Objectification Interviews
From my experience with being turned into a human mannequin, and whilst thinking about times where I have been sexually objectified, I carried out a series of interviews. I wanted to discover from my peers how they felt about sexual objectification, if they had ever experienced it and whether they found any correlation between the medias obsession with sexualisation and behaviour within their own interpersonal relationships.
I interviewed both men and women, the outcomes of these interviews were fascinating, so I noted down their dictation. I would like to create a script from these interviews and carry out more.
Here is the transcription, and above are the audio clips:
Well, there was this one time when my girlfriend asked me how tall I was. I told her, six foot three. She was pretty impressed by this, she said she found it super sexy. She told me how much she liked my body, how she finds my stature enticing and likes the way I use my strength. I felt pretty good abouy it. Then later she sent me a text which read “I’ve been thinking about what I said earlier, about your sexy body and all that, and I feel a bit bad. I don’t want you to feel objectified for your height. I think you have a great body, but I also love you for your amazing personality too. It’s like a nice tall bonus on to an already amazing person.” It was pretty hilarious.
But have I ever really felt objectified? No, I don’t think I have. I don’t really think about it to be honest. I just sort of go out and live my life. I mean, do girls… wait I guess yeah, girls must have to think about it a lot. It’s different isn’t it? It’s like, when they go out they have to deal with people making comments about their appearance and they have to experience a lot more prejudice towards them. It must be really hard come to think of it. I guess I’d never really considered it before because ‘ve never had to deal with it first hand.
I think so, but not in a bad way. It was actually in quite a flattering way, but mainly by gay people. It’s nice to know that they appreciate me as a human being. I got stopped my a massive bear of a human in a club and he was like ‘Oh my god, I love your hair’ and I was like ‘oh thanks!’ and he was like ‘oh, and your face too’ and I was like oh so like the entire head? He was like, yeah shame you’re not gay. And I was like, how do you know I’m not gay? He was like, ‘oh are you gay?’ and I said no and ran away. I keep my body out of the limelight, so I’ve never felt objectified in a physical way because I’m too much of a prude.
Not really. Perhaps because of the way I dress and the way I look. People say ‘nice shoes, twat.’ I think that women actually have the control in sexual situations. Biologically, males have always fought and shown off to get the females attention. They need to push their genes into the next generation and women decide whether or not that happens.
Yes. Definitely. I’ve been mostly patronized about my age, for being younger and feeling like there wasn’t that much regard to my feelings to it at the time. It was basically a suggestion that I should follow and, well, I didn’t want to follow it and the person making the suggestion seemed to play it off like I was insecure. Like ‘oh it was just a joke’, kind of thing. Like ‘oh it was weird of you to think that I wanted that in the first place’ kind of thing. It’s mostly manifested awkward situations. I suppose it’s just a method of communication. The hardest bit is saying no without offending the other person, sometimes. And sometimes they get offended. Even if it’s subconsciously they realize that.
Yeah, yeah, mostly when I’ve been minding my own business dancing around. I’ve had people just persist, persist, persist. Wanting me to, wanting to come into MY personal space. Them wanting to cross my barriers. Even when I say no it’s like they don’t believe it. Or maybe they just, I don’t know. I don’t know I do remember feeling a bit belittled. It’s really annoying to have someone say that your mind isn’t accurate. Do you know what I mean? Like if you say no, I don’t want to come back to yours or whatever to do this, they kind of, they challenge you on that and you therefore have to explain yourself. No should be enough. It objectifies, it’s like your treated like a computer like ‘oh this button doesn’t work so I’ll press all the other buttons that it potentially could be!’.
That’s coming from the gay community side of things, I’ve mostly only dealt with older gay men. But er, I’ve never had a woman do that to me no. No, no. Maybe if she was really drunk and just being silly. Sort of as a joke so it wasn’t as persistent, I guess I haven’t had women do that to me. I have women sort of suggest it, as flirting but not nearly as annoyingly as prowlers.
Yeah definitely, all the time. Every time I go out I am aware of what I’m wearing and how people will interpret and react to that. Actually even if I’m not, even if I am
Once in my life, I was in the club, I saw this guy staring at me, at the bar. Suddenly he comes up to me, saying that he finds me really beautiful and he would love to lock me in a glass coffin and stare at me for the rest of his life.
Sometimes but I don’t mind.
I would call myself a sexual threat. No I never felt like that. I never experienced that in my life. I’m not truly offended but I am not comfortable with that. I think it’s like a lack of manners. You don’t talk to a woman like that. It’s kind of disrespectful in a way. That’s what I think. It’s just like coming back to the route and behaving like a cave man. You can come over to a woman and say you’re beautiful, but you don’t have to like, whistle or scream or whatever. Usually when they whistle they don’t say your gorgeous but they want to say your gorgeous but they say it in a very rude way. Hey bitch, I like you. It’s really disrespectful.
