There has been a lot of commotion about Kim Kardashian’s  nude cover for Paper Magazine in which she bares her bottom under the headline  ‘Break The Internet Kim Kardashian.’ While it certainly set the internet alight, I find it short of anything significant enough to “break the internet. Basically, Kim Kardashian is visually reduced to a body, or more specifically, parts of her body (e, as if she is not a real, whole person. This is a perfect example of female objectification, which has been around for as long as I can remember. It is frightening to consider just how deeply entrenched objectification of women is in our cultural subconscious. Hyper-sexualized images showing women’s bodies are all too commonplace — but would we react to these ads differently if they objectified men the same way they do women? We see thousands of ads with women scantily clad and in provocative poses regardless of the product being sold, yet we don’t even bat an eye to it. However, when these same ads are recreated with men, the sex appeal apparent in the ad miraculously dissipates and it is somehow turned into a comedic routine. That is because men, in contrast to women, are frequently portrayed as sexual subjects, actors exercising their sexuality, instead of objects meant to gratify someone else’s sexuality. The recreation of the sexy image by men points a finger at how ridiculously uncomfortable and demoralizing the originals are. There’s nothing quite like a bit of role reversal to underscore the unrelenting, culturally-ingrained objectification of women, and to highlight just how obscene the marketing industry really is.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/11/14/men-recreate-kim-kardashian-naked-bum-photos_n_6157014.html