Laetitia Mugerwa: Stop Objectifying Women!

Laetitia Mugerwa: Stop Objectifying Women!

BellaNaija
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Recently, I’ve been noticing the persistent metaphor suggesting that women lose value as they age, gain experience, and accumulate life history. I’m curious about why this idea is so prevalent and who it ultimately benefits. If women spoke about men in the same dismissive way that men often talk about women, it would be clear just how illogical such comparisons are. How is it that men can compare women to used cars? As a writer, I encounter these analogies far too often for any mature person’s comfort. It’s always the women being labelled as worn out or past their prime, as if men have never lived, loved, aged, or faced failures themselves.
Women do not lose value over time. Instead, their experiences yield dividends that enhance their discernment, establish boundaries, and set standards they no longer feel the need to apologise for. When people, men, objectify women, they are stripping away their identity and worth. They approach relationships as if they were shopping for appliances that will serve them rather than forming meaningful connections. Often, the men who are quickest to label women as used are the ones who are themselves emotionally, financially, and spiritually totalled.
In my experience, this double standard subtly undermines marriages. Men often demand that a woman be untouched, unhurt, and without a past. Yet, they carry a significant amount of their own emotional baggage. They seek purity they cannot provide, loyalty they refuse to offer, and flawless histories they themselves have never experienced.
Women internalise these expectations and begin to diminish their own worth. They feel ashamed for living fully, for loving deeply, and for having their own histories. This happens because some men reduce them to objects that are perceived to lose value over time. However, women do not depreciate. Instead, they evolve, refine, and deepen.
Every time I hear a man express these ideas, I remind women of the truth: he is not defining her, he is revealing his own fears. They fear women with experience because experienced women cannot be manipulated. They fear women who have healed because healed women do not tolerate nonsense. They fear women with history because women with history can see patterns.
If the logic were reversed, men would likely falter under the same scrutiny that they impose on women; this is why the analogy fails. A woman is not an object. She is not a tool to be examined for wear. She is a human being whose worth does not lessen with age, use, or experience. Often, the men who struggle to grasp this concept are the ones who have their own imperfections.
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