Women’s Bodies: The World’s Hidden Commodity

In 2007, a Dolce & Gabbana advert was released depicting a woman being pinned-down by an oily, shirtless man while four other men looked on. This scene quickly sparked international debate for portraying images of impending gang rape while simultaneously eroticizing violence against women. And while that is question enough about the incentives that drive our purchasing habits, there is no question here about the likelihood of such an occurrence under a patriarchal society within which the female body is relegated to a simple object of sexual desire.

After all, this is a hypersexualization trope we know well— do we not? If it is not in a Dolce & Gabbana advert, it is in a multi-billion dollar Internet pornography industry, in sexualized images of women on magazine covers, or in the rise of chain restaurants featuring young female servers in revealing uniforms. And if not there, do we not know it to be omnipresent in our streets in the form of catcalling?

Whether it be in films, advertisements, night clubs, sex-shops, strip-tease clubs, restaurants, or sexual telephone services; the female body is first reduced to an object utilized for the satisfaction of the general public and then equated to a resource that can be used, sold, or exchanged for that same public’s pleasure. This is our true but dark reality. However, where there is objectification through hypersexualization, there is soon thereafter auto-objectification through self-sexualization. Girls learn early on that their bodies hold sexual value within a society where they have neither structural power nor full autonomy and that body becomes their tool for access to capital. Girlhood as we know it today is characterized by the harmful apprenticeship of the use of one’s body to gain value. At a young age, we are fed TV storylines where a man saves a woman’s life and magically becomes deserving of being taken to the bedroom or to her hand in marriage. We need also not remind you of the storylines of female spies or superheroes needing to seduce a villain for vital information. When our survival and safety are dependent on men’s access to our bodies on the big screens, it comes as no surprise that we emulate those same behaviors in the real world. At just 4 years old, we’re rewarded with a snack at daycare if we hug our caretakers. At 7, our parents promise us dessert if we allow our uncle to kiss us on the cheek. When age 12 comes around, we know to flirt with a male classmate for answers on a test or to smile at a male teacher to go to the bathroom. By age 17, we wear low-cut shirts to get easy entry to 18+ movies at the theater. And then begins the visible make-up at job interviews and the slow shedding of clothing to have access— to bars, to clubs, and to spaces in general.

The aforementioned expression, that of a “resource that can be used, sold, or exchanged” is what we otherwise call a commodity. In a world where we have separated body from individual, this is effectively the modern equation we are utilizing: women's bodies are mere commodities. And if we are to paint the systemic commodification of women’s physical selves like we just did, then we ought to recognize the deep era of women’s dehumanization that we are living through.

A 2020 study by Barbosa et al. states: “commodified women are not valued for their human characteristics, so their health, physical integrity, and well-being also lose their importance, which opens the way for the violation and violent practices against women.” We are talking about violence you likely have familiarity with: intimate partner violence, sexual harassment, femicide, sexual assault, and female genital mutilation. All of these stem from a sense of entitlement to or ownership over women's bodies. However, this violence is but the tail end of a cycle that started much earlier— back when we birthed a system where women’s humanity could be traded in exchange for the satisfaction of someone else’s desire. When object became woman. When commodity became woman. When currency became woman.

But the existence of women’s humanity is no debate, no dispute with an ambiguous answer. It is simply due to them by virtue of their existence. The only relevant question here is whether we find any degree of personal satisfaction worth the dehumanization of women. The answer to that question requires a will for morals and the application of the dignity due to half of our population. It is a question that must first be answered on a personal level, then on a communal one. And the beauty of this is that where there is communal application, there is soon systemic a one— which is the exact place where harmful cycles like this one are broken.