Assignment 2: Analysis of two objectification theories

Reading the two materials, I came upon several theories about all kinds of objectification and beauty concepts. The thing I like the most about these materials is the fact that they provide the reader with examples and researches in order to give better explanations about what is being presented to us.
There were a lot of theories that absolutely enchanted me at “The Beauty Myth”. Nothing that I didn’t knew before but seeing it so well presented and elaborated made me even more aware of the How’s and Why’s a society is the way it is. I would like to extract a passage from there that says: 

“After years of much struggle and little recognition, many older women feel burned out; after years of taking its light for granted, many younger women show little interest in touching new fire to the torch.”                                                                                   

While being well aware of all the fights women have done during centuries they still haven’t achieved the status of feeling free. It is pretty ironic actually but I do understand those who claim that there is no more inequality between men and women. The reason why that occurs is because they are either living in a box or they were taught since childhood that feminism isn’t an actual thing. Not accepting inequality and inequity among men and women is the first mistake that people make that leads them astray of the real situation.                                       

Back in the days the most difficult thing to fight against was the mentality. Women were trying so hard to change people’s perception and attitude towards biological causes as well as to implement the idea that natural behaviors were acceptable. They were trying to develop a society and they still are, but somehow still get all the shame and contradictions.  I don’t blame older women. They feel tired. I understand what it feels like to struggle your way up to the top and still not getting any kind of recognition because of situations such as sexual ignorance or encapsulation of ideas. It is funny how women who have fought their whole life for their rights, even in their old years they are attacked and defined with claims such as: “aging is unbeautiful”. It’s understandable how such a thing can make you lose hope and feel burned out.
 Many people may assume that younger women are considered luckier at some point, because they are not the one’s taking the initiative to make a revolution. That was done long ago from their ancestors and what young women should do now is to keep their position in society high, their moral intact, their motherhood on point and their appearances on ‘fleek’. This sentence has Stupidity written all over it. Wanting women to be perfect human beings according to a male driven society perspective just makes their freedom look optional. Cause if not, they are not perfect...than they are worthless. Young women today have it harder to prove they are capable of a lot of things. Even though many things are changing there are still young women who show little interest in touching new fire to the torch. Society is slowly colonizing female consciousness and the breaking relation between female liberation and female beauty is a more accurate thing as many people may think. 
Young women wanting to be more beautiful in order to be accepted by society is making them neglect on being soul free. While many others are trying to keep that old fighting flame still going on, are facing all kinds of prejudice. But they are respected and feared. That’s why I love them.  

It was hard to disagree on the theories presented at the lecture but I think one of them really caught my attention.

“One of the key assumptions of objectification theory is that women self-objectify in response to both attracting and managing the male gaze.”

While it is a good thing that this is considered just as an assumption and not as a fact it still isn’t acceptable. Claiming that women self objectify in order to have males attention is not something to be considered as a self objectification theory rather than just a vain mentality occurring by both parts because there are also men who self-objectify in order to attract women with materialistic objects or body figures. I do agree that there are people who do this but the feeling of attracting a male is not the main reason self-objectification.

The root of this problem is the lack of self esteem these individuals have. Psychologically speaking, in order for them to have a higher self esteem they have the urge and need to feel wanted by the other sex. Lacking confidence leads a person away from the richness of their soul and mentality. They focus only in the appearances and encapsulate the feeling of love and passion mainly in their outer world, forgetting that there is more that meets the eye.

This assumption does not qualify as real because having a mental disorder is not something you can explain by the attention one may have from men. There is an example on the text about the eating disorders among lesbian women which may qualify as inadequate according to the self-objectification assumption but I think that self-harming in order for women to attract other women is possible as well. So in my opinion, craving attention from other sexual partners is one of the many outcomes but not the root of this problem and I believe that you cannot address the thought of feeling wanted to other people rather than to your own perception and mental attitude.