Objectification will always be around, advertising depends on it

[El_Johns]

42. I think there's a lot of sloppy talk in the media that would lead you to that assumption. But it's

not, at least not in the theoretical origins of the term.

Which ultimately derives from Marx and has to do with social relations under capitalism.


Reification (German: Verdinglichung, literally: "making into a thing" (cf. Latin "res" meaning "thing&quot or Versachlichung, literally "objectification"; regarding something impersonally) In Marxism reification is the thingification of social relations or of those involved in them, to the extent that the nature of social relationships is expressed by the relationships between traded objects (see commodity fetishism and value-form)...

The concept is related to, but is distinct from, Marx's theories of alienation and commodity fetishism. Alienation is the general condition of human estrangement. Reification is a specific form of alienation. Commodity fetishism is a specific form of reification.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(Marxism)


Under the reign of capital, people become commodified as labor and subject to capitalist relationships in which people are treated as things and used instrumentally. People also self-objectify by assuming the properties of "things" and attempting to conform to the standards of capitalist commodification (i.e. getting facelifts and the like to present the proper 'image' to the market -- for spouses, jobs, whatever, in which relations between people have become relations between "marketable objects&quot .

Sexual objectification is only one of the ways people are objectified under capitalism.