Would I Fuck Me? The Dark Consequences of Self-Objectification

By Rachael Boyd

Being sexually appealing is in the terms and conditions of existing as a woman. If a man doesn’t want to shag us, we may as well not be here. This isn’t exactly news to us; women are used to being objectified, reduced to bodies on a sliding scale of sex appeal and held under the magnifying glass of the male gaze.

What might be news to some, however, is that we help the patriarchy out by internalising the obligation to be fuck-able. This is self-objectification. It’s what it says on the tin: viewing oneself as an object. It is a subconscious trap that too many women have fallen (or been forced) into.

Self-objectification makes us assess our appearance round the clock, existing outside our bodies as a pair of critical eyes floating beside us. Suck your belly in; you’ll look sexier. Cross your legs; you’ll look slimmer. I’d never fuck you with that posture. Pull your shoulders back and lift your chin up. We don’t realise we do it – it’s second nature – but much of our precious brain space is hoovered up with efforts to ensure a pleasant visual experience for onlookers.

The catch is that women are set up to never feel appealing enough. We are fed an ideal that is ever-shifting and ever-unattainable. Our bodies are constant works in progress. We can always eat less, exercise more, go on a ‘detox’, book a spray tan and get lash extensions. Even though we may intellectually know that editing, filters, fillers and butt-lifts make body ideals wildly unrealistic and unachievable, we are so saturated with distorted imagery that we can’t help but subconsciously interpret this as the expected norm.

When we self-objectify, our sex appeal is calculated by how close we think we are to this false image. We take note of where we’ve fallen short, despair over our inadequacy and hop back on the self-improvement treadmill in search of a new solution to fix our ‘problem’ body. 

This set-up works perfectly for the patriarchy as it keeps women distracted. Being in a constant battle with our bodies leaves little mental capacity for much else. As Naomi Wolf puts it, ‘dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.’

Assessing our worth on whether or not the bloke across the road has to suppress a hard-on makes us more detached from our bodies. The less connected we are to them, the less we trust them, their needs, their boundaries and their true desires. So, we outsource stories and beliefs about ourselves and constantly seek external validation.

It’s why we put our trust in (and give money to) companies telling us what to eat, how to move and what to wear, rather than simply listening to ourselves on these matters. We’re pulled further and further away from our bodies until they don’t really feel like our bodies at all. They don’t belong to us; they belong to the onlooker. 

Self-objectification stunts women’s confidence and agency, but it also has deeply dangerous consequences. When our bodies cease to be our own, they become public property, making it far easier to disregard their boundaries and violate them: we become fair game.

Hence unsolicited toots of horns, slimy compliments and penetrating stares that haunt us. Hence why female bodies are deconstructed into segments by rap artists, and rape jokes run rampant in seedy WhatsApp groups. Hence why countless women are pressured and often forced to surrender to males’ sexual endeavours, with nothing but a set of keys in-between their knuckles as a feeble defence. 

The irony is galling. It’s a woman’s responsibility to be sufficiently visually and sexually appealing in order for her to obtain basic respect, yet doing so is deemed her fatal flaw when she calls out male violence. It’s a pretty twisted and impossible tightrope to tread.

A woman’s body is a hard place to be. Frankly, I don’t blame us for wanting to tap out and detach from what it feels like to exist in them. Ignoring our bodies is all we know; rejecting hunger and pushing through gruelling workouts because then we will be wanted, and once we are, we say ‘yes’ – regardless of how tired we are – to the poor boy we are ever-so-lucky to be in bed with because otherwise, what was the point?

But your body is, and will always be, yours. You’ve been taught to wish it wasn’t, to wish you had someone else’s, but disowning your body traps you in a disempowering vicious cycle. Whilst we can’t simply take the power back from the greedy white men (alas), we can put a chink in the cycle by re-possessing our bodies and owning them, in whatever form they take.