Moriah Lahr

05/18/18

  Sexual Objectification and Its Effect on Women’s Mental Health

Sexual objectification is when women are seen by men as objects made for their own pleasure and not as intelligent, complex beings. Examples of sexual objectification include catcalling, sexual assault, rape, or simply getting checked out. Studies show that sexual objectification impacts women's mental health for the worse as I stated in BLOG POST 1. Every woman that I have talked to about being sexually objectified says they deal with mental health issues very often, including daily battles with anxiety or depression. I even did surveys on a few high school female students at Science Leadership Academy in BLOG POST 2.

Women are starting to come out more about their experience with being sexually objectified in the workplace, at school, or even just walking down the street. One example is a 20 year old named Noa Jansma who took selfies with every man that cat called her to show everyone awareness and show people how much this happens to women every single day. I think this is a very good way of showing people that this is a very damaging thing that a lot of men do.

For my agent of change, I decided I wanted to film a video touching on these issues of sexual objectification then later get in touch with an 8th grade sex ed teacher to show her students. Unfortunately, my plans and communication with the teacher fell through and I was unable to get ahold of her so I just posted the video on youtube and hope to reach the goal of 30 views. I felt as though talking about sexual objectification in depth would be a great way to spread awareness and understanding of the topic. The experience of working toward an agent of change was stressful at times but I tried my best to stay focused and get it done. I am curious to see what people’s response and reactions will be to the video.

I loved doing this topic as my project as a whole. I learned a lot of new things and feel like I can relate to a lot of things that women are experiencing in their daily lives. I learned about myself and others that being sexually objectified is what really pulls down our self confidence levels and can leave negative effects on women even if we don’t realize that’s the reason some of us feel bad about ourselves. In this project I feel as though I could’ve managed my time a lot better so that there wouldn’t be any inconveniences. There is still a lot left for people to do to help end sexual objectification but I think our best bet for now is to just raise awareness and show people this is how we feel. Women are feeling degraded and oppressed and we need to show people that this isn’t okay. We need to show people that we aren’t just pieces of meat to be lusted after and that we are actually complex and intelligent human beings with feelings and a personality.

       annotated bibliography

Link to video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TIOkbCilRQ

   The Effect of Sexual Objectification on Women’s Mental Health

Moriah Lahr

3/14/18

Annotated Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lJ6B8PTnw_vgVb6aBkCLC_DRJA1BjmPpT_-KwdDTSdg/edit

I want to focus on the topic of the effect of sexual objectification on women’s mental health. I experience sexual objectification daily. Whether it’s seeing a music video of half naked girls dancing around a guy or getting cat called on my own block. Both which can make me feel bad about myself. A goal I have in researching this topic is to be educated on the different types of sexual objectification and the different health issues it can cause. I want to help make a change by getting women’s different point of views and stories of being objectified and getting the word out there to people who can’t see that it’s a problem.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3673099/Man-confesses-checking-mediocre-women-Reddit-good-deed.html

This woman is shown walking past a man while he looks back at her curves. What this photo actually came from was a website that had a married man saying he checks out mediocre women to “compliment them” as if we enjoy being gaped at.

I am interested in this topic because as a woman in this culture, I have been objectified many times in many different ways. This topic matters to me because I have many friends who have been cat called or checked out etc. and I know first hand how scary it feels to me and my friends. When I’m out with my friends, we have to talk about what if a guy comes up to us and starts checking us out and saying creepy things to us. We came to a conclusion that if that happens, we’ll just say we’re a couple. I think it’s truly sad that girls at a young age are so scared to just walk outside because we get looked at and taunted. Some men even think checking out girls are a compliment when it really makes us feel worse about ourselves. “We are not outside for your benefit. We do not look in the mirror every morning hoping this outfit will get a guy to silently follow us down the street for five minutes after saying, “God bless you mami… Damn.””

http://www.eatthedamncake.com/2010/06/14/getting-checked-out-by-guys-with-wives/

This woman is being showed in the camera view in an angle that only shows her body and shows two guys looking at her body. This shows how much women’s bodies are sexualized and lusted over. It’s showing her body as if she doesn’t have a face or a personality.

