Painting Over the Female

I swear, officer, these women were objects when I got here

I was confused the first time I heard a girl complain about being “objectified”. How does me being horny make you an object? I don’t want to have sex with objects. I don’t even want to have sex with objectivists! I just wanted to have sex with you, and now you’re mad.

Objectification as violation makes sense in the frame described in the last post. Skilled feminine performance consists of demonstrating control over how sexy / threatening / inconspicuous you are perceived to be. It’s not about being maximally sexy or unsexy all the time. Objectification is denying a woman that control by perceiving her as sexy when she wishes not to be seen that way. It’s not objectifying to sexualize a stripper on the pole; it is objectifying to sexualize a nurse in scrubs. It’s a violation of her will — her subjectivity.

Being subjectified/objectified is itself a balancing act that we perform. We don’t always want maximum subjecthood, that is — demanding maximal deference to our subjective point of view. This is cognitively demanding of other people. It makes you more threatening and dominant, less trustworthy and likeable. A big part of charisma is setting aside your subjecthood: demanding little of other people, “yes, and”-ing their frame instead of insisting on yours, flowing like water.

We self-objectify by playing out roles with strictly defined scripts: student in class, barbecue host, regular at the bar, any job that involves a uniform. No one thinks too much about the postal worker’s unique interiority or point-of-view — while in-uniform they are a mail-delivering object.

The same works for sexual objectification. You can sexually self-objectify by communicating your commitment to playing out a predictable sexual script.

don’t know why this picture makes me think of a young Eliezer Yudkowsy

This ↑ guy is going home with someone from the bar at 2 am not because his palm-reading trick is irresistible to women. The girl who’s there alone at 2 am wants someone to fuck her tonight, as long as she’s sure he won’t catch feelings and text her the next day. The peacocking performance demonstrates a man’s commitment to doing just that. This pick-up artist is an object and, indeed, a tool. He’s there to be used.

The important question: is this by choice? Could he drop the act if he wanted to, and subjectify? Presumably: yes, if he’s not completely PUA-brained. He could show up to the same bar the next day with a dark hoodie and a menacing glare and have every woman worrying what’s on his mind and not what’s in his pants.

Made Up Subjects

Who do women wear makeup for?

You sense a trick question. Fine, I’ll let you google the answer:

No trick here. If you’re reading the English-language internet in the century of our Lord the 21st, you know that women only ever wear makeup for themselves. And in fact, every single woman in a 21st-century makeup ad is entirely by herself. Not a single ad shows the woman, after having spent an hour applying the featured makeup, being looked at. She is the one looking, whether at the fourth wall or at something of interest off-screen. She is the subject, the one with a point-of-view.

Now, something funny has happened. When modern makeup was popularized during the post-WWII baby boom, the answer to “who do women wear makeup for?” was also clear to absolutely everyone. Except — it was the opposite answer.

In 1950, everyone knew that women wear makeup for men to look at. In 2025, everyone knows that women wear makeup for themselves. Did something happen to men that they stopped looking at made-up women? Did something happen to women?

“Women were liberated from the patriarchy.” Let’s grant this for the sake of argument. Lipstick was invented by patriarchs to paint their women a more pleasing shade, as one would any household object.

But then, why are women still painting themselves? The global beauty industry went from $6B in today’s dollars in the 1940s to $600B today. Why are women painting themselves 100 times as much “for themselves” as they did when the patriarchy forced them?