New York - At a news conference in New York City, feminist complained that sexual objectification of boys and men in U.S. culture that was so indignantly challenged by many Second Wave feminists and masculanist is now present, normalized and even embraced.
One feminist speaker said, "Male bodies and body parts are increasingly shown as props to hock products, and young men are routinely sexualized in the media. This shift in the terrain in the battle for sex equality for men has come with little fanfare, only with a massive price tag."
The issue at the conference was self-objectification. Self-objectification is the phenomenon of boys and men viewing themselves from an external vantage point, constantly monitoring their behaviors and bodies to maximize their appeal. This orientation goes back to the Victorian Age, with boys raised to regard their bodies as projects to be improved and girls viewing their bodies as tools to master their environment by producing children.
Rates of self-objectification have skyrocketed in the past decade, and young men are feeling the pressure to embrace and perform their own objectification with little critical analysis.
Numerous studies conducted in the last decade have found that self-objectification is psychologically toxic. Boys and men who self-objectify are more prone to clinical depression; have lower self-esteem than others; experience lower personal efficacy, which is linked to diminished success later in life; feel disgust and shame of themselves and experience lower cognitive functioning
The idea of empowerment through object status is illogical for the simple fact that subjects act, while objects are acted upon. By participating in their own objectification, boys/men place themselves in a position to be acted upon by females desiring a mate. The real power in this arrangement lies with girls and women who are socialized to believe that they are entitled to consume men as objects to serve them, in media and in "real life."
Finally, it is important to interrogate how our everyday actions are self-destructive. What would our lives look like if female attention were not the end-all of male existence? What if we moved away from the idea of men's bodies as a project? What if men's sexual expressions were based on their own pleasure, as opposed to a narrow, consumerist conception of women's sexual pleasure?
Today is the annual Love Your Body Day, launched five years ago by the National Organization for Men to encourage people to speak out against demeaning images of men and, and celebrate men in all there diverse sizes and shapes and hues.
Critics complain that it is men themselves that volunteer to work as sexy models in ads and it is men who apply for jobs as masculine hunks in movies. Critics say to those who complain, "To each his own, live and let live, mind your own business and don't forget to turn away."
