Sexual Objectification

From the very beginning of my project emerged the word objectification. Although this word had become apparent to me before, I was intrigued into the official definition of objectification, and from discovering this, decided to delve further into the importance of this topic. As I searched through works by artists contemplating the relevance of this subject in art, that of Sarah Lucas appeared, and I immediately became interested in her point of view on the matter. Lucas toys with the idea of specifically sexual objectification, using photography and sculpture of objects resembling genitals on both males and females. I particularly enjoyed the use of puns in her work, and this inspired me to begin coming up with my own ideas, incorporating my enjoyment of photography. As I developed the concept of my work, the general theme of objectification became more refined to focus on four of the many different theories that feminists have defined surrounding the issue.
The first concern I began reading about is what is known as fungibility, though I had not come across this particular word before this project, I have been familiar with what is represents since a very early age. Fungibility is specifically known in this context as the treatment of a person as if they are interchangeable with other objects, for example, within sexual objectification of
women, one may be seen as if she is primarily a tool for sex rather than a whole person.
This theory is very similar to the second issue I researched into named instrumentality, which is the treatment of a person as a tool, in this situation, similar to fungibility, somebody will use a woman as an object made explicitly for sexual pleasure or the stereotypical role of a woman as a housewife.
The next word I came across enticed me into thinking about my own experiences of sexual objectification, especially incidents involving catcalls, which was part of my initial thinking when I first began to think about objectification.
The word I came into contact to was violability, a form of the adjective violable, which means that something is capable of being violated. The definition of violability is the treatment of a person as if they are lacking in boundary integrity, from this, I began to think about the regular use of misogynistic slurs and hateful comments used towards women by some men and occasionally by
women.
Through researching into hate speech used against females, I decided that I would like to incorporate this into the photography I had done whilst developing ideas. However, I could not see an effective way of using those same photos in my final piece, so I decided to plan my pictures that I would like to use based on the research I had done so far, also incorporating the idea of ownership over others’ bodies. By planning the pages, I was able to shoot photographs knowing exactly how I needed them to turn out. I used my sister to model for the photographs as she is an example of the strong, independent person I needed to convey my point about objectification, and women taking back their own bodies. I also wanted to show the utter stupidity of most words and phrases used in attempt to put women down, by using the childish pun, “nice pair” in reference to the physical appeal of women’s breasts and comparing it to a group of “nice pears”
I have learned a lot whilst working on this project, and I feel that the topics I have chosen to include are important issues that need to be spoken about. As much as people might think this issue is not current nor necessary to be solved, objectification is a significantly terrible problem that has a much more harmful consequence than a few hurtful phrases shouted by irrelevant people on the streets, but I agree with the words of Sarah Lucas “I am not trying to solve the problem. I’m exploring the moral dilemma by incorporating it”