This book, written with Susanna Paasonen, Clarissa Smith, Alan McKee and John Mercer, is an accessible introduction to ‘objectification', one of most frequently used terms in debates about gender, media, beauty, fashion, looking, and feminism.

 

We show how the concept of objectification fails to examine important issues of social power and argue that debates about it often collapse together ideas about sexism, sexual representation and sexuality, in the process offering a confused and unhelpful way of thinking about these issues.

 

We offer more useful ways to think about and challenge sexism in popular media and in our societies, while insisting on the importance of sexual agency and the value of sexual representation.