If you’ve ever been objectified, you know it doesn’t feel good. For me, this rejection of my humanity brings with it a sickening mixture of shame and long-burning anger. But what if there’s more to it than just feeling bad?
If you’re not familiar, objectification is when a person is treated less like a human and more like an object.
If you’re a woman, you probably know this feeling all too well. Many of us report that this begins even before puberty with adult men catching us as children, which I must not tell you is absolutely despicable behavior.
I recently came across Roxanne Nai’a Felig (@naia_papaia) on TikTok where she shared some mind-blowing insights from her research on objectification.
Nai’a is a 27-year-old social psychology doctoral candidate living in Florida whose work has been published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, and other scholarly publications.
Alissa Cook
In her post on TikTok titled “Why You Should Worry About Objectification,” Nai’a explains that her research and related studies reveal that when women experience objectification, it is not just a metaphor for how we are treated. Instead, objectification is a very real phenomenon in the brain that causes people to treat us as less than human.
“We found that objectifying women, such that they are equated with real objects, as opposed to dehumanizing women such that they are equated with animals, predicts reduced perceptions of their capacity to suffer, because objects cannot feel pain,” she explains in the video.
In her research, Nai’a examined objectification in the context of domestic violence against women, and the results are sickening.
He says: “We found that the absence of perceived pain predicted reduced punishment for the perpetrator. This also predicted reduced culpability for the perpetrator, because why should someone be punished for damaging an object?”
He goes on to share that a recent neural study on objectification found similar results. “They discovered that when we are shown sexualized women, we are neurologically unable to recognize their perception of pain.”
And this phenomenon also applies when we objectify ourselves. Nai’a previously conducted a study inspired by Cardi B’s “Anchor Never Gets Cold” theory, finding that women who rank high in self-objectification literally don’t get cold when they need it. And there is now neural research to support this conclusion.
“We found that when women objectify themselves, they lose access to their body sensations. They don’t feel cold when they need to,” Nai’a explains.
“Earlier this year, another paper was republished examining the neurological underpinnings of this, citing our work and showing that there is a neural mechanism by which people who are higher in self-objectification fail to recognize body sensations.”
So objectification can even alienate us from ourselves.
@nai’a_papaia / Via tiktok.com
He concludes his video by saying, “It really should be taken into account that we have neuro evidence, physiological evidence, and behavioral evidence that when people are objectified by others or self-objectified, they are actually presented as a real object devoid of sensations. It’s scary for you because we live in a culture where certain groups of people are highly objectified.” .”
And this doesn’t just apply to women. Nai’a points out that those who work, especially in low-wage jobs, are often objectified by employers who ignore their struggles and pain. It makes you see the term “human resources” in a new and disgusting light.
You can watch the full video here:
@naia_papaia / Via tiktok.com
I thought Nai’a’s research was both disturbing and fascinating, and TikTok commenters were quick to apply her findings to their own experiences of objectification. Exhibit A: Is this why the gynecologist always calls excruciating pain “just a little pressure”?
Exhibit B: pretty much everything related to the fashion industry.
Or exhibit example C: The unfortunate prevalence of misdiagnosis and misinformation in women’s healthcare.
And then this person’s father went ahead and said the quiet part out loud.
Nai’a told BuzzFeed that commenters were absolutely right to attribute these examples to research specifically related to women’s health. “I think all of this points to a historical context that denied women the same humanity as men, and this is especially true of women of color. Numerous studies show that Black women are more dehumanized than white women, and many modern gynecological procedures have been tested without proper anesthesia.” to these women.”
“My research finds that dehumanization is the connection between being objectified and not being seen as someone who can suffer, so you can see how problematic this is for women of color who are often dehumanized.
I highly recommend it for a great dive into this topic Pain Gap The one I am currently reading is written by Anushay Hossain!”
He also explained how objectification was defined and presented in his research. “The determination of whether a woman is being objectified can be inferred from the way she is physically presented, such as in some media images where a woman’s body parts are highlighted as if they are the only parts that matter.”
“We often conduct our research this way; we show participants an image of a woman depicted in a way that focuses on her body and physical appearance, and then we see how she is perceived compared to a woman whose body or appearance is different, but not as emphasized.
“If we see differences in the way he is perceived, we can attribute this to the value we place on his physical body.”
via NBC/giphy.com
But that’s not the only way the objectification of women occurs. “For example, some research finds that sexualized women are processed cognitively in the same way that we cognitively process images of real objects. Findings like this tell us that women are more likely to be objectified when they are presented in a way that emphasizes their physical appearance, and we mean that literally; they are people.” They are perceived less as objects and more as objects.”
“And that’s what we found in our studies as well. We found that when women are shown in a non-sexualized way, when women are shown in a non-sexualized way, people are more likely to implicitly associate them with real objects. So objectification involves this denial of humanity.”
Monty Rakusen/Getty Images
I also needed to learn more about her research on self-objectification. Nai’a says: “‘Objectification theory’ argues that girls and women grow up in cultures where their bodies are constantly observed by others, more than by men, and this creates the internalization of the observer’s perspective known as self-objectification.”
“It’s actually how much you focus on your appearance, and it’s related to things like high body shame, decreased body awareness, and disordered eating.”
And he told me a little more about his “diameter never gets cold” work. “Fundamentally, if we know that self-objectification is associated with low body awareness, it could partially explain this behavior rather than women wearing cold but still cute clothes. To test this, we surveyed women waiting in line in front of their homes on above-seasonally cold nights pre-Covid in 2020.” nightclubs and bars.”
“We did a brief survey measuring their typical level of self-objectification, asking them to indicate how cold they felt, how much they drank, and some other variables that needed to be controlled for. We then asked them to take full-body photographs of their clothing to test the relationship between skin exposure and the feeling of coldness.” “We coded each photo according to the amount of skin exposure.”
Duel / Getty Images / Image Source
And the results showed that his hypothesis was correct. “Our findings suggest that women’s self-objectification is highly realistic and distracts from their body sensations. We found that women who are low in self-objectification have an intuitive relationship between skin exposure and the perception of coldness, feeling colder when wearing clothing. Less clothing, but highly focused on their appearance “Women don’t feel colder when they wear less clothes.”
“Although this is a fun and interesting study, the consequences can be very serious. If women prioritize their appearance and do not feel the consequences, could this have harmful consequences?”
And she says the dehumanizing and disconnecting effects of objectification should concern us all. “Since objectification involves seeing someone as less of a person and more of a thing, you can imagine that this has harmful consequences. When women internalize this, it’s linked to body shame, anxiety, eating disorders, and sexual dysfunction.”
“I bring up the example of factory workers or laborers because it’s a really clear example of people being valued for their physical abilities, regardless of their health. They’re seen as interchangeable tools and a means to the end of creating products. Research has shown that they’re also valued for their human qualities and mental states.” “It reveals that they are also rejected and internalize this view, similar to how women objectify themselves.”
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Follow Nai’a on TikTok and Instagram.
Have you ever experienced objectification? Tell us what happened and how it made you feel in the comments!