Idolizing Is Just Another Form Of Objectification

I don’t really want to be on your pedestal

A few years ago I met a man on Medium who would become my friend. We chatted in the comments section of someone else’s article and eventually began to email in order to continue our conversation. Within a few days, we were emailing almost daily. He was an American living in another country, and I enjoyed hearing about his life there. He’d had some interesting experiences and he was genuinely curious about my life and experiences as well. We didn’t see eye to eye on every little thing, but that isn’t necessary for me to be friends with someone.

It became apparent pretty quickly that this guy had a bit of a crush on me. But he wasn’t asking for anything other than to talk to me, and his admiration was frankly, flattering. The only part that made me a bit uncomfortable is that I could see him putting me up on a pedestal. In hindsight, I should have paid more attention to that discomfort. He waxed poetical about how he imagined I must look and published what was essentially a platonic love letter about me and our relationship. I should have put the breaks on it at the time, but it didn’t really seem like that big of a deal until finally, at last, it was.

The problems began to arise when who he imagined me to be began to clearly no longer mesh with who I actually was. I’m a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of woman, and I never pretended to be anyone other than who I am. But humans have a great capacity to see what they want in other people and to ignore what they don’t want. He admired my intelligence and insightfulness until it produced insights that challenged some of his dearly held and wound-informed beliefs. We all have positions based on our prior experiences and ones that arise out of places we’ve been hurt can be particularly tricky.

Because I’m well aware of this, I tried to have compassion for those spots where he was deeply entrenched and beyond the reach of reason due to old pain. And, it’s not like I have the only handle on Truth, although I am at least always open to expanding my perspective. And I also take a look at and deal with my personal BS on a daily basis. Everyone has shadow spots and sore spots, but there’s also a limit to how much latitude I’m willing to give someone who is lashing out at me because of them. Particularly so, when they won’t even acknowledge that this is what they are doing.

Somewhere along the way, I went from the admirable woman living in an expanded and larger than life way to a tawdry harpy living in a bubble of delusion. Meanwhile, nothing about the way that I live, talk about my life, express my point of view, or anything else about me changed in any way. What changed is that I’d fallen off of the pedestal that he’d hoisted me up on. His dream woman wouldn’t be someone who challenged his deeply held beliefs or who encouraged him to deal with his wounding. She would be someone who would see how worthy he was and admire and accommodate him. I did like and admire a lot about him, but enough was enough. I am a person, not a doll and I have no interest in playing into the subconscious paradigm where it’s a woman’s role is to silently adore and support the patriarch.

Quite interestingly, at least some part of himself understood this inclination of his to objectify and project, as well as to feel betrayed when the fantasy woman turned out to be a real person with her own thoughts, experiences, and desires. Here’s an excerpt from that platonic love letter:

It leads one to the conclusion that the lover adores the object of his attention only as long as ‘it’ remains an extension of himself. When this object breaks off the dance and stands alone as a truly separate being, the lover is aghast.

He feels cheated. It never occurs to him what a monster he is. Yet, he is not a ghoul and neither am I, who also have been guilty of projecting my make-believe worlds onto others who have no obligation to respond. A mild monster, let’s leave it at that.

So, in other words, he told me pretty close to the beginning of our friendship how he is and what he tends to do. And, I should have paid more attention to that and taken Maya Angelou’s advice.

“When someone shows you who they are, you should believe them the first time.” That’s what Maya had to say about it, and I should have listened to her.

People are complicated; relationships of all types are complicated. I’ve worked hard these past couple of years to learn to take people as they are, but sometimes that just isn’t going to work out — sometimes it’s just not a viable dynamic. And now I really understand, one of the things that will make a relationship not be viable is if one person has the other on a pedestal. There is just nowhere to go from there but down.

I get it now that the love relationships and friendships that really nourish me are ones where neither person is idolized, but we both simply adore each other for all that we are, as well as all that we aren’t. That’s where real love, friendship, and admiration can thrive, in the milieu of what’s real. So from now on, I’m staying right here on the ground. No more letting somebody put me on a pedestal.

This morning I read Yael Wolfe’s piece with a lot of similar sentiments and I resonated with it all, but this part really stood out for me:

This is about my desire to be uncomfortably honest, to pierce through fantasy, to explore our tendency to put sexually liberated women on a pedestal.

I do this because:

• I think it’s important — no, essential — to constantly assert reality in the midst of our online personas.
• I believe that in order to be healthy, sexually-fulfilled humans, we must tirelessly tear down all the romantic and sexual fantasies we’ve been taught to buy into so that we can learn to relate to one another body-to-body, mind-to-mind, and soul-to-soul without the rosy filters that tend to blind and ultimately separate us.
• I fear that women will never be able to truly achieve sexual liberation so long as our sexual freedom is perceived through the lens of fantasy, instead of as a normal, ordinary part of our human experience.

I appreciate my friends and admirers, and those who are perhaps a little bit of both, but I also don’t want to be glamorized because that erodes my humanity. I try to make it clear in my writing that anyplace I’ve gotten to in my life that seems interesting or admirable has been hard-won, usually with a lot of bruises and tears. Through that, I’ve learned a lot about myself and gained some insights and wisdom, but I’d rather be seen and recognized for that as an achievement rather than for some kind of fantasy woman status. It underplays all that I’ve given in order to get where I am, including but not limited to my sexual freedom. That was no less hard-won and I continue to have to advocate for its acceptability and normalcy in the world even though I enjoy more of it than many women do.

That’s why I will never find the term slut to be sexy or empowering. Many women do, and although I’m not trying to take that away from them, it speaks to a women’s full sexual experience as being naughty and taboo, rather than normal and ordinary. For that reason, I don’t see any way to take that word out of the patriarchal paradigm wherein I only exist for the pleasure and enjoyment of men, and any slight pushing against that level of control is eroticized. My sexual expression, whether it is words, or in bed, is of and for me. If I share that in some way, it is for my own purposes, which may include your enjoyment as well, but that doesn’t mean it’s intended to become your fantasy, which really is just another term for sexual commodity.

I appreciate genuine admiration as much as anyone would, but at the same time, I really don’t want to be a fantasy or up on someone’s pedestal. I am imperfect, but I try every day to do better to meet my own standards and goals. I work at intentionally creating the life that I want to be living and sometimes have to pay a price for that, but that’s real and at times it’s gritty. My life isn’t airbrushed and sanitized. It did not emerge fully formed from the head of Zeus like Athena. I have created the woman that I am by the sweat of my own brow, and for me, that is enough. It is my hope that it will be enough for you also.

© Copyright Elle Beau 2020 Elle Beau writes on Medium about sex, life, relationships, society, anthropology, spirituality, and love. If this story is appearing anywhere other than Medium.com, it appears without my consent and has been stolen.