In the research I found, I learned that sexual objectification comes in many forms such as catcalling, getting checked out, sexual assault, rape, pornography, television, etc. These things can cause not only men to look at women as objects but cause women to look at themselves as objects and make them want to look a certain way to fit into the cultures view of a “perfect body”. This causes mental health issues such as body dysmorphia, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, etc. It is important for people to know about this and be aware of it because some men are raised to think it’s okay to objectify and they just don’t know any better. Knowing the research behind it might really change the way we are looked at and the way we look at ourselves. The details in my research that can educate readers is what the different types of objectification there are because some people might not even be able to realize it when they see it or do it.

http://websterjournal.com/2014/12/01/catcalls-arent-compliments/

This photo shows a woman that is covering up and looking insecure as people are cat-calling her all around. This happens on a daily basis to women. Mens calls make us feel insecure like all we are is a body.

My research so far has impacted my understanding of sexual objectification because I never really focused on looking at the mental health side of things and how it affects people. Now I can see better why me and some of my friends have the self image issues that we have. I’m objectified on a daily basis so I feel like this is a personal topic that I have actual experience to backup my claims with.

effects on well-being

“The present research suggests that stranger harassment (i.e., experiencing unwanted sexual attention from strangers in public) is a frequent experience for young adult women, and that it has negative implications for their well-being. First, stranger harassment was positively related to self-objectification. This was true for women who coped with stranger harassment using common strategies (passive, self-blame, or benign), but not for women who used an uncommon, active coping strategy (e.g., confronting the harasser). Second, stranger harassment experiences and self-objectification were positively related to women's fear of and perceived risk of rape. Further, women who feared rape were more likely to restrict their freedom of movement. In concert, the findings suggest that stranger harassment may have both direct and indirect negative effects on women's lives, and that it is a phenomenon worthy of future research. “

Women perceive themselves as objects

“girls and women are typically acculturated to internalize an observer's perspective as a primary view of their physical selves. This perspective on self can lead to habitual body monitoring, which, in turn, can increase women's opportunities for shame and anxiety, reduce opportunities for peak motivational states, and diminish awareness of internal bodily states.”

This says that women see themselves the way other people view them and if they are viewed like objects that’s how we’ll see ourselves as.

Graph of psychological consequences  

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This image shows what sexual objectification can lead to. It’s like a domino affect where once one thing happens there’s a trail of bad things happening after it.

I gathered surveys from 3 different female SLA students. Some new information i found is that ⅔ of them were around my age and ⅓ was an older teen. I learned that people experience similar things such as getting cat called and feeling extremely uncomfortable. One girl said that being cat called is one of the most terrifying experiences she has, I can relate to  his because for me it also sparks a lot of anxiety when I’m being sexually objectified.

Also, 100% of the people who answered the survey say that they deal w mental health issues. This proves my point that sexual objectification affects the mental health of females. I asked them what they think we can do to end this issue, and the main response was to just bring awareness and show people this is what’s happening to you and how it makes you feel as a woman.

                   The Effect of Sexual Objectification on Women’s Mental Health

Moriah Lahr

2/14/18

Annotated Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lJ6B8PTnw_vgVb6aBkCLC_DRJA1BjmPpT_-KwdDTSdg/edit

I want to focus on the topic of the effect of sexual objectification on women’s mental health. I experience sexual objectification daily. Whether it’s seeing a music video of half naked girls dancing around a guy or getting catcalled on my own block. Both which can make me feel bad about myself. A goal I have in researching this topic is to be educated on the different types of sexual objectification and the different health issues it can cause. I want to help make a change by getting women’s different point of views and stories of being objectified and getting the word out there to people who can’t see that it’s a problem.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3673099/Man-confesses-checking-mediocre-women-Reddit-good-deed.html

This woman is shown walking past a man while he looks back at her curves. What this photo actually came from was a website that had a married man saying he checks out mediocre women to “compliment them” as if we enjoy being gaped at.

