Don’t Want Me to Say Justin’s Hot? It’s Trudeau.

In the wake of political reform in Canada, a conversation regarding the objectification of men (or, one particularly foxy man) has been brought to the forefront in the Great (not so White, these days—hello, climate change) North. If you’re a Canadian, by now you’ll have heard someone crying “SEXISM!” at the global response to Justin Trudeau’s full head of hair and chiseled features.
[Click here to read this buzzfeed article about non-Canadians who have the hots for Trudeau.]
The argument being circulated is that if Justin was instead Justine, society would be in an uproar over any comment on her appearance, and therefore, any utterance that Trudeau is attractive, is basically sexism incarnate.
Well, I call bullshit.

The centrality of the claim that calling Trudeau hot is sexist, is based on the concept of objectification. Martha Nussbaum, American philosopher and the current Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, has identified the features that are present when we consider a person to be an object. The relevancy, in this case, of these important characteristics of objectification is that, by commenting on his appearance, in no way am I treating Trudeau as a tool to be used; as though he has no autonomy; is interchangeable with an object; is owned by anyone; or is a thing whose thoughts, experiences, and feelings don’t matter. In itself, this argues a strong case against the proposition that Justin Trudeau is really being objectified at all. But I’ll continue.
If the assertion is that commenting on his appearance is a slap in the face of equality,  I’d argue that calling Trudeau “hot” is more a step in the direction of equality than remaining silent about his appearance would be. Even better, let’s talk about his too prominent nose, haphazard eyebrows or that one time he had a mullet. Every single woman ever to begin a career in politics has had her appearance scrutinized. Saying that, if Trudeau were a woman, we would be in an outcry over comments that she’s “hot”, is ridiculous, because we DO hear comments about women politicians’ appearances on a VERY regular basis, and we’re not in any kind of frenzy about it. While there may be the odd feminist-written article criticizing the media’s regular comments about Hilary Clinton’s hair and make-up, the general public is not writing Facebook posts waxing poetic about the injustice or sharing these articles. Those who ARE pointing out the fact that her ability to competently exist in government has exactly ZERO to do with her choice to wear glasses on any given day, are CERTAINLY not the white males who are choosing now to take their stand against sexism.
And if you’re going to address the “double-standard,” whereby women can “objectify” Trudeau without being policed, yet men can’t objectify women with the same freedom, there’s no way I can continue without acknowledging the fact that men do NOT live in a world where their objectification is the catalyst for unwanted catcalling, devastatingly high rates of sexual assault and rape, victim-blaming, and having their general value in society be determined based on how they look. There isn’t a system of oppression in place for men like there is for women; there’s no way that calling Trudeau hot is reducing him to the sum of his physical parts in anyone’s mind; a comment on Justin’s appearance is JUST a comment on his appearance, whereas a comment about Justine’s appearance has been systematically ingrained to affect society’s attitude towards her. In other words, throughout history, freedom from objectification has been a privilege of being male, and commenting on the appearance of Canada’s new Prime Minister isn’t having any affect on the very meaningful economic, social, political, and reproductive advantages that all men enjoy. In no way, is it shadowing any of the reports on his promises to boost spending, take in more refugees, reform the voting system, and raise taxes for the wealthy.

I can admit, that in a perfect world, we would fully adopt spiritualist Ram Dass’s practice of turning people into trees; allowing them their physical differences completely free of judgement, even unequivocally appreciating our bodily diversities, but we don’t live in a perfect world. And while I would like the entire system that allows for objectification of ANY kind to be reworked, all you’re really doing by labeling the interest in Justin Trudeau’s physiognomy as sexism, is distracting from the REAL problem with objectification: a deep-seated, misogynistic, sexual injustice against women.