Sexualization and Power

So I think I figured something out. Why women feel degraded by sexualized images and men don't. It's about power. When women are sexualized, they feel like power is taken from them, when men are sexualized, they feel like power is given to them.

The problem then, isn't really with sexualization of characters at all. It's about who the sexualization is for.

For the longest time, women's sexuality has been seen as belonging to men. Sexualized women are "eye candy" for men. Why?

And worse than that, if a women does claim her sexual power, she's a bad girl. (See: Madonna/Whore complex). If a woman controls her sexuality, she's dangerous, and not in a "ooh, she's so dangerous, I like that" sort of way.

Maybe some of the sexualized characters in the media do own their sexuality, may they do claim their own personal sexual power. But we are culturally inclined not to see it.

Maybe not seeing it this way is why, at least for the longest time, I haven't been bothered by sexualized characters. One of my closest friends is highly sexual, and she owns her sexuality. Although she's not perfect (nor are any of us), that idea that your sexuality belongs to you, is a positive message to me, and in that way she inspires me. When I think of sexualized characters in my head, I see someone like my friend, someone who is proud of her body, someone who claims self-ownership. She does not flaunt her body because she is told to by society, nor because it gives her power over other people's desires, although she is free to enjoy that other people enjoy her body. She flaunts it because she is proud of it. She loves herself, and is confident and strong.

I know this isn't what most people see, and when I look at sexualized characters the way they do, it bothers me a little bit too. The idea that women are stripped of their agency that way. My body is my own. It doesn't exist for the benefit of someone else, although if I want to use it to give them pleasure, it is my right to share it with them. And if both (or more) of us enjoy it, there is nothing shameful or wrong about that. And that doesn't take the power of my body away from me, nor does it take it from my partner. As consenting adults, instead it allows us to share in each other's personal glory. To claim and enjoy our bodies. And to feel empowered within our selves. At least that's what sex should be, I think.

So, maybe, just maybe we don't need to get rid of sexualization, we need to own it.