The Sydney Feminists

What Is Self-Objectification? We live in a society where girls and women’s bodies are under constant scrutiny and evaluation by others; a society wherein from a very early age, girls consistently receive societal  messages that their appearance and their body plays a fundamental role in determining their worth and value as a person. A direct consequence of this objectification culture is that girls and women internalize these messages, and consequently start to experience their own bodies as objects and view their physical appearance from a third-person perspective. This process is called self-objectification, and it manifests most commonly in body surveillance, which is habitual body checking and monitoring from the perspective of an observer. Self-objectification has been studied extensively with a focus on its maladaptive effects upon female mental health. According to  PhD researcher Caroline Heldman, the average woman engages in body monitoring every thirty seconds. I