Self-Objectification in Women: Causes and Consequences

In our society, it is typical for women to be valued for their appearance rather than their

abilities (Silverstein, 2011.) We see this in the sexualization of women in media and in the

everyday interactions of women with others, where gazes that evaluate a woman’s appearance

are the most common form of objectification (Kaschak, 1992). Due to the nearly constant

presence of the sexualization of women, women have internalized the idea that their value lies

in society’s evaluation of their appearance; consequently, they take on a third-person view of

themselves in order to monitor the way they look, which takes their personal emphasis away

from their competencies and places it on meeting a societal standard of beauty. This external

view that becomes internalized is often manifested by habitual monitoring of one’s appearance.

The constant, though not always conscious, preoccupation women have of their appearance due

to the expectations that society holds for them is know as self-objectification. For some time,

the preoccupation with the way one looke...