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Essay / 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 the media and in women's everyday interactions with others, where gazes that evaluate a woman's appearance are the most common form of objectification (Kaschak, 1992). Due to the almost constant presence of the sexualization of women, women have internalized the idea that their worth lies in society's evaluation of their appearance; therefore, they adopt a third-person view of themselves in order to police their appearance, which shifts their personal focus away from their skills and places it on meeting a societal standard of beauty. This external vision that becomes internalized often manifests itself in habitual monitoring of one's appearance. The constant, although not always conscious, preoccupation women have with their appearance due to the expectations society has of them is known as self-objectification. For some time now, the preoccupation with appearance...