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When people think of the word “objectify,” most think of lust. Normally, it applies to when men think of women merely as objects (hence the word) of pleasure rather than actual human beings, though the situation can most definitely be reversed or changed. This meaning of the word “objectify” has been drilled into society’s head, with Hardee’s commercials most commonly charged with being suspect for playing into men’s objectifying tendencies towards women. However, the word “objectify” doesn’t just apply to attraction and fast food commercials. Objectification is, in its purest form, when any one takes away the humanity of any other.

Informative objectification is, in a nutshell, the stripping of humanity that occurs from the conveyance of information. News casters, subsequently, are experts at informative objectification. While informative objectification has its benefits in the realm of information media, it sacrifices one important aspect of journalism: the “full story.”
I remember watching News Channel 5 on Thanksgiving in 2014 to see what was happening during the Ferguson riots. The helicopters were hovering above the rioters, capturing every moment of the uproar. The rioters seemed like nothing more than a wave, lapping up against the shore of police that were holding them back. The news casters talked ad nauseum about what the crowd was doing, why it was doing it, and where it seemed to be going.
I remember sitting there and thinking what motives would cause people to do the things that they were doing. Of course, the shooting of Michael Brown and the (lack of) indictment of the officer were the main causes, but I wondered what would drive people to go to such lengths as to burn down buildings or raid businesses that they didn’t even know or have any relation with. The objectification of the rioters into one big wave, while offering safety to the news casters, came at the price of the “full story”; the rioters, from the secure view of the helicopter, seemed like nothing more than statistics on a news cast than actual, fleshed-out people. The news cast had taken away the humanity of the rioters. It was easy, from the perspective of the news casters, to condemn the rioters for being “savage” or “heartless”; by portraying the rioters not as humans but as a wave, made it easier to admonish them, since there was no human aspect shown about the rioters.
But even past momentous things like Ferguson, the passive eye of the news glazes over the human in lieu of the story. The news is racked with stories of theft, burglary, arson, and other crimes that are barely but mentioned. It is expected, in order to fit as much in as possible into thirty minutes, that personal details be left out in order to maximize the information that can be fit into one thirty-minute block. However, at this comes the price of, again, the “full story”.
For example, I heard about this one story where a thirteen-year-old girl and her child who were kidnapped by a man in a green minivan with Illinois license plates. After hearing the thirty seconds devoted to the story, I remember sitting there with so many questions: “why did a thirteen-year-old have a baby?”; “why did he kidnap them?”; “what was the man’s relationship with the girl?”. However, in order to fit it into such a short time span so that the maximum amount of stories can be shown in the news cast, the news casters took the humanity out of the story entirely; thus, the story turned from a complex and interesting story about a child mother and her son being kidnapped into just another paragraph on the afternoon news cast.
However, news isn’t the only source of informative objectification. History textbooks are another serial culprit. When is the last time anyone was excited to read a history textbook because of the tone of the narrative? Probably never. It is not the fault of the information for being boring, but the fault of the people conveying the information; in order to maintain an objective and factual look at history, many textbooks remove all influence of opinion or bias. While this allows for history to be taught in a uniform and relatively standardized manner, it removes the conflict and the interest of history. Take, for example, the Stonewall Riots in 1969. Considered the first riot for LGBT rights, it is often cited as an example of the progressive overtones during the 1960s and 1970s. However, the description usually ends there; a sentence or two is all most textbooks grant to these riots. To do so is a grave injustice. It strips away the humanity of the rioters by simply using them as a footnote of a movement during the time period and denying their causes and reasons due justice. Textbooks never mention how the youth of the riot drove not only the riots but the modern LGBT movement as a whole. This, among other ignored details, highlight the common problem that history textbooks and news casts have in common. This problem shares aspects with the news in that not only does it take an objective look at a subject, devoid of all danger of opinion in a similar manner to the Ferguson Riots, but it also shortens a complex narrative for the sake of time and space constraints, as to not have an extremely long textbook in a similar manner to the kidnapping story; hence, history books also have the problem not telling the “full story”.
Informative objectification can come from many sources: safety, space-time constraints, objectivity, etc. However, it always stems from a removal from something: a removal from danger, a removal from space-time freedom, a removal from subjectivity, etc. This removal of a certain aspect of the information takes away the humanity, normally because it takes away something that would show the humanity of the subject of the information and would tell the “full story”. If the news casters of the Ferguson Riots would have risked themselves and reported on not only the events of the riots but the thoughts of the rioters, the story would have painted every person as an individual, with fears and desires driving their actions; it would show an aspect of the information that would complete the narrative and flesh the rioters as human beings and not just some force of destruction in downtown St. Louis.

