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UK Study Shows Objectification, Street Harassment Affects Girls

October 3, 2016 By HKearl

Each year, Girlguiding, the UK’s leading charity for girls and young women, asks girls what they think through our Girls’ Attitudes Survey. They collect the views of over 1,600 girls and young women aged 7 to 21 across the country.

This year’s report shows that safety in public spaces is a big concern.

girlguiding-research-2016-unsafe-on-own

So is objectification. Sadly, 36% of seven to 10-year-old girls believe they are rated more on their looks than their abilities.

Overall, Girlguiding says its survey shows girls and young women face “multiple, compound pressures” including exposure to images that objectify women, sexist online abuse and street harassment.

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Filed Under: Resources, street harassment Tagged With: girls, objectification, research, UK

USA: The Normalization of Street Harassment in Childhood Television

July 15, 2016 By Correspondent

Mariel DiDato, NJ, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

johny-bravo-s-flirts
Johnny Bravo

As a child-turned-adult Pokémon fanatic, I have succumbed to the hype of Pokémon-Go. While basking in my nostalgia, I decided to watch some early episodes of the iconic cartoon. Watching childhood television shows as an adult, I often catch things that I didn’t pick up on as a kid. Certain jokes now make sense, while other things don’t seem as funny. One example of a less-funny aspect of Pokémon is Brock’s persistent advances towards almost every female character besides Misty, and the continued response of female annoyance or rejection. I wouldn’t necessarily claim this show is sexist, as they feature multiple female characters in leadership roles. However, the repeated romantic attempts towards much of these characters, played off with the “boys will be boys” narrative, is something I did not appreciate.

This prompted me to think about the other shows I watched as a child that normalized this kind of behavior. I realized that Pokémon is hardly the worst offender. Johnny Bravo is a show that features catcalling and female rejection as the main source of humor. Even more infamous is Pepe LePew, a male skunk whose storyline involves chasing and grabbing onto a female skunk who, very obviously, does not want to be approached or touched by him.

Although this harassment and female rejection is repeatedly portrayed as comical, the real-life version of this experience is far from laughable. On the Pokémon end of the spectrum, Brock takes rejection with a blushed face, and then moves onto the next woman. Johnny Bravo’s objects of affection sometimes even strike him, leading him to simply move on to his next target, like Brock. However, the reality of female rejection often leads to male escalation, with women receiving a spectrum of responses that can range from insults, threats, and actual violence. Women are aware of this fact; smiling and receiving compliments from harassers is often misconstrued as acceptance and openness, when it is really a method of de-escalation. It is sad to see this portrayed to young children as something to be laughed about. Even while LePew’s victim can be seen struggling to break free from his arms as he kisses her, the whole situation is trivialized to the point of comedy. It is as though harassment is seen as nothing more than a mere annoyance, generally harmless to the women it affects.

More and more data reveal that street harassment is anything but funny or harmless to its victims. Studies show that the continued street harassment most women face before the age of 18 is linked to a multitude of negative effects. One 2008 study found street harassment to be correlated with self-objectification and fear of rape. This, in turn, can lead women to fear travel of any distance, restricting their freedom of movement. In addition, there is evidence that continued and frequent abuse, such as the street harassment women can be subjected to virtually any time they leave their homes, can be more harmful than experiencing one traumatic event.

However, in these cartoons, sexual harassment is shown to be a trivial event that can be laughed off. Young boys are potentially learning that, while ineffective, street harassment is an acceptable way to pick up women. In each of these shows, there is an example of the male “getting the girl.” This might send the message that harassing multiple women is okay. Eventually, one will say “yes” and it will all be worth it. Plus, the women who say no will walk away irritated, but intact. On the other hand, young girls are potentially being taught that objectification and harassment is an appropriate and acceptable part of being female.

Street harassment was a problem prior to the invention of television. Misogynistic cartoon characters did not create the larger problem of sexism in society, but they are instrumental in keeping these messages alive and normalizing them for younger generations. It’s easy to criticize outright sexism on television, but it is also important to pick up on these more discreet messages that people of all ages are receiving. I don’t think I’m going to stop watching shows like Pokémon, but I will definitely be more aware of these indirect messages in the media. I will also be supporting shows that depict healthy relationships, instead of normalizing deeply harmful social interactions. I encourage others to do the same, and hopefully future generations will enjoy cartoons that don’t rely on sexism for their laughs.

