Caroline Heldman on The Sexy Lie at TEDxYouth@SanDiego (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Caroline Heldman’s TED talk on The Sexy Lie at TEDxYouth@SanDiego.

Listen to the MP3 Audio here: The Sexy Lie by Caroline Heldman at TEDxYouth@SanDiego

Caroline Heldman – Professor at Occidental College

Good afternoon. Are we having a transformative afternoon so far? Well, I am here today to talk about a lie – in specific, a sexy lie. I know there are lots of lies, some of them are sexy, some of them are very unsexy. But I’d like to talk specifically about the lie or the idea that being a sex object is empowering. And I’d like to convince you that it is not empowering. First by talking about what sexual objectification is and then moving on to theoretical and data-driven analysis of why it’s damaging, and lastly, provide you a plan of action so that you can both navigate objectification culture and change objectification culture.

So let’s jump right in. What is sexual objectification? It’s the process of representing or treating a person like a sex object, one that serves another’s sexual pleasure. And what’s so interesting about sexual objectification is we used to have a vocabulary for it. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, we were concerned about sexual objectification and its harm on girls and women. In the ‘80s, ‘90s and today, we’ve actually been relatively quiet when it comes to public discourse. And so even though our sexual objectification culture is more amplified we see more images, and 96% of them are female, of sexually objectified bodies, we don’t have a vocabulary to talk about it.

And in fact, young people, I think, have even mostly lost the ability to identify it. As a friend of mine said, it’s like being raised in a red room, pulled out of that red room and asked to describe the color red. So I built on the work of others, and I put together a sex object test, and if the answer is yes to any of these 7 questions, then you are looking at a sexual objectifying image.

First, does the image show only parts of a sexualized person’s body? In other words, does a part stand in for the whole? This woman’s derrière, for example, in this advertisement. Does the image present a sexualized person as a stand in for an object? In this image a woman becomes a table. Does the image show the sexualized person as interchangeable? That is, as one of many items that can just be swapped out. Does the image affirm the idea of violating the bodily integrity of a sexualized person and that person can’t consent? In other words, is that person being acted upon as though she is a sexual object?

Does the image suggest that the sexual availability of the person is the defining characteristic of that person? And the text for this ad reads: “You know you’re not her first, but do you really care?” And it’s being used to sell pre-owned vehicles.

Does the image show a sexualized person as a commodity? Something that can be bought and sold? In this advertisement, you see women in a vending machine and a man is choosing a woman and this is to sell men’s shoes.

And, lastly, does the image treat the sexualized person’s body as a canvas? And I’m not talking about inking or tattooing that a person decides but rather marketers using the body as a specific type of canvas.

New objectification culture has emerged in the past 10 years and it’s marked by two things. One is an increase in the number of sexually objectifying ads in television, movies, video games, music videos, magazines and other mediums. And the second advertising component, is that the images have become more extreme, more hyper-sexualized.