And there certainly is a difference between having and expressing a preference, and imposing that opinion on a conversation where it’s out of place. If you’re talking with a bunch of friends on the subject of what kind of body types you find attractive, and you say, “I’m attracted to curvier women”? Sure. Valid. You’re welcome to your preference. If your friend is having one of those body-hating moments and wails, “Nobody will ever want to fuck me, as fat as I am!” and you say, “That’s not true! Personally, I’m more attracted to curvier women”? You’re a good friend, and she may even be comforted to hear it. If you’re in the middle of a discussion in which women address the way beauty standards and expectations infiltrate every aspect of our lives and how we’re evaluated with shifting metrics on the shape of our bodies every day, that’s where an individual’s personal preference is out of place and unwelcome. When women are talking about being judged by society, that’s not the place to come in and offer yet another judgment, even if you’re trying to be complimentary.

One way that psychologists have found to test whether something is seen as an object is by turning it upside down. Pictures of people present a recognition problem when they’re turned upside down, but pictures of objects don’t have that problem.

So Bernard and his colleagues used a test where they presented pictures of men and women in sexualized poses, wearing underwear. Each participant watched the pictures appear one by one on a computer screen. Some of the pictures were right side up and some were upside down. After each picture, there was a second of black screen, then the participant was shown two images. They were supposed to choose the one that matched the one they had just seen.

People recognized right-side-up men better than upside-down men, suggesting that they were seeing the sexualized men as people. But the women in underwear weren’t any harder to recognize when they were upside down—which is consistent with the idea that people see sexy women as objects. There was no difference between male and female participants.