Objectification of Women in Media: Understanding and Addressing the Issue

Every day, we are exposed to hundreds of media messages – through television, films, billboards, social media, and digital platforms. A significant number of these messages share a troubling commonality: they reduce women to their physical attributes, stripping them of their intellect, agency, and individuality. This practice is known as objectification, and it is one of the most pervasive yet under-discussed problems in media today. Understanding how objectification works, where it shows up, and what harm it causes is the first step toward building a more equitable media landscape.

What is objectification? 🔗

At its core, objectification means treating a person – most frequently a woman – not as a full human being, but as a thing. A body. A collection of parts meant for someone else’s visual or sexual pleasure. The person’s thoughts, emotions, talents, and autonomy are erased from the picture.

Philosopher Martha Nussbaum, in her influential 1995 essay published in Philosophy and Public Affairs, provided one of the most comprehensive frameworks for understanding this concept. She identified seven dimensions of objectification:

Instrumentality – treating a person as merely a tool for someone else’s purposes. Denial of autonomy – behaving as if the person has no capacity for self-determination. Inertness – regarding the person as lacking agency or activity. Fungibility – treating the person as interchangeable with other objects or people. Violability – viewing the person as something that can be violated or broken. Ownership – treating the person as property that can be bought, sold, or controlled. Denial of subjectivity – ignoring the person’s inner experiences, feelings, and perspective altogether.

When media reduces a woman to a pair of legs in a car advertisement or an anonymous midriff selling a deodorant, it is engaging in several of these dimensions at once. The woman is no longer a person – she is a prop, a visual accessory, a marketing instrument.

How objectification shows up in advertising 🔗

Advertising is perhaps the most visible arena where objectification operates. The logic is deceptively simple: use sexual imagery to grab attention, associate that imagery with a product, and hope the viewer transfers their desire from the body to the brand. This is the widely recognized principle that “sex sells.”

In practice, this takes several forms. One of the most common is body fragmentation – where an advertisement shows isolated body parts (lips, legs, waist, chest) rather than a complete person. As research on Indian advertising has documented, women are frequently presented in scanty clothing to sell everything from detergents to men’s personal grooming products. The woman’s body becomes a decorative wrapper for an entirely unrelated product.

Another form is what scholars call decorative presence. Here, a woman appears in an advertisement – say, for an automobile or a technology product – but she serves no narrative function. She is neither a user of the product nor a participant in the story. Her role is purely ornamental, implying that the product, like the woman, is desirable and available for consumption.

Then there is the reward trope, commonly seen in advertisements for perfumes, chocolates, and similar products. These ads suggest that purchasing the product will lead to romantic or sexual success. The woman in such a scenario is not a person making her own choices – she is the prize that comes with the purchase.

The Indian advertising landscape 🔗

The Indian advertising industry has a particularly complex relationship with objectification. On one hand, some brands have taken progressive steps. The “Dark is Beautiful” campaign by Women of Worth challenged the deep-rooted obsession with fair skin, and Ariel’s #ShareTheLoad campaign encouraged men to participate equally in household work. The brand Fair & Lovely even rebranded as “Glow & Lovely” in 2020 following sustained criticism over promoting colourism.

On the other hand, regressive portrayals continue to thrive. Women routinely appear as passive objects in advertisements for products that have nothing to do with them – motorcycles, cement, pan masala, and alcohol surrogate ads. The Indian advertising industry has often relied on the assumption that sexualized portrayals of women are necessary to sell certain products, reinforcing pre-conceived notions about how women should look to maximize commercial appeal.

Objectification in cinema and entertainment 🔗

If advertising plants the seeds of objectification, cinema and entertainment water them generously. The film industry – and Bollywood in particular – has a long and well-documented history of reducing female characters to their physical appearance.

The “item number” phenomenon 🔗

Perhaps the most overt example is the item number – a song-and-dance sequence inserted into a film that often has no connection to the plot. Its primary function is to present a woman (usually a well-known actress or dancer) in sexualized attire performing choreography designed for the visual pleasure of the audience. The woman in the item number is not a character with a story arc. She is, quite literally, an “item” – a spectacle to boost box-office collections. This term itself is dehumanizing, equating a human performer with a commodity.

The male gaze in filmmaking 🔗

Film theorist Laura Mulvey coined the term “male gaze” in the 1970s to describe how visual media depicts the world from a masculine, heterosexual perspective. In Indian cinema, this manifests through camera angles that linger on women’s bodies, slow-motion sequences that sexualize everyday activities, and the “wet sari” trope that has persisted across decades. As academic research has noted, classic Bollywood films have long used costumes and choreography specifically designed to expose and sexualize women’s bodies, even when it contradicts the characterization of the women being portrayed.

The problem is structural. The entertainment industry remains predominantly male-dominated, with men occupying most key creative positions as directors, producers, and cinematographers. When men overwhelmingly control the storytelling, stories are more likely to centre male desires and perspective. Female characters are frequently reduced to limited archetypes: the love interest, the devoted wife, the damsel in distress, or the object of desire. These narrow portrayals deny women complexity and reinforce the idea that their primary value lies in their relationship to men.

The psychological impact of objectification 🔗

Objectification is not just a theoretical or aesthetic problem. It has real, measurable effects on the mental health and self-perception of women and girls.

Self-objectification and its consequences 🔗

When women are repeatedly exposed to media that treats them as bodies to be evaluated, many begin to internalize that message. Psychologists Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts developed objectification theory to explain this process: women living in cultures that sexually objectify them begin to view themselves through the lens of an external observer. They start monitoring and evaluating their own appearance constantly. This phenomenon is called self-objectification.