I am interested in this topic because as a woman in this culture, I have been objectified many times in many different ways. This topic matters to me because I have many friends who have been catcalled or checked out etc. and I know first hand how scary it feels to me and my friends. When I’m out with my friends, we have to talk about what if a guy comes up to us and starts checking us out and saying creepy things to us. We came to a conclusion that if that happens, we’ll just say we’re a couple. I think it’s truly sad that girls at a young age are so scared to just walk outside because we get looked at and taunted. Some men even think checking out girls is a compliment when it really makes us feel worse about ourselves. “We are not outside for your benefit. We do not look in the mirror every morning hoping this outfit will get a guy to silently follow us down the street for five minutes after saying, “God bless you mami… Damn.”

http://www.eatthedamncake.com/2010/06/14/getting-checked-out-by-guys-with-wives/

This woman is being shown in the camera view at an angle that only shows her body and shows two guys looking at her body. This shows how much women’s bodies are sexualized and lusted over. It’s showing her body as if she doesn’t have a face or a personality.

In the research I found, I learned that sexual objectification comes in many forms such as catcalling, getting checked out, sexual assault, rape, pornography, television, etc. These things can cause not only men to look at women as objects but cause women to look at themselves as objects and make them want to look a certain way to fit into the culture's view of a “perfect body”. This causes mental health issues such as body dysmorphia, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, etc. It is important for people to know about this and be aware of it because some men are raised to think it’s okay to objectify and they just don’t know any better. Knowing the research behind it might really change the way we are looked at and the way we look at ourselves. The details of my research that can educate readers is what the different types of objectification there are because some people might not even be able to realize it when they see it or do it.

http://websterjournal.com/2014/12/01/catcalls-arent-compliments/

This photo shows a woman that is covering up and looking insecure as people are cat-calling her all around. This happens on a daily basis to women. Men's calls make us feel insecure like all we are is a body.

My research so far has impacted my understanding of sexual objectification because I never really focused on looking at the mental health side of things and how it affects people. Now I can see better why some of my friends and I have the self-image issues that we have. I’m objectified on a daily basis so I feel like this is a personal topic that I have actual experience to backup my claims with.

   Chris Jacobs and I, had a great time doing this project. Our video project is a “vlog” or “video blog” based on Act 5 Scene 1 of the play written by Shakespeare’s, “Macbeth”.  Act 5 Scene 1 is the scene that has Lady Macbeth's doctor and her gentle woman watching as she sleepwalks around and talks about all of the many murders Macbeth and her have been responsible for. We decided to make this parody scene a video because we feel as though that's the best way people will understand it and take it in. Adding comedy into the scene will make it more interesting and understandable compared to if we just read in old english, verbatim from the book. This scene is very important because it shows how Lady Macbeth switched up from being nonchalant about the murders to been guilt stricken in her sleep walk. It's also the scene that she confesses her murders accidentally. The scene takes place in her bedroom where her caregivers are watching afar as she walks around talking to herself about the murderers and goes to wash her hands of all the “blood” that is there in her mind, which is a call back to an earlier scene where Macbeth was trying to wash his hands of all the “blood” that represented his guilt about the murders. The blood isn’t physically there, but metaphorically because they feel as though the sin of murdering those people will never go away and they’re stuck with the guilt forever.  This scene affects the rest of the play in a not so significant way in the actual book, but shows the audience why Lady Macbeth committed suicide in the movie even if its skimmed over in the book.  

We decided to do a parody because we found that if we read the lines verbatim it would honestly seem really boring and nobody would want to watch someone just read that considering that scene in general isn't all that visually appealing. We will give the scene a comedic effect so it can actually have something for people to look at and really understand deeply. We tried our best with the environment and props to make the scene as realistic as possible. In drama we learned the different skills of acting so we applied it to the scene. Some of the skills are facing the audience, establishing the environment, having a goal, and projecting our voices. Our favorite part of filming this is how we completely changed the language of the scene from old english to modern American English. We switched up the words a bit so that it still made sense in the context that the original version was, but in a way that more people would understand without it having to be explained. We designed it in a vlog type of video because that’s what a lot of people are doing these days and we feel as though it would be a lot funnier that way.