sabotabby | A theory of attraction (Reply)

I know! Let's have a big rambling discussion of objectification, since the last one was so much fun. A couple of you brought up points that I found Rather Interesting and wished to Ponder Further, all centred around the overlap between objectification and attraction.

The personal

I've been unattractive and relatively attractive, depending on both my age and environment. Though the evolutionary psychologists may bleat about the universality of the hip-to-waist ratio, attraction is cultural and social. Which is probably a good thing when you think about it. The point is, I've been on both sides of the divide: Feeling worthless and unlovable because of how I looked, and having to pretty much beat off men with a stick.

I hope you'll forgive me if I say that I prefer the latter situation. Wanting to be thought of as attractive—not even so much because I wanted more action, but because I thought that it would make my life immensely easier—was rather jarring for an adolescent beginning to get a grasp of feminist theory. I was raised to believe that many things mattered more than looks—brains, kindness, hard work, and so on. I wanted to be above that, and in the same way, if you'd ever asked me what I wanted to change most about myself, I would have responded that I wanted to be thinner and hotter. I resented that I sometimes felt envious of my more attractive friends, that I couldn't empathize with the frustration of one girl who complained, "Why do men always want to touch me?" I didn't want to be objectified, but I would have rather been objectified than not seen at all. And I felt like a bad feminist for it.

And as aware that I was of the influences all around me that dissected me, evaluated me as "fuckable" or "other," as much as I wanted to be different—strong, smart, confident—I succumbed in part to them. Quick, name me a poem written by a man to celebrate the intelligence or independence of his lover.

At any rate, I eventually got my wish, to a point. I rate as "fuckable" these days (or, at least on one uncomfortable first date, apparently "marriageable.") Which is how I got to learn, on a very visceral level, that objectification is not the same as attraction.

Case in point: A man says to a woman, "You are beautiful." Depending on the man, depending on the woman, this could be a statement of attraction or objectification or both. I've had this said to me more than once. Coming from a lover, it's a compliment, and a rather nice one. Coming from a stranger on the street who is standing too close and breathing in my face—it's a threat. (This would be my response to the discussion here, incidentally. The distinction is not between "you look terrific" and "nice ass." The distinction is whether you think the person making the statement is going to rape you.)

The post that says the same thing, I think, but far more concisely

babygotfat illustrates the difference between objectification and attraction here, with two different photography projects about fat women. My impression is that Adipositivity plays into objectification by visually dismembering its subjects, rendering them anonymous and thus exchangeable. You should be attracted to a fat woman's ass. Mr. Spock's Full Body Project, conversely, is mainly about expanding the boundaries of attraction. His subjects are people, and he wants you to see them as beautiful.

The utopian

Picture life after The Patriarchy.

Vision #1: There are no physical bodies. We have all been uploaded into the Singularity. One finds one's partners, not based on form, but on function: the interaction between a person's neurons. Gender becomes irrelevant. Neither objectification nor (physical) attraction exist.

Vision #2: We are bodies, but all bodies are acceptable. Gender is a spectrum, a cornucopia. The thought of a hot blonde being used to sell cars is laughable, because there are no cars, no selling, and no culturally agreed-upon standard of "hot." Physical attraction is still part of attraction, but the pressures that make attractiveness so crucial in economic and social terms are absent. Attraction exists, which means that you'll probably still get rejected every so often by someone who just isn't physically attracted to you, but the debunking of the concept that a woman's value lies in her youth, beauty, and fertility means that the long-term consequences of this aren't so dire.

You'll notice that this fits neatly with the stereotypes of second- and third-wave feminism: on the one hand, sexual equality born out of androgyny, on the other, sexual equality born out of diversity. It probably won't come as a shock that I subscribe to the latter ~~because I'm femme and I like pink~~ because it's more fun, but also because it goes quite a way to reconcile the visceral pleasure of being looked upon with the feminist objection to being seen only as a collection of acceptable or unacceptable body parts.