Aside from informative objectification, everyday situations lend themselves to objectification, too. This common objectification is impersonal objectification, since it deals with interaction on an interpersonal basis of people who share no relation at the time. Not all common objectification situations are the same though. There are two main categories: the impersonal negative and the impersonal positive.
School hallways. Restaurants. Traffic. Grocery stores. These are all experiences of the impersonal negative, negative meaning that one does not have a direct contact with the person they are objectifying. I remember one day I got an email from my mom. It basically said that I had to get my own food tonight since she had a band meeting. It also included a little post script mentioning to get milk and eggs before going home. So when the bell rang at ten to three, I started out of the classroom quickly. My brisk jog was deterred by the river of people using the stairs as well, though. It was a pain to have to walk at almost a stand-still pace. I felt as though the crowd of people wasn’t so much a crowd of people but a viscous fluid that was specifically put there to slow me down. I eventually egressed the madness and got my things, heading out to my car. I weaved through the back roads and cruised on 141 north and 364 west. I then got off and made my way to Panda Express. And of course, there was a long line. It took about fifteen minutes for me to even approach the counter to order my food. And of course, there was an old couple that took at least five minutes to order their food. I eventually got up to the counter and ordered my teriyaki chicken. And as luck would have it, they ran out of teriyaki sauce. So, it took another minute or so for the cooks to finish that up. After my long escapade, I quickly paid and left with my food in hand. I realized as soon as I had gotten in the car that I needed to get milk and eggs. I frantically drove to the grocery store, cutting someone off. I ran in, grabbed what I needed, and went to the checkout line. The wait took another five or so minutes, complete with screaming kids and shouting bosses. After paying, I quickly ducked out, racing back home.
In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it can be hard to see other people as little more than obstacles, objects, in the way of our goals. Waiting in line or being in congestion due to traffic is an annoying and boring situation. So, it seems reasonable that our brains associate the people directly affecting that situation to be the direct cause of that situation, even though that might not be the case; we might pass judgment on people, labeling them as just another obstacle, without taking into consideration their humanity and what they had to deal with. In terms of the story I told, although I wanted to get home, there were several others who also wanted to get home (and probably for better reasons other than to eat food); I neglected to have any empathy for the human condition of the people in the hallway, in the restaurant, or in the grocery store and allowed myself to take away their humanity.
Simply even describing people is a form of objectification. The impersonal positive, meaning that there is a direct interaction, has to do with adjectives and groupings. When someone describes or presents themselves as X, Y, and Z, it is difficult to not think of that person in terms of X, Y, and Z; once someone is seen in a certain way, they are fixed to that description until proven otherwise. It often applies to judging people based off of first impressions, grouping people like things into groups of adjectives and not treating them like human beings. (It applies to when you judge people in a new class or scantily-clad women walking down a street at night.) This grouping process isn’t bad by nature - for example, thinking of someone as smart because they introduce themselves “Dr. So and So” - , but it is a fickle business. Some attributes of first impressions are easy to break. However, some are most definitely not.
My friend made the wonderful mistake of lying that he had made a NASA rocket his freshman year. That was all he would talk about. Consequently, everyone saw him as that weird liar that wasn’t worth their time. Seeing, this, my friend realized that he was at a cross roads, and that changing the way he presented himself would be the first step to changing how others saw him. When he changed junior year and turned into an actually very respectable person, no one credited him with it until he had fully demonstrated it throughout junior year. Impersonal positive objectification is highly based off of first impressions, and can be hard to affect as demonstrated. It is not the cause of this opinion inertia. However, there is an explanation as to why we group people or (in the case of impersonal negative) pass judgement on people in this manner.
As implied by the two types of impersonal objectification, objectification is not a personal experience. There is a sociology concept called the “outgroup-homogeneity bias”. It is basically the concept that everyone who holds these attributes is in this group and vice versa. It is the convention of the “all (insert group) are (insert adjective),” like all Muslims are terrorists and all people with glasses are smart. In terms of impersonal negative objectification, OHB creates an image that everybody that doesn’t have your interests in mind is a hindrance to them. In terms of impersonal positive objectification, it pertains more to what most people would consider a “straw man” (making a group of people or an issue simpler than it actually is).

So, one may be asking what the overarching theme of objectification in totality is. In one word, it’s simplification. Objectification takes away the humanity of something in order to make it easier to understand and comprehend. It is much easier for our brains to fit people into neat boxes of groups and stereotypes as opposed to seeing each person as human person who makes mistakes or has their own wants, needs, and desire.
Farmers often put straw men into their fields to scare crows from flocking there and eating its food for nourishment. And society often does the same, with straw men made of groupings, stereotypes, and over-generalizations, marking people without even letting people explore what is to be had from each person, ignoring the humanity and depth of the people that surround and influence us. We the crows, however, can get past these straw men. After all, scarecrows are just facades filled with hay and are dressed to simply appear as something else. Objectifications are much the same: empty actions that don’t have much substance to them. All we have to do is fly down that meter or so and reap the benefits of seeing the humanity in every situation.