It is no secret that, throughout the ages, women’s bodies have been the source of nearly constant objectification. The ubiquity of social media has further enabled this objectification, as women’s likeness is made available for anyone in the world to scrutinize, romanticize, or dehumanize at will.

Sexual objectification occurs when a woman’s body or sexual functions are separated from her personhood, reducing her to an object for consumption rather than a human with feelings, personality, intelligence, or needs (Frederickson & Roberts, 1997). Contemporary research suggests that, on average, women report witnessing the sexual objectification of other women at least 1.35 times a day, and experience their own sexual objectification at least every other day (Holland et al., 2017).

This constant exposure to the objectification of women’s bodies has a lasting effect on their mental health, sexual functioning, self-esteem, and attitudes toward their bodies (Calogero & Thompson, 2009; Grabe, Hyde, & Lindberg, 2007; Steer & Tiggemann, 2008; Tiggemann & Kuring, 2004). In addition to these negative outcomes of sexual objectification on women’s well-being, there is another outcome that may be even more harmful: the internalization of objectification.

Self-objectification refers to the tendency for some women to internalize the objectifying messages they receive from their patriarchal culture—taking on a third-person perspective of themselves as though through the eyes of others (particularly men). Rather than seeing themselves as complex human beings with richness and worth that reside within, they begin evaluating their worth based on how they look, how other people think they look, and what their bodies can do. Sadly, they........

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