Sexual objectification is a phenomenon that can be traced way back since the earliest civilization such as the Cleopatra Era. It is generally defined and seen in the context as the disposition and act of equating a person’s worth to his/her body’s appearance and sexual functions (Balraj, 2015).
According to Loughnan and Pacilli (2014), sexual objectification involves “the reduction of a fully person to a sexual object” which makes any person susceptible to potential sexual objectification. On the other hand, despite the existence of this assumption, research has shown that the experiences of sexual objectification fall disproportionally on certain groups of individuals.
There is a higher tendency for women to be more sexually objectified…show more content… In these cases, women’s personal value is openly reduced to their bodies exclusively, and they are viewed and treated as sexual objects. In addition, Langton (2009) suggested that sexual objectification can also happen when a woman’s value is determined on the basis of her physical appearance, not only when a woman is identified with her body. In relation to this, it has always been established that beauty ideals and physical appearance are considered one of the most important and essential female quality but it also can turn out to be oppressive for females who are not seen to meet the beauty ideals (Forbes, Collinsworth, Jobe, Braun, & Wise, 2007). In this case, hostile intention and blatant expression of sexual objectification will occur when a woman is openly devalued for her ugliness and non-conformity to the normative beauty ideals. Thus, it can be seen that one facet of sexual objectification is an open, hostile equation of a woman with a sexual object, reduced to an appraisal of her sexual utility for…show more content… More often than not, women’s sexual objectification has been found to be highly correlated with a number of various negative effects on the psyche of women including body shame (Calogero 2009; Moradi, Dirks, & Matteson, 2005) disordered eating (Harrison & Hefner, 2006; Tiggeman, 2011), internalization of the objectification (Aubrey, 2006; Grabe & Hyde, 2009; Roberts & Gettman, 2004), depression and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (Muehlenkamp & Saris-Baglama, 2002; Szymanski & Henning, 2007; Tiggeman, 2011), poor interceptive awareness (Peat & Muehlenkamp, 2011), substance abuse, (Szymanski, Moffitt, & Carr, 2011), and sexual dysfunction (Calogero & Thomspon, 2009; Steer & Tiggemann, 2008) and other psychological dissociation and self-harming behaviors (Dohnt & Tiggemann, 2006; Erchull, Liss, & Lichiello, 2013; Miles-McLean et al., 2015; Moradi & Huang,