Mariel is a recent college graduate, feminist, and women’s rights activist. Currently, she volunteers for a number of different organizations, including the Planned Parenthood Action Fund of New Jersey and the New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault. You can follow her on Twitter at @marieldidato or check out her personal blog, Fully Concentrated Feminism.

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Filed Under: correspondents, street harassment Tagged With: cartoons, catcaling, female rejection, kids, messages, objectification, trivialization

Street harassment and the Beauty Myth

June 8, 2011 By Contributor

Noami Wolf is a preeminent figure in debunking society’s convenient truths. In The Beauty Myth she explores the relationship between the rise of beauty products and gains of the women’s movement in society. While street harassment has always been an issue, I think the way we perceive beauty has a powerful effect on the mindset behind it. This is a great resource for male allies who wish to understand the burden and pain placed on women by the corporate beauty industry.

Women put up with beauty critiques in the workplace and then walk home to cat calling at the end of the day. In the stores they are greeted with beauty pornography all around them. It transmits the following value: to be beautiful is to be liked.

Naomi Wolf summarizes this as “….’beauty’ is defined as that which never says no, and that which is not really human…’”

This encourages the behavior of men to treat women in public spaces as objects to be critiqued and scored. If women react to this kind of treatment in a negative way they are “bitches” or “difficult.” They failed the inhuman test.

Wolf goes on to say that “he gains something: the esteem of other men who find such an acquisition impressive.” Men will often sit on the sidelines or cheer their friends on when committing street harassment.

Beauty does not always translate into attraction. Wolf describes attraction as a deeper value that involves elements of people’s personality, desires, and interests. Beauty is purely visual. A main theme of the book is how advertisers manipulate women into being insecure consumers of beauty products, creating a visual distance between men and women. Men start to view women as “the other” and treat them as such. A cat call on the street sets up a boundary of the” looker” and the “looked.”

Wolf gives a charge to her readers: to grow up free of these boundaries and unite in sexual understanding.  Male allies can work to “grow up free” by rejecting the stereotypes of their own gender and to stand up against dehumanizing acts that the beauty myth perpetuates.

– Sean Crosbie

This post is part of the weekly blog series by male allies. We need men involved in the work to end the social acceptability of street harassment and to stop the practice, period. If you’d like to contribute to this weekly series, please contact me.

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Filed Under: male perspective Tagged With: beauty myth, male ally, naomi wolf, objectification, street harassment

New Study on Street Harassment

December 23, 2008 By HKearl

The following is from a presentation given at the annual conference of the Association for Women in Psychology entitled, “Gender-based public harassment: Avoidance, objectification, and self esteem” by Tracy Lord.

“Limited research on gender-based public harassment suggest there are multiple individual and societal effects of this harassment: increasing women’s fear of men; decreasing trust between men and women; making women ashamed of their bodies; and contributing to women’s self-objectification. Women who are objectified by men begin to self-objectify. The theories of why public harassment occurs include the male bonding theory, the social-structural theory, the sociocultural theory, and the social control theory.

The current study addressed gaps in our understanding of women’s experience of and reactions to street harassment. Women college students (n=125) from the subject pool responded to questions regarding: their public harassment experiences; the frequency with which they occur; and the feelings women have about these incidents. Participants also completed: Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale; the Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire – Appearance Scales; the Objectified Body Consciousness Scale; and the Mobility Inventory for Agoraphobia. Preliminary analyses indicated that street harassment in mild and moderate forms were common experiences. Women reported a range of reactions to street harassment. The complete data analysis will be reported.”

None of these findings surprise me. I look forward to reading the full report, especially the theories cited for explaining why it happens.

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Filed Under: Administrator Tagged With: association for women in psychology, bonding theory, gender-based public harassment, objectification, self esteem, social-structure theory, sociocultural theory, street harassment, tracy lord

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