A systematic review of 95 peer-reviewed studies found that traditional advertising featuring idealized and stereotypical portrayals of femininity was consistently linked to negative psychological outcomes. These include increased body dissatisfaction, heightened appearance-related anxiety, and elevated symptoms of depression. Self-objectification has also been associated with body shame and eating disorders.

There is a cognitive cost as well. Studies have shown that when women are engaged in monitoring their physical appearance – a direct consequence of self-objectification – their ability to concentrate on intellectual or academic tasks is diminished. Mental resources that could be directed toward learning, problem-solving, or creative work get diverted to appearance management.

In the Indian context, these effects are compounded by additional cultural pressures around fair skin, slimness, and conformity to specific beauty standards that blend Western ideals with traditional expectations. The fairness cream industry, worth thousands of crores, is a direct commercial beneficiary of these insecurities.

Societal consequences 🔗

The effects extend beyond individual psychology into the social fabric. Research consistently shows that objectifying portrayals shape how society views and treats women. When people are regularly exposed to media that presents women as objects, it can diminish their perception of women’s competence and moral standing. It reinforces rigid gender roles and, most alarmingly, increases tolerance for sexual harassment and violence against women. If media normalizes treating women as things, it becomes easier for individuals to justify treating real women with less dignity and respect.

Legal and regulatory frameworks 🔗

Recognizing the harm caused by objectifying media, several legal and self-regulatory mechanisms exist in India – though their effectiveness remains limited.

The Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986 🔗

The IRWP Act prohibits indecent representation of women in advertisements, publications, and other media. However, as legal scholars have pointed out, the law focuses narrowly on “obscenity” and “indecency” without explicitly addressing “objectification” as a distinct concept. An attempt was made in 2012 to amend the definition of “indecent representation” to include objectification, but this effort did not succeed. A similar attempt in 2018 to update the law for the digital media age also remained unsuccessful. This means that many subtle yet harmful forms of objectification – body fragmentation, decorative presence, the reward trope – may not technically violate the Act, even when they contribute to damaging attitudes toward women.

The role of ASCI 🔗

The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) is a self-regulatory body that provides guidelines on ethical advertising. In 2022, ASCI released updated guidelines on harmful gender stereotypes, which explicitly state that advertisements should not engage in sexual objectification of any gender or depict people in a sexualized manner merely to attract viewers. The guidelines also introduced the SEA framework (Self-esteemed, Empowered, Allied) to help advertisers evaluate whether their portrayals of gender are responsible. A Kantar study cited during the launch revealed that 64% of consumers believe advertising reinforces harmful gender stereotypes rather than helping to dismantle them.

However, ASCI’s guidelines remain recommendations rather than legally binding mandates. Enforcement is complaint-driven, and compliance is far from universal. The subjective nature of determining what constitutes objectification further complicates regulatory efforts.

The way forward: challenging objectification 🔗

Addressing objectification requires change at multiple levels – from media production houses and advertising agencies to individual viewers and policymakers.

Greater representation behind the camera 🔗

One of the most impactful changes is increasing the number of women in creative decision-making roles. When women direct, write, and produce content, the portrayal of female characters tends to shift from objectified spectacles to complex, fully realized human beings. Films like Queen, Lipstick Under My Burkha, and The Great Indian Kitchen are examples of cinema that presents women with depth and agency. The more such stories are told, the more the audience’s expectations evolve as well.

Media literacy and critical viewing 🔗

Educating audiences – especially young people – to critically analyze media messages is essential. Media literacy programmes teach people to recognize objectifying techniques like body fragmentation, the male gaze, and the reward trope, rather than passively absorbing them. Social media has also emerged as a powerful space for public critique, where problematic advertisements and film sequences are called out and debated in real time, creating pressure for change from the ground up.

Responsible advertising and industry self-regulation 🔗

Some brands have already recognized that respectful portrayals are not just ethically sound but also commercially viable. Campaigns that empower women or challenge stereotypes have generated significant positive attention and consumer loyalty. However, this shift needs to become the norm, not the exception. Advertising agencies and production houses can adopt internal codes of conduct that go beyond the minimum requirements of law and ASCI guidelines, proactively choosing to portray women as whole persons rather than as body parts.

Stronger legal provisions 🔗

Finally, legal frameworks need updating. The IRWP Act’s failure to include “objectification” as a recognized harm leaves a significant gap. Legislation should evolve to address the full spectrum of harmful media portrayals – not just the overtly obscene but also the insidiously dehumanizing. Digital media, which is currently far less regulated than traditional broadcasting, needs particular attention given the sheer volume of content consumed online.

What do you think? 🔗

Consider the advertisements and films you encounter daily. How often do you notice women being presented as whole, complex individuals versus as decorative elements or body parts? And as media consumers, what responsibility do we carry in demanding better representation – not just as a matter of policy, but as a reflection of the kind of society we want to live in?

References

1. https://philpapers.org/rec/NUSO-2
2. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350343014_Gendered_Media_Objectification_of_Women_in_Indian_Advertisements
3. https://southasiajournal.net/from-stereotyping-to-objectification-the-portrayal-of-women-in-indian-advertisements
4. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366605366_Status_of_women_in_contemporary_indian_media
5. https://www.legalserviceindia.com/Legal-Articles/women-in-indian-media-and-popular-culture-representation-reality-and-resistance/
6. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1431079/full
7. https://ili.ac.in/pdf/8._Prabhat_Kumar_Saha__F_.pdf
8. https://www.exchange4media.com/advertising-news/smriti-irani-releases-ascis-guidelines-on-harmful-gender-stereotypes-120718.html