Talking about gender and the objectification of Justin Trudeau

When Canadians were rejoicing the electoral victory of the Liberal Party this past week, the world was rejoicing along with them.

It was not a collective rejoicing over the defeat of the bigoted Conservative Party or that Canadians have chosen to steer their country towards its former glory as a liberal haven (one can always hope la kan?). No, the world was captivated with Canada’s second youngest prime minister, Justin Trudeau – a former high school teacher and amateur boxer.

Sadly, that collective global enthralment did not focus on the policies and platform Trudeau ran on but on how good looking he is. Yes, for these past few days, social media has been buzzing with photos and videos of Canada’s newly elected prime minister, all highlighting what a fine specimen of manliness he is.

“… he’s pretty hot, like actually hot, not just politician-hot,” was how Gawker decided to plunge into objectification of Trudeau.

The Mirror, never satisfied until stirring the pot, goes one step ahead and asks “Is Justin Trudeau the sexiest politician in the world?” The article pits Trudeau against other world leaders that have been at one time or another deemed “hot”, including Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama.

“Surely there is nothing wrong in appreciating a gorgeous man who happens to be the prime minister of Canada. After all, he did pose for the shirtless glamour shots and did perform a striptease at a charity event, both which are making the rounds on social media.

A little objectification of a good looking man is not harmful. He is still the prime minister and will go on to pave his own path and have his name marked in history books,” I can almost imagine the defensive excuses to justify the objectification of Trudeau.

And therein lies our hypocrisy.

Should the gender of Trudeau be changed to woman, would we still be singing the same tune? Would we be comfortable with focusing on her physical appearance and sex appeal? More importantly, would we be able to look past her physical beauty to recognise the leader within?

How about we run this thought experiment for a while:

Let’s put two equally competent and attractive politicians (or people from any other professions for that matter) on the stage together. One is a man and the other is a woman. Display photos and videos of them at social events and from glam photo shoots of them “sans tops”. List all their qualifications. Now ask the audience to vote for one person whom they think will be the better leader.

Should you be one of the audience members, whom do you think you would readily look past the physical and start judging the person based on their qualifications? Who do you think would be chosen as the leader?

My bet is on the man.

The woman most likely would be deemed as “nothing more than a pretty face”. Somehow should the audience be able to look past her physical attractiveness, generally speaking, she would still lose out to the man.

“The woman, well, if she is that pretty, surely she can’t be as good as him. She’d need to take time off to maintain her good looks, and even when she is a leader, people will not take her seriously because of the way she looks, like one of them Hollywood actresses. He, well, he looks like a true leader, a Hollywood hero,” I could go on and on with the gender stereotypes and discriminations that have tinged our perspective, but you get the picture.

Also, let’s backtrack to the “sans tops” part. Should a man not we wearing a shirt, we would just call it SHIRTLESS. Now, if it were a woman who does not have any clothing on her upper body, we would call it TOPLESS.

Shirtless and topless, while they both mean the same, they carry different connotations; the former being a statement and the second sexualised in context. Men are allowed to be shirtless but women are forbidden from being topless, unless if it is on Instagram and the photo is pornographic in nature instead of a photo of a mother breastfeeding her child.

Not only does the buzz surrounding Trudeau reveal how normalised objectification has become in our society, it also reveals how we differently we perceive, judge and treat men and women. Our ideas around gender are not inherent but learned, and we can change them. Perhaps we could start from how much value we place on physical appearance and start valuing people for whom they are, not how they look? – October 25, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.