by MATTHEW HUTSON
Brigitte Bardot posing for a fashion shoot in a studio, Paris, 1958. PHOTO/Nicolas Tikhomiroff/Magnum
What goes on in our minds when we see someone naked? The more we see of a person’s body the stupider they seem
In 2010, the editors at Vogue Paris made a design decision that could soon lead to a wide-sweeping change in French law. A spread in the December issue starred a model named Thylane Blondeau. In one picture, she was sprawled on a tiger-skin rug, her dress exposing one shoulder, as a jewel-encrusted leg props up a high-heel slipper and her heavily made-up eyes stare intensely into the camera. This would be a typical magazine fashion shoot if Blondeau had not been nine years old.
The photos caused outrage — 84 per cent of respondents in one French poll found them demeaning — and led the French politician Chantal Jouanno to write a parliamentary report entitled ‘Against Hyper-Sexualisation: A New Fight For Equality’. The report requested a ban on child-size adult clothing and on beauty pageants for children younger than 16. In September this year, the French Senate voted in support of the pageant ban; it awaits confirmation from the lower house. ‘At this age, you need to concentrate on acquiring knowledge,’ Jouanno told the Associated Press. ‘Yet with “Mini Miss” competitions and other demonstrations, we are fixing the projectors on their physical appearance.’
The US — home of the popular reality TV show Toddlers & Tiaras — seems unlikely to follow France’s lead. Our focus on beauty and sexuality, even in children, does not bode well for the treatment of girls and women in general. A report from the American Psychological Association in 2010 notes that sexualisation leads us to value people only for their sexual appeal at the exclusion of other traits, encourages unwanted sexual advances, and causes objectification, wherein a person’s capacity to direct his or her own life is ignored.
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Feminist theorists have given extensive thought to objectification — often in the context of pornography. It’s not universally assumed that men treat sexy models as devoid of feeling. ‘In pornography all sorts of emotional states and desires are imputed to women,’ says Martha Nussbaum, professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago, who has written widely on the topic. ‘The point that feminists make is that it is a construct: far from being interested in what the real woman is thinking and feeling, men think of her emotions in terms of a stock scenario familiar from porn, and don’t inquire further.’ Rather than discerning her real desires, they project fantasised feelings, which often include the wish to be used. ‘It’s similar to the sort of objectification of slaves that is portrayed in Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ Nussbaum adds. ‘White owners impute to them all sorts of emotions but just not the ones they actually have.’
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