuzzy.
Making comments on a person’s attractiveness is not necessarily
objectifying them. For example, Charlie Hunnam’s bum. If you watch Sons of
Anarchy you know what I’m talking about, if you don’t you might want to google
it. His bum is one of the things that make this world a little bit better just
by existing, I’m not the only one who thinks so, I have a facebook chat where
it’s a regular topic of conversation. Am I objectifying Charlie? No, I don’t
know him, I don’t particularly want to know him but I appreciate his aesthetic
qualities. I don’t watch the programme purely for this, the rest of our
Facebook chat is about the trials and tribulations of all the characters, this
is just a nice bonus. I think we appreciate that he is a person who we happen
to make rude comments about in the knowledge that he will never know or care.
Most people I know – men and women- have their version
of Charlie’s bum. Surely it is harmless to look at another person and notice
things that you find attractive about them and then tell your friends. We don’t
know them, they don’t know we’re making them and we aren’t reducing their
entire existence to this one aesthetic quality. Just celebrating it a little.
However, objectification is real, to a ridiculous
extent. I know myself I have felt confused by what it actually means, though I
can certainly identify when I feel it’s happened to me. It’s hard to quantify,
without trespassing on the lovely world of attraction. We need another word for
eyeing up someone we fancy (I like ogling but maybe that just because I think
it’s a funny word) because when I first started becoming more active in my
feminism I felt like a hypocrite. Women I know who are vocal feminists would be
ranting about objectification one minute and making raunchy comments about our
waiter the next. Maybe I’m a bit slow but I couldn’t understand how these women
thought it was ok for them to do something and not for men to do it, that’s not
fair. But I realised, the objectification they were talking about was not a
flippant comment about someone’s attractiveness, it was this constant demand
for women to be more than physically perfect to get a man. That being
physically attractive was not just the most important thing for a woman to be
but that it was the only thing that made you have worth. Being objectified is
being made into a thing, a doll to be played with. I will never be a doll, I
will always be someone who has in depth conversations about whether Charlie
Hunnam’s bum is in fact the greatest gift that has ever been given to men
fanciers everywhere. Finding someone attractive or making it the only thing
that is important about them are two very different things. Having your
intelligence dismissed because you’re “too pretty to be smart” is downright
insulting. Being told that men don’t like smart girls is slightly ridiculous. I
kind of wish I knew who started that phrase so as I could strongly dislike
them. This is what objectification is, to me anyway. It is the constant social
reinforcement that unless I look like Angelina Jolie I will never be good
enough.
There is one more aspect of this subject I want to
discuss; someone finding you attractive and making a move when you are not
interested. It can be annoying, it can be overwhelming, the way it is done can
be wrong. But their finding you attractive regardless of your feelings is not
wrong. We cannot help who we are attracted to. What we can do is choose how we
act on those feelings. The reason I am including this in this blog is because I
hear women say “why did he even think that was ok?” or insulting someone for
staring at them. Basically putting someone down for feeling attraction. I find
this difficult to explain because it is a very fine line, however I’ll try. If
someone finds you attractive they will probably look at you, if they get the
courage up they may talk to you. Neither of these things are bad. If they cross
the line to being creepy – making comments that would be rude by anyone’s standards
- or groping you, or actively making you uncomfortable in their pursuit in any
way then it’s not ok. And in this scenario of course be rude and say ‘why did
he even think that was ok?’ But just thinking you are good looking, in itself,
is not a bad thing. It’s actually kind of nice (sometimes really nice!) to have
someone think you’re attractive; who doesn’t want to be thought to be sexy or
beautiful just the way they are? But this area has been made into a minefield
for everyone, Men get told that if they want to be nice and respectful then
they have to pretend not to notice our breasts or bums or legs or whatever is
there thing, which is biologically impossible for them not to do (unless they
like men in which case same thing, different gender being ogled). We also imply
with statements like ‘what made him think that was ok?’ that his feelings are
not equal to our own, that the fancier’s emotions are less important than the
fancyie’s. Women get told (like I just told you) that being found attractive is
a good thing. We don’t get told when it stops being a good thing and starts
being a creepy and uncomfortable thing it’s ok for us to say so. We don’t have
to be nasty (going back to my earlier issue of being rude in these situations),
we can be polite and firm and clear. Take the flattering part of being found
attractive as a compliment and acknowledge that it’s tough to let someone know
you find them attractive. We can deal with their putting their emotions and
dignity into our hands with class and grace (or humour in the right situation).
But if that attraction is not mutual we absolutely should make that clear and that
decision should always be respected.
So we need a new word, my vote is in but I'm open to
suggestions. This word needs to be defined very clearly as “finding someone
attractive and appreciating their physical attributes without objectifying them
or making the situation really uncomfortable”.
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