Is objectification always a bad thing? Revisited
By Brian Clegg
REVISIT SERIES
It’s all too easy to take a widely accepted statement as a universal truth. But if we are to be thinking people, rather than knee-jerk puppets, we should always question anything presented as such a truth. So, for instance, we all know it’s wrong to objectify people. But is it really? Is there any scientific basis for this assumption, or is it based on ‘common sense’ that objectification is inherently a bad thing?
The reason I bring it up is two recent [in 2016] discussions on Facebook. One was on the matter of Poldark, the BBC TV series. As usually seems to be the case with this programme, the main topic among female correspondents was the body of the actor playing the eponymous Mr P. This is surely just as much objectification as the old, thankfully departed Page 3 girls in the Sun, and my immediate reaction was to condemn it. But I really couldn’t, because it was hard to see what harm was being done.
The second controversial discussion was one I started myself, having seen a couple of men haplessly attempting and failing to select a packet of nappies in a supermarket. I said ‘It may be sexist, but still funny watching men in supermarket, unable to decide which pack of nappies to buy.’ I got the response below:
Leaving aside the fact that it was a joke, not a ‘liberal trope’ (what’s liberal about it, anyway? Liberals think men make great parents), in effect when we engage a stereotype like this we are once again objectifying. And certainly some stereotypes can be misused. But they are also very useful shorthand communication tools, and personally I think, in this instance, totally justified.
Is all objectification acceptable? Almost certainly not. But has the pendulum swung too far against mild versions of it? I suspect so. And in revisiting this in 2026, it’s a thought that fits well with the reintroduction of common sense into our social responses that is not yet complete, but has begun on a number of matters.
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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.
Source: http://brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/01/is-objectification-always-bad-thing.html
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