Objectification Theory

This study investigated cosmetic surgery attitudes within the framework of objectification theory. One hundred predominantly White, British undergraduate women completed self-report measures of impression management, global self-esteem, interpersonal sexual objectification, self-surveillance, body shame, and three components of cosmetic surgery attitudes. As expected, each of the objectification theory variables predicted greater consideration of having cosmetic surgery in the future. Also, as expected, sexual objectification and body shame uniquely predicted social motives for cosmetic surgery, whereas self-surveillance uniquely predicted intrapersonal motives for cosmetic surgery. These findings suggest that women’s acceptance of cosmetic surgery as a way to manipulate physical appearance can be partially explained by the degree to which they view themselves through the lenses of sexual and self-objectification. KeywordsCosmetic surgery-Objectification theory-Self-surveillance-Bod...

Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, the civil rights advocate and the great rhetorician, has been the focus of much academic research. Only more recently is Douglass work on aesthetics beginning to receive its due, and even then its philosophical scope is rarely appreciated. Douglass’ aesthetic interest was notably not so much in art itself, but in understanding aesthetic presentation as an epistemological and psychological aspect of the human condition and thereby as a social and political tool. He was fascinated by the power of images, and took particular interest in the emerging technologies of photography. He often returned to the themes of art, pictures and aesthetic perception in his speeches. He saw himself, also after the end of slavery, as first and foremost a human rights advocate, and he suggests that his work and thoughts as a public intellectual always in some way related to this end. In this regard, his interest in the power of photographic images to impact the human soul was a lifelong concern. His reflections accordingly center on the psychological and political potentials of images and the relationship between art, culture, and human dignity. In this chapter we discuss Douglass views and practical use of photography and other forms of imagery, and tease out his view about their transformational potential particularly in respect to combating racist attitudes. We propose that his views and actions suggest that he intuitively if not explicitly anticipated many later philosophical, pragmatist and ecological insights regarding the generative habits of mind and affordance perception : I.e. that we perceive the world through our values and habitual ways of engaging with it and thus that our perception is active and creative, not passive and objective. Our understanding of the world is simultaneously shaped by and shaping our perceptions. Douglass saw that in a racist and bigoted society this means that change through facts and rational arguments will be hard. A distorted lens distorts - and accordingly re-produces and perceives its own distortion. His interest in aesthetics is intimately connected to this conundrum of knowledge and change, perception and action. To some extent precisely due to his understanding of how stereotypical categories and dominant relations work on our minds, he sees a radical transformational potential in certain art and imagery. We see in his work a profound understanding of the value-laden and action-oriented nature of perception and what we today call the perception of affordances (that is, what our environment permits/invites us to do). Douglass is particularly interested in the social environment and the social affordances of how we perceive other humans, and he thinks that photographs can impact on the human intellect in a transformative manner. In terms of the very process of aesthetic perception his views interestingly cohere and supplement a recent theory about the conditions and consequences of being an aesthetic beholder. The main idea being that artworks typically invite an asymmetric engagement where one can behold them without being the object of reciprocal attention. This might allow for a kind of vulnerability and openness that holds transformational potentials not typically available in more strategic and goal-directed modes of perception. As mentioned, Douglass main interest is in social change and specifically in combating racist social structures and negative stereotypes of black people. He is fascinated by the potential of photography in particular as a means of correcting fallacious stereotypes, as it allows a more direct and less distorted image of the individuality and multidimensionality of black people. We end with a discussion of how, given this interpretation of aesthetic perception, we can understand the specific imagery used by Douglass himself. How he tried to use aesthetic modes to subvert and change the racist habitus in the individual and collective mind of his society. We suggest that Frederick Douglass, the human rights activist, had a sophisticated philosophy of aesthetics, mind, epistemology and particularly of the transformative and political power of images. His works in many ways anticipate and sometimes go beyond later scholars in these and other fields such as psychology & critical theory. Overall, we propose that our world could benefit from revisiting Douglass’ art and thought.

