the lamp proclamation
“Sometimes I just want to be a lamp.”
This caught my attention.That is something you don’t hear every day. While living in San Francisco, I had the opportunity to attend a welcome meeting hosted by the Society of Janus, an organization offering support and education about kink, fetish, and BDSM practices. The woman who made the lamp proclamation was discussing her kink to become a literal object, which is a type of sexual role-play known as objectification. In this case, becoming a lamp was a way to provide a service to her dominant partner as well as fulfill her own desires, despite the outwardly non-sexual nature of the activity. Whether it was simply a desire to please her partner or whether she felt something deeper, the woman’s approach was consensual and intentional, assuming agency with her choice to become an object. And that assertion was incredibly fascinating to me.
defining objectification
In 2015, I wrote an article entitled “Define Objectify,” focusing on how the word objectify has been used, specifically in artistic critique and presentation of the nude female form. I recently re-read my essay, and it gave me the opportunity to consider how my perspective about the word has evolved and how the practice of objectification might actually offer a contradictory interpretation.
In the simplest terms, objectify means to degrade to the status of a mere object. The type of objectification most of us are familiar with typically pops up in music videos, fashion magazines, pornography, or other forms of entertainment. This use of objectification reduces its subject to a sexualized object without agency or personhood, and often for the purposes of exploitation. Sex sells and there are plenty of Calvin Klein ads to prove it. Periodically, careers and celebrities are made because of it. How else do you think Marky Mark went from the lead hunk of the Funky Bunch to the serious actor and businessman who we now know as Mark Wahlberg?
The art world has relied on objectification for millenia. Women have served as muse and inspiration for many artists and some of the most revered and recognizable works of art feature women as the objectified subject. DaVinci’s Mona Lisa. Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X. Each work of art has achieved a level of notoriety and fame where one easily could name the artist, but not necessarily name the woman (or women) who inspired the piece. And while nudity in art is not inherently sexual or sexually exploitative, the female nude has been appropriated by the supremacy of male artists and the male gaze in much of Western art. Just ask the Guerilla Girls who have shared decades of humbling statistics on the place of women in museums and galleries.
the question of agency
Through my journey with the Femme Project, art has been a means to explore and examine myself as a woman through the lens of both the subject and the object. Having sat as an art model and been photographed by other artists, I’ve experienced what it is like to be on both sides of the lens. A delicate balance of power exists between the creator and their subject, circumstances which can leave room open for predatory behavior and abuses of that power. How then, do we consider consent and agency in these final works of art?
In my recent piece “Objet d’Art,” I created a self portrait that explores these themes of objectification and the female body as art. By assuming the role of creator and subject, I am probing questions about the conflict between art and sexuality, object and subject, exploitation and authenticity. And at the heart of it lies the question of agency.
Objet d'Art. ©2023 The Femme Project.
Over the coming months, I will be delving more deeply into topics surrounding objectification and how that shapes perspectives on female agency in multiple ways. But it is more than that. Objectification speaks to and informs the complex experience of female sexuality. Whether we like it or not, our sexuality is shaped by the inescapable ways that women are objectified in art, culture, and entertainment. Many of these representations are unhealthy and problematic for young people as they struggle to navigate adulthood without resources and education based on science and facts.
Can we reclaim that narrative and take that power back? Can we own the true nature of our sexuality, own it completely, with all of its delicious contradictions coupled with the shame it is conditioned to create? Relationships and sexuality are messy and beautiful in that they are uniquely human.
Join me on this journey to explore, learn, and grow. But mostly, I hope it empowers you to be a more tolerant and informed listener by considering ideas and concepts that we don’t typically discuss in today’s Disney-fied culture.
