The Fight for Women to Own Their Sexuality: Objectification vs Empowerment

Can women ever truly own their sexuality? How do we empower ourselves in the face of objectification? What does empowerment even look like? The fight for women to own their sexuality is a never ending one, but this week we’re trying to unpack it.

There’s SO many questions to answer. And if you’ve been listening to our podcast, you know that there’s never one easy answer. For our one-year anniversary episode, we are diving into the psychology of sexualization to understand how we got here and what we can do to empower ourselves. 

If there’s two things we’ve learned from women like Megan the Stallion, Cardi B, Lizzo it’s that empowerment looks different for everyone, and someone is always going to be mad when a woman is confident in her sexuality. 

And of course, it wouldn’t be a proper conversation on sexuality without discussing “WAP.” So does this anthem propel us forward in the fight for empowerment, or send us backwards? Tune in to see what the psychology says. 

If you enjoyed this episode check out past episode such as: Like a Virgin: When Popstars Become Women and Challenging Masculinity: a History of Gender Expression

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Want to talk more? Find us: @name3songs | @sara_feigin | @jenna_million

Sources for The Fight for Women to Own Their Sexuality: Objectification vs Empowerment

The Sexualization of Women and Girls (Psychology Today, Catherine McCalle (MS, LMFT), 2012) 

Sexualization of Girls is Linked to Common Mental Health Problems in Girls and Women–Eating Disorders, Low Self-Esteem, and Depression; An APA Task Force Reports (American Psychology Association, 2007)

Sexualizing Media Use and Self-Objectification: A Meta-Analysis (Kathrin Karsay, Johannes Knoll, Jorg Matthes, 2017)

What drives female objectification? An investigation of appearance-based interpersonal perceptions and the objectification of women (Kellie, D. J., Blake, K. R., & Brooks, R. C. (2019))

Do Self-Objectified Women Believe Themselves to Be Free? Sexual Objectification and Belief in Personal Free Will (2019)

Objectification, Sexualization, and Misrepresentation: Social Media and the College Experience (2018)

When Are Young Women in Pop Allowed to Grow Up? (MTV News, Larisha Paul, 2021)

It’s My Pussy, I’ll Rap About it If I Want To (Wear Your Voice, Ro Carson, 2019)

From Like a Virgin to WAP: The truly provocative pop songs (BBC Arwa Haider, 2020) 

When Are Young Women in Pop Allowed to Grow Up? (MTV News, Larisha Paul, 2021)

Black Women Have Long Celebrated Their Sexuality Through Music (Wear Your Voice, Sherronda J Brown, 2020)

From Like a Virgin to WAP: The truly provocative pop songs (BBC Arwa Haider, 2020) 

From Blurred Lines to New Rules: how sex in pop songs has changed forever (The Guardian, Laura Snapes, 2018)