The current qualitative study endeavoured to investigate the multi-layered meaning of billboard advertisements by elaboration, exploration and elucidation of intended meanings and cultural norms demonstrated in billboard advertisements. For this purpose, the content of eight (8) billboard advertisements was thematically analyzed utilizing Fairclough's 3-Dimensional Model: Description interpretation and explanation. The obtained results showed that these billboards had underlying meanings in terms of gender objectification, female portrayal, and social stereotypes as prominent themes. Furthermore, all the selected advertisements were based on a fine designed semiotic study to motivate the users.

Objective: Recent research grounded in objectification theory reveals significant positive associations between experiences of sexual objectification and sexual assault victimization. However, it remains unclear why this relationship exists. To address this question, we tested a path model in which repeated experiences of body evaluation (a form of sexual objectification) were expected to increase risk of sexual assault via the mechanisms of increased body surveillance (a form of self-objectification) and lower sexual assertiveness. Method: Participants were 297 undergraduate women who completed validated measures assessing their body evaluation experiences, body surveillance, sexual refusal assertiveness, and sexual victimization. Results: Correlations revealed expected relations among the variables. As hypothesized, the results of path analyses revealed that higher body evaluation predicted greater sexual victimization both directly and indirectly via higher body surveillance and lower sexual assertiveness. Conclusion: This study identifies body surveillance and sexual assertiveness as potentially important factors that may mediate associations between experiences of body evaluation and sexual assault. Findings suggest that interventions designed to interrupt persistent body surveillance and bolster assertiveness in the face of unwanted sexual experiences may be effective in reducing sexual assault.

EDITORIAL
Zachary A. Casey: Sustaining and (Re)Creating Hope

ARTICLES
Ninnie Andersson: Teacher’s Conceptions of Quality in Dance Education Expressed through Grade Conferences

Chetan Sinha: Post-formalist Explanation of Academic Achievement: Exploring the Contribution of John Ogbu and Joe Kincheloe

Dragana Pavlović Breneselović, Živka Krnjaja: Discourses on Gender in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) Setting: Equal in Being Discriminated

Effie Maclellan: Agents Pedagogical: Bootstrapping Reflexive Practice through the Psychological Resources of Self-agency

Carol Thompson, Michael Kleine: Using Literature to Explore Interpersonal Theory: Representation of Rhetorical Objectification and Oppression

REVIEWS
Bühler-Niederberger, Doris: Lebensphase Kindheit. Theoretische Ansätze, Akteure und Handlungsräume.
Wyness, Michael: Childhood and Society
(Anna Fangmeyer)

Introduction

[In the gaze] …. 'the other person transforms me into an object and denies me, I transform him into an object and deny him, it is asserted.  In fact, the other’s gaze transforms me into an object and mine him, only if both of us withdraw into the core of our thinking nature, if we both make ourselves into an inhuman gaze, if each of us feels his actions to be not taken up and understood, but observed as if they were an insect’s'. 
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception. 

Merleau-Ponty here responds to the pessimistic and reductive Sartrean account of the Gaze, highlighting that this objectifying gaze only becomes possible by withdrawing into our thinking nature.  The capacity to detach and compartmentalize our manner of engagement with others, becoming empathically unavailable, closing down affective responsiveness, can serve positive ends as with certain occupations such as bomb disposal and surgery.  Outside circumstances such as these, however, empathic unavailability may facilitate violence, negligence and ethical failure. It remains contentious, nonetheless, whether empathic responsiveness is ontologically basic and whether it is essential for ethics. What is clear is that primary empathy drives psycho-social development and serves as an affective and ethical touchstone for the more cognitive modes of intersubjective engagement and for metadiscursive practices, ensuring that subjects are able to sustain positive connections with others and the shared world.

Merleau-Ponty’s inhuman gaze both ‘animalizes’ the ‘object’ of the gaze but paradoxically requires a ‘rational’ retreat, effectively ‘de-animalizing’ the gazing subject .......