Male Objectification II

[G-Max]

Well, a half-naked guy, who I'm assuming straight women and gay men find attractive, is directly addressing the female viewers and trying to convince them that if they buy a certain product for the men in their lives, said men would become more like him in a completely superficial way.

I don't see how this is fundamentally different from makeup commercials featuring attractive women, except that both types of ads are aimed at women because the average straight man allocates about half of a brain cell to thinking about cosmetics.

 

[Traitorfish]

Is there anything in the advertisement that implies the man is lacking in agency? There was certainly a focus on physical aesthetics, but as I've already said, any assumed equivalence between beautification and objectification doesn't actually stand up to history.

(Plus there's the whole thing about it being a piss-take BUT WHATEVER.)

 

[G-Max]

Is there anything in the advertisement that implies the man is lacking in agency?

Is there anything in any advertisement that implies anyone is lacking in agency? We're going to need examples if we're all to be on the same page about this alleged difference between beautification and objectification.

 

[Traitorfish]

Examples of what? I don't really know what debate you think that you're engaged in, so you're going to have to start writing down the parts that are now taking place only within your head.

 

[G-Max]

Examples of what?

Things that fall under your very specific and obscure definition of "objectify", rather than the one that everyone else is familiar with.

I don't really know what debate you think that you're engaged in, so you're going to have to start writing down the parts that are now taking place only within your head.

You are challenging my assertion that the video is an example of male objectification. You are using a definition of "objectification" that not only have I never come across before, but which would seem to exclude literally every example that I've seen/heard people use when discussing objectification. In order to avoid further confusion, I need to know just what in the nine circles of Hell you're talking about when you mention "lacking in agency" or "being constructed as an object".

 

[Traitorfish]

Is basically what I'm working from. Given that this is pretty much the origin of the modern theory sexual objectification, I have to say that any misunderstanding on your part is not because I'm being wildly unconventional in my usage.

 

[G-Max]

Sadly, I don't have a copy of that book. Could you provide examples from film, tv, magazines, etc. that fall under your definition of objectification, and explain why they count and the Old Spice guy doesnt?

 

[Traitorfish]

Not really, because I don't think that any such example constitutes objectification in itself. It's all about social context; about how a given image is understood. You can't really jam existentialism and positivism together like that, much as Anglos are wont to try.

 

[BasketCase]

Are men objectified by the media of film, TV, newspapers, magazines, calendars, etc?

Not really. Men (and women, and all other living things) are actually objectified by the simple nature of existence. Mother Nature doesn't really care whether we're happy, or nice to each other, or anything else; Nature only cares that living things survive, and if survival is by means of cruelty, then so be it.

The media don't turn people into objects--they simply show us what's already present.

 

[Borachio]

The media don't turn people into objects--they simply show us what's already present

Well, does it only do that?

Er, isn't the purpose of all advertising to change behaviour?

And won't it do that in any way it can?

Mother Nature doesn't really care whether we're happy,

Isn't Mother Nature's happiness*, the mechanism of conditioned response used by nature?

*oxytocin? or some such