I remember in this huge avenue in Athens, like two cars stopping, like they were friends or something, in the middle of the avenue. And I wanted to just cross, they stopped their cars, both of them, and they were like ‘come on princess- cross the street’ and I was like ‘woah take it easy’
I hate when people call me princess.
It depends how someone calls you princess.
It’s just that idea of you not being able to do anything apart from be good looking.
My dad always called me princess when I didn’t want to do stuff. ‘Hey Princess, maybe you would like to help me?’ something like that, I was always so angry.
No not really. Not from my family background which was quite liberal and I was always quite accepted. It never really stressed me and never really mattered to me, like the whole situation.
A night out? Yeah I would say that can happen. I have to say, yeah. Yeah, I sometimes have but it’s mainly like from other ethnic groups. Where there is a strict sexuality. Especially with homosexuality where its not expected. Then you have the whole group dynamic if it’s a closed group, especially if you come with your own group with your own friends. Not being educated, completely different background and culture.
Let me think, no. Actually not. I can’t really. I think that’s just… maybe it’s just like a gender question. A natural gender thing. Once you start talking with a lot of people they can accept it. Usually it’s something they really cant identify with themselves. If they can’t face it, they can change it. Maybe it’s a fear as well?
I think yeah that, you have like ‘sex sells’ everywhere. But the thing is, if you look back when my parents where younger, like my mother, it was kind of like, not normal, or my grandparents I think they, and now, I have to say I’m so used to that. Sit in a tube or walk through the street and see all like this kind of images, and I think you get so careless. Its not only with that, in London you have so many different cultures and people get careless, they see so muc that they blind everything out. A lot of issues I think. They don’t bother them any more and it gets normalized. And I think that’s the same with sex advertisement. Maybe they can do really controversial stuff but there’s a point where it’s actually not controversial anymore because everyone has seen it before. I think people see that as ok even if it’s not. Everybody has seen a porno movie before and its, ok, yeah, it gets so normal. People don’t question the things anymore.
You really judge people. But you just put them in a kind of box. If you see a woman in a tshirt and a short skirt and you can see everything, you sort of just put them in a slutty box. Without like, asking yourself how this person is actually. You just put them in a box. Because you see every weekend, every night, you see these people, even if it’s snowing, wearing nothing. And of course you ask, why is she doing that? What does she actually want because she knows. But then you think, you know whats going to happen when you kind of wear like a really short skirt.
I think people like it, otherwise they wont wear it. Often, maybe it’s a group pressure, and image of what is beautiful and what is not. In most cases its an image in your head of what looks good on you and what not. Often this image is influenced by just trends, celebrities, media based things.
I think media pushed it really strong, because eit is a huge business. The whole sex sells is a really huge business. It reaches our desire. People wanted to see that and then people picked on that and pushed it really really forward.
Yeah I do consider it. I have two smaller brotehrs I don’t see a lot these last two years and its so crazy. They do such different stuff to what we used to do. They already are 6 and 8 years younger than me and when I talk to them now I already feel likes theres such a huge generation gap, and I think that’s only going to grow in the future.
Pornography, when I was this age, this kind of, forbidden. Now everbody has a smart hone and a computer and can download this stuff everywhere. We didn’t have that, you could text but you couldn’t be online, like in my kind of circles when I grew up. Maybe I had a computer at home but I think that’s something that influenced them really quite a lot. At one point of course, its over done, and maybe it will go in another direction, but I think young people are really influenced already.
Yeah I think it will or already does. I think a lot of things get more superficial, especially in like, inter human relations. A good example is how you talk to somebody in a chat room. You don’t see the person, every word has a short name, you use short lol and stuff to express yourself and you limit yourself so much. I even get it with facebook, you just use short cuts to say something, it’s a message but, often you feel much freer, you can just say something, and then it’s out there. There is a reaction but you don’t have to face it. You don’t have to face the reaction. You don’t have to kind of feel responsible because its just a future world.
They get like, more and more superficial and I mean it’s hard to make a prognosis on that, or maybe it just depends on the person and the age as well, once you get educated how it woks you become a believer you so you just believe whats out there and don’t question it anymore. People get stupid. In a relationship you lose so much if it is just on the surface.
Well, I’m not really sure, sometimes I think it’s hard to say. We live in a really erm male dominated society anyway I think, and I think that, like, due to the fact that we live in a such a male dominated society, being a male, you don’t really experience so much prejudice as maybe females do. I think there are certain situations where, you know, like, as a more sensitive man you might be objectified by a more dominant man you know, but whether this is sexual objectification or whether it’s just dominance, male dominance actually. Otherwise no, I don’t think so.
