One of the biggest annoyances in relationships between men and women is that of objectification. . We’ve all heard people refer to someone as ‘a piece of ass’ or know people who will happily say they’re a ‘breast man’ without any shade of irony, or even awareness that the person they’re talking about might actually be a bit upset about it. It’s like men can’t help it – and some recent research suggests that not only is that truer than we might find comfortable, but that women are just as prone to it as well.
Stereotypes and Misconceptions
You might think that the focus on women is one that society has created from images and stereotypes that we receive subconsciously both from the media and the conversations around us. While it’s hard to argue that it does not play a role, it would seem that our own biology seems to conspire to make things as difficult as possible.
One of the biggest ways that our own brains get in our way is in objectifying women. The origins of this seem to lie in the way that the human brain reacts to new images. We will either see things as a single item (which is called ‘global processing’) or as a bunch of objects (which is called ‘local processing’)
When you look at a rugby player for example, you’d see him globally – as one object. When you look at the food on your plate, you’ll process the items on it locally; which is what allows us to choose that gorgeous steak and ignore the salad on the side.
You’ll notice though that I used the example of a rugby player and deliberately used the masculine pronoun, and there’s a reason for that. Researchers have found that we process images of men and women very differently.
A study was done where both men and women were shown a whole load of photos of people, and then asked to identify those people again from a series of pictures of body parts. What they found was that men and women both used global processing more often when looking at men. When looking at a women however, the research suggested that both men and women processed a picture of a woman in terms of their hair, their breasts, their lips and so on.
Why does this happen? Well they’re still not sure, but the most popular theory is that women are being sized up by men as possible partners, and by women as rivals by comparing their features. So our biology seems intent on making us all as bad as each other. This, my friends, is why we invented the concept of ‘being classy’.