Devon De Paola

October 3rd, 2021

Histart211
Paper #1

Physical Beauty or Physical Strength: Which is More Important?

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, to “objectify” is “the action of degrading

someone to the status of a mere object.” But when most people hear the word “objectification,”

their brains immediately think of the ways in which women are constantly being objectified. The

idea that women being the object of a man’s attention, that the male is the active main character

and the female is the passive object of beauty, is a claim that can be seen everywhere in our day

to day lives. We see it in television, commercials, social media, magazines, and on so many more

platforms. We also see how the strongest of women and female athletes are, in the end, still

photographed and posed to show off their physical beauty rather than their physical strength.

In 2009, ESPN released a new edition of their “The Body Issue,” featuring Serena

Williams on the cover. The national slogan of this ESPN issue is “Every Body Has a Story,” so

why isn’t William’s real story being told in this picture? Serena Williams is a well renowned

American professional tennis player. She has won 23 Grand Slam singles titles, the most by any

player in the Open Era, and is widely regarded to be one of the greatest tennis players of all time,

but in this picture, Williams is shown completely naked. The cover is a white background with

“ESPN” in bright large red big lettering, centered at the top. Seated front and center of the cover

is Williams, she has her legs crossed, the right leg horizontal and the left leg perpendicular and in

front of the right. This is allowing the viewer to be drawn to her legs because of the enticing

message of what is between her legs. But this specific placement also implies the idea that
women are often perceived as more mysterious, as to almost “taunt” the viewer to think about

the parts of her body that they can’t see. As we move up her body, she is topless; her right arm is

across her body, covering only a small amount of her chest, just enough to make sure everything

is covered. Her right arm is vertical and touching her face. Her hair is blown out with volume

and shine, she has a smokey eye and a wide smile; they whitened her teeth as well. By the

placement of her left arm touching her face, her energy is “dainty” and delicate. Almost giving

off this “soft and sweet” presence. Her name is in very small, almost illegible print, under her

leg. Showing us that the magazine wanted the focus to be on her body and her physical beauty,

rather than the name that she has worked so hard to build.

The makeup artists and photographer made sure to put emphasis and draw attention to

Williams by highlighting specific parts of her body. This allows the viewer to see her as clean

and shiny, as someone would describe an object or a possession of importance to someone. It

also helps add to the idea of Williams having a light, energetic, and playful energy. Drawing

away from her powerful and dominant energy that she shows the world on the tennis court. The

makeup artist also goes to extra lengths to make sure that Williams’ have freshly painted nails,

blush, and eyeshadow to accentuate her physical features of beauty. This is part of ESPN’s “The

Body Issue,” so one would think that when showing a strong female athlete, they would be

focusing or drawing attention to the strength and muscle of a female athlete’s body. But instead

they downgrade the power of Williams’ body to focus more on her appearance, and by doing

this, they are promoting the sexualization of the body of a female athlete.

According to John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, “one might simplify this by saying: men act

and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at… The

surveyor of women in herself is male: the surveyed females” (p.48). Saying that objectification is
when women are ultimately turned into objects due to men being “in charge” of how women are

perceived by society and themselves. This is shown in the ESPN cover of Serena Williams

because she is a strong and talented professional athlete and she is being depicted as a woman

that is just a body or an object of beauty. ESPN magazines are stereotypically geared toward the

male audience, so picturing a naked and attractive woman on the cover is very much intended to

draw in male attention. Which supports Berger’s claim that “men act and women appear… men

look at women.”

This magazine cover also backs up Kelly Oliver’s statement in The Male Gaze is More

Relevant, and More Dangerous, The Ever, when she writes “in terms of traditional narrative film,

this means that we identify with the active protagonist (the male actors) and desire the passive

objects of the gaze (the female actors)” (p.451). She is saying that women exist in the social

media industry to be the object of a man’s gaze, they are the passive characters in society and are

there for their physical appearances. Coming back to the idea that women are on this earth to be

the object of the male gaze and attention, that women appear and men watch.

Oliver also writes about Laura Mulvey’s canonical essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative

Cinema. Oliver speaks to Mulvey’s analysis which suggests that “the fluidity between filmic

poses and still poses from other forms of media and popular culture together to create not only

the star persona available for consumption but also the looks and poses that define what it means

to be sexy for our cultural moment” (p.453). This quote draws attention to the idea that women

have to constantly change their physical appearance according to what culture, or men, are

attracted to at that time. The idea that a woman can’t be considered “sexy” based on her

intelligence and or professional success, but instead, based on how pretty her smile is, how

smooth her skin is, and how her body looks compared to others.
 The idea that women have to work harder than men on their physical appearance in order

to be accepted and respected in today’s society is not an unheard of thought. Serena Williams had

to spend extra money and energy to be posed by someone else in a room full of people watching

and commenting on her physical looks. What pose will gain the most attention? How can we

make her look her sexiest and most attractive? This happens to women all across the world, from

an actress we see on our favorite sports teams or movie to women who are just walking to work

in the morning or coming back from the gym. In all scenarios, women are just trying to go about

their normal lives, but no matter what they do, how they dress, or in what way they act, they will

always be judged and critiqued. This is something that has changed over the decades, and most

likely won’t change any time in the near future.

References:

Berger, John. “Chapter 3, Page 48.” Ways of Seeing, British Broadcasting Corporation, London,
2008.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary. (2021). Objectify. In Merriam-Webster.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/objectification

Oliver, Kelly. “The Male Gaze Is More Relevant, and More Dangerous, than Ever.” New Review
of Film and Television Studies, vol. 15, no. 4, 2017, pp. 451–455.,
https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2017.1377937.

Wade, Lisa. “Serena Williams on the Cover of ESPN - Sociological Images.” Sociological
Images Serena Williams on the Cover of ESPN Comments,
https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/10/23/serena-williams-on-the-cover-of-espn/.