– by Wes Colton,  Introvert Unbound

A woman walks down the street, her hair dyed blonde, eyes smeared with purple eyeshadow and mascara, blush on her cheeks, bright red lipstick glistening, wearing a low-cut, form-fitting, oh-so-short dress.

Does this mean she wants to be ogled by men?

Some might say no, that she does it to feel good about herself and it has nothing to do with anyone else.

But if she really isn’t dolling herself up for attention, does that mean she spends the same amount of time on her appearance on a night when she’s sitting home alone with a pint of ice cream watching Netflix?

To the contrary, study after study has concluded that women dress most revealingly during the most fertile periods of their menstrual cycle. Which suggests the obvious: consciously or unconsciously, she’s trying to attract a man.

So does that mean she wants every guy she passes on the street to come up and say hello? The answer to that is no. She wants to attract the type of man she finds attractive and anyone else she’ll likely consider a nuisance at best and a creeper at worst.

But how are you supposed to know if you’re her type unless you approach her? Of course the answer is, you can’t. So you might as well say hi.

So we’ve determined that a woman dressing sexy wants to be approached—by some dudes at least. But between the moment that she successfully catches a man’s eye and he approaches her, does she want to be sexually objectified?

The reality of the situation is that when a woman goes out into public hypersexualizing her appearance, her physical attractiveness is the only visible signal that’s being sent. There is no way of knowing what books she reads, her opinion on immigration, or whether she loves puppies or not. Her physical appearance is all we’ve got to go by, especially since she’s deliberately accentuating it above all other aspects of her being.

Think about how an average woman dresses on a daily basis: yoga pants where you can make out the exact contours of her legs and ass. Low cut or tight shirts where her breasts are on display. Short shorts where 80% of her legs are revealed. Do you see most guys dressing like this? How can this be seen as anything but a woman advertising her sexuality? And since we know literally nothing about her as a person, how can we see her as anything but a sexual object?

Even though it’s fair to assume that she’s trying to get male attention and you should feel no shame in looking or approaching, it doesn’t mean you have to see her as an object, or a thing. After all, she’s a human being with a personality and even though that’s not what she’s leading with, it doesn’t mean we have to fall into the objectification trap, seeing her as less than a person. That’s not good for her and it’s not good for us.

One way of preventing this is by refusing to see her by her individual body parts alone, i.e., she’s just a “great pair of tits,” or a “tight ass,” or simply “pussy.”

This isn’t to say you can’t admire attractive aspects of her anatomy. Go for it, you want and it and she wants it too. But make sure you see her as a whole being, a sexual SUBJECT rather than OBJECT.

In conclusion: sexual OBJECTification = bad. Sexual SUBJECTification = good.