The Other’s look freezes one’s free project into a fixed character.

Evidence

It is true that for the Other who apprehends me as the Other-as-object, I am ill-tempered, hypocritical or frank, cowardly or courageous. This aspect is referred to me by the Other’s look; by the experience of the look, this character, which was a free project lived and self-conscious, becomes an unrealizable ne varietur to be assumed. … So long as I let myself be fascinated by the Other’s look, my character will figure in my own eyes as an unrealizable ne varietur, the substantial permanence of my being—the kind of thing expressed in such ordinary everyday remarks as “I am forty-five years old, and I’m not going to start changing myself today.” — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1284

Categorization

• XREF: The Look as objectifying mechanism — core machinery that Beauvoir will repurpose for gender as the gaze makes women into objects. — connects to: The Other’s look turns the free for-itself into a fixed thing — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1045; A look already captured by the Other cannot objectify what he already fixes
• DEEPTHINKING: The collapse of freedom into a ‘ne varietur’ assumed by the self — the precise mechanism by which one consents to being objectified — is dense and central enough to sit with.

Broader Connections

• A look already captured by the Other cannot objectify what he already fixes #corroborates (0.92)