Women portrayed as objects

In my Women's Studies class we just started our unit talking about body image, so I've been thinking a lot about it. It's so tragic that in our society, the media controls our perception of everything. They present to us this image of the perfect woman, who all women are supposed to strive to become. The goal is obviously unobtainable, considering the fact that everyone is different and also the fact that the image shown on billboards and on TV is not even a real human being after all the computer editing. Even though it's impossible to look like the models shown in the media, women still go to extreme measures to become one step closer to that ideal, flawless, skinny, white, tall woman with a big chest, full lips, big eyes...the list goes on and on. What I'm trying to get at, is that women are objectified in the media. They aren't viewed as much more than something that needs to be shaped and formed into something that everyone wants to look at and have. Because of this objectification, which takes away the humanity of a person, treating them as such is the result. I'm not saying this is the only reason why, but I think objectifying women is a contributing factor in the abundance of rape and sex trafficking and prostitution.

In this article I was reading about the abductions that took place during the LRA in northern Uganda, the study showed that out of all the people abducted, women ages 19-30 were abducted for the longest time period, on average, than any other age group or gender. Overall, the average length of abduction for women was 643 days, whereas for men it was 258 days. The hypothesis as to why this was so, is that since women were "given" to commanders (given away like a commodity, not a person), they were forced to be wives or long-term sex partners or domestic servants and many had babies while with the LRA. All of these things made it much more difficult to either try and escape or for anyone to come in and try to capture them.

I am not sure how women are viewed and portrayed in Ugandan culture, but I believe that there is this connection between encouraging people through the media to view women as objects and then the way women are treated all around the world.