I think it is very different for women because the society we live in is mainly a male dominated society for years and the fact it remains a male dominated society is what gives the problem to women. Because women they have to shoulder this, they get totally disrespected. It’s a real shame actually I think It’s a total shame. Because actually I don’t think it was always like this. Male dominated society is only a thing which developed with the strength of weapons, the strength of people at war, this sort of forced strength if you like. They real strength still lies with the women (laughs).
I think it was created very much as a controlling method. A violent controlling method. A woman dominated society, if you look at woman as a being, women have a womb they have the ability to look after a child, they have a nurturing ability, a caring ability. I think men could feel very threatened by this. In many ways like, it makes men feel like they are not powerful. I think men developed war to show how powerful they are when actually it’s a show of their weakness.
I think an equal society can only come when there is a nurturing balance. There needs to be on both sides a sense of respect nuture and importance of one another. Which is think is a more natural feminine quality. I think in a female driven society that would come more into play.
Well for me it’s quite difficult because I grew up in a family with a sister and a mother I have always been quite conscious and respectful of women and felt that women are very are worth a lot of respect you know. I spent the first the first few moments of my life in the womb of y mothr. If my mother didn’t get birth to me I wouldn’t be here. With that in mind I think women deserve the upmost respect you know? I can’t understand men who don’t understand women actually as they all have mothers.
I think sexual objectification is when someone, whether its male or female, makes prejudices of the other person due completely to their sex whether they are male of female you know. That’s what I would judge it as.
If you look at marketing, it is something that is very sexual in nature. Male dominated, like most other things, like I said it’s a male dominated society. I think that is also why the female form plays such a role in modern marketing, because the female form is something that attracts other men of power, you know because its an object. They objectify the female form to make it sellable, because it IS sellable you know, because most men are attracted to that. That, there is something very wrong about that too because when you start to see the female as just a sexual object, you totally misunderstand the feminine power. It’s not in the Venus adverts you know! Female power is nothing to do with any kind of marketing technique which they might use in female orientated advertising. Female power is seeing women as mothers, as the source actually. The source. The source of life.
I’m negative about the way things are developing at the moment because you know, the male dominated society is very very strong at the moment, you can see that in politics, the way war is going round and round and round, marketing, you can even see it in the skyline! Look at the skyline, all the towers are representative of penises, its like all these business men are sticking their penises up in the air you know? In such a society it’s hard to imagine how it could turn around. I think it’s just the more people open up, open their eyes and recognize again what is the female, what actually is the female, they see they have a mother and without their mother they wouldn’t be here. It would be a revolution of sorts for men to let go of their power. Because power is an addictive thing. When you get some you want more you know?
Yes (laughs) yes. A lot of times actually. I have had a lot of men where I have felt like an object.
No but I often felt before I met max, when I got to knew someone it was often like men were interested in me until they had sex and then afterwards not anymore so I was reduced to the sexual thing. I had the feeling that I was the object and they had pushed their ego and when they got what they wanted they said ‘ok, next one’.
Yeah, I think so for sure, if you wear a short skirt and a low t-shirt for sure it provokes men. They are more interested, but they are interested in your body more than you. I think it is sad that women cannot dress like this without men getting you know, cannot control themselves. Men have to learn to control themselves and not reduce a woman because she is attractive and shows her body. Not to make them a sexual object.
Not in a relationship, more like in the behviour, like how men behave, they were only intereste duntil they had what they wanted. They didn’t say something but I could tell from their behavior. You understand what I mean?
You know what, actually, I remembered, this is a good example. Once I spoke with a guy I thought like having a relationship about a different woman. He is not interested to have, can’t imagine to have just one woman because he doesn’t eat every day the same pizza. This is one good example. He is an idiot.
I think its ok to use the female body but why always this perfect thin body, why do they always have to show the ‘perfect’ woman you know? So a lot of woman get complexes, they think, oh im not slim enough, not tall enough or whatever, not a nice skin, because we see in advertising something that is non realistic. They all look the same actually. Show women in their personality. Different kind of woman, not the same woman. Don’t reduce them to their sexuality. Not only women can make nice sex or nice breast or legs or whatever you know?
Yeah I think sex sells, because it is the strongest energy we have. It is the basic instinct that we all have. Behind everything. Yeah actually, it’s behind most of the things we do, this strong energy, this strong sexual energy is there. Desires and stuff. It’s there for good.
I wish that this, one day, will develop in another direction. That men learn to control this ego, their ego, control and can accept woman as a strong part, men can accept women are strong people and that women also see themselves as strong beings.
I think there are some women who do this also but it’s much less, really much less. Something else. For women it’s more of an emotional thing, a uniting men where for men it’s like animals trying to spread their sperm. No really you know! They really identify with this animalistic instinct. To spread his sperm to as many women as possible. They are caring and more emotional. Sexuality of woman, a man enters a woman and the woman gets the man in her.
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