GS Faculty Research Workshop: Michael Rea shares "Objectification and Beauty"

"Objectification and Beauty"

Sexual objectification is in some sense and to some extent clearly “about” or triggered by sexual attraction or attractiveness. Because of this, it makes sense that it would also have something to do with beauty. But the relationship between objectification and beauty is far from obvious. Sexual attraction and the appreciation of beauty do not always or (one hopes) even typically lead to objectification. Some sexual objectification is wrapped up with violence and other forms of abuse in ways that make it hard to see how it could also be prompted by anything normally associated with beauty or attraction. And so on. This paper—a chapter of my forthcoming book, Love, Beauty, and Objectification—aims to clarify the relationship between sexual objectification and beauty. I begin by offering close readings of two literary fictions that I think point toward what I call an “empathy suppression” account of sexual objectification. I then make an empirically informed philosophical case for the conclusion that objectification (understood in terms of empathy suppression) is grounded in beauty.