Being visually seen and commented on makes the girl’s body an object to herself.

Evidence

Her breasts show through her sweater or blouse, and this body that the little girl identified with self appears to her as flesh; it is an object that others look at and see. “For two years I wore capes to hide my chest, I was so ashamed of it,” a woman told me. And another: “I still remember the strange confusion I felt when a friend of my age, but more developed than I was, stooped to pick up a ball, I noticed by the opening in her blouse two already heavy breasts: this body so similar to mine, on which my body would be modeled, made me blush for myself.” “At thirteen, I walked around bare legged, in a short dress,” another woman told me. “A man, sniggering, made a comment about my fat calves. The next day, my mother made me wear stockings and lengthen my skirt, but I will never forget the shock I suddenly felt in seeing myself seen.” The little girl feels that her body is escaping her, that it is no longer the clear expression of her individuality; it becomes foreign to her; and at the same moment, she is grasped by others as a thing: on the street, eyes follow her, her body is subject to comments; she would like to become invisible; she is afraid of becoming flesh and afraid to show her flesh. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 738

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Sartre’s ‘the look’ (le regard) from Being and Nothingness — the other’s gaze objectifies the subject; the girl becomes-for-others before becoming-for-self. — connects to: Shame at nakedness symbolizes the human condition of being seen as an object. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 784; The Other’s gaze reveals one’s own nausea as fleshly object.; The girl learns to view herself through an imagined collective male gaze (+5 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The girl is ‘grasped by others as a thing’ only because her body is now publicly legible as female — the very moment the male gaze’s objectifying power turns on her is what fragments the self. This dialectic of being-seen producing alienation is a paradigm-shifting insight.
• SEED: An essay could trace how contemporary ‘modesty policing’ of girls’ bodies replicates this pubertal self-estrangement — modern versions of the capes and lengthened skirts.

Broader Connections

• The girl learns to view herself through an imagined collective male gaze #expands (0.90)
• The Other’s look makes the self haunt an unreflective consciousness #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 727
• The Other’s look reveals my body as an object-for-others #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 913
• The girl’s narcissism follows from an early craving to be looked at by others #qualifies (0.75)
• Shame first reveals one’s factical body because the Other’s look falls on embodiment #expands (0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 97
• Being objectified by another’s look constitutes an inescapable existential guilt #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 72