Woman As Sex Object

New York Times Bestseller - An NPR Best Book of the Year “Sharp and prescient… The appeal of Valenti’s memoir lies in her ability to trace objectification through her own life, and to trace what was for a long time her own obliviousness to it…Sex Object is an antidote to the fun and flirty feminism of selfies and self-help.” — New Republic Author and Guardian US columnist Jessica Valenti has been leading the national conversation on gender and politics for over a decade. Now, in a darkly funny and bracing memoir, Valenti explores the toll that sexism takes from the every day to the existential. Sex Object explores the painful, funny, embarrassing, and sometimes illegal moments that shaped Valenti’s adolescence and young adulthood in New York City, revealing a much shakier inner life than the confident persona she has cultivated as one of the most recognizable feminists of her generation. In the tradition of writers like Joan Didion and Mary Karr, this literary memoir is sure to shock those already familiar with Valenti’s work and enthrall those who are just finding it.

The United States is obsessed with virginity - from the media to schools to government agencies. This panic is ensuring that young women's ability to be moral agents is absolutely dependent on their sexuality. Jessica Valenti, executive editor of Feministing.com and author of Full Frontal Feminism and Yes Means Yes, addresses this poignant issue in her latest book, The Purity Myth. Valenti argues that the country's intense focus on chastity is extremely damaging to young women. Through in depth analysis of cultural stereotypes and media messages, Valenti reveals that powerful messages - ranging from abstinence curriculum to ''Girls Gone Wild'' commercials - place a young woman's worth entirely on her sexuality. Morals are therefore linked purely to sexual behavior, as opposed to values like honesty, kindness, and altruism. Valenti approaches the topic head-on, shedding light on chastity in a historical context, abstinence-only education, pornography, and public punishments for those who dare to have sex, among other critical issues. She also offers solutions that pave the way for a future without a damaging emphasis on virginity, including a call to rethink male sexuality and reframing the idea of ''losing it.'' With Valenti's usual balance of intelligence and wit, The Purity Myth presents a powerful and revolutionary argument that girls and women, even in this day and age, are overly valued for their sexuality, and that this needs to stop.

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2013 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Other, course: Humanities (English), language: English, abstract: Females are often viewed solely as de-personalized objects of desire instead of as individuals with complex personalities and desires or plans of their own. They also grow up in a culture with widespread sexual objectification and tend to view themselves as objects of the fulfillment of others' desires. This internalized sexual objectification can be linked to mental health as well. In the novel, patriarchy in general and other females in particular both insist that woman's role is to be the slave of her own sex as well as be a sexual object for males. The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck is a story of a peasant. Buck brilliantly portrays the isolation, dislocation and identity crisis of a typical Chinese society's woman. It is about the true status of the women in pre-revolutionary China, especially on the unloved life of a Chinese peasant's ugly wife. She has control over all the riches in her husband's life, she is a true better half in all the senses but still she faces the psychological trauma and remains only as a sex object to bear him children. This thesis concludes that the cultural upbringing, the patriarchy and the women's submissive and subservient nature results a woman to become a mere sex object in the hands of male counterpart.

The classic manifesto of the liberated woman, this book explores every facet of a woman's life.

Modern industrialized society chronically and pervasively objectifies the female body, and many women have come to view themselves through the lens of an external observer, habitually monitoring their own appearance whether in public or private settings. Given the negative effects associated with self-objectification-such as body shame, appearance anxiety, depression, and disordered eating-an empirically based approach to researching and treating self-objectification is critical. This book integrates recent research developments and current clinical knowledge on self-objectification in women. Using Barbara L. Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts' objectification theory as a framework, the contributors address various aspects of the theory, including evidence for and causes of self-objectification across the life span, psychological consequences, and associated mental health risks. The book also discusses various scales for measuring self-objectification, as well as approaches to prevent and disrupt this phenomenon. With research from a variety of disciplines-psychology, sociology, anthropology, women's studies, and political science-this book should be read by everyone interested in the well-being of women.