Tomi-Ann Roberts
Colorado College
Tomi-Ann Roberts, PhD is professor of psychology at Colorado College. She earned her BA from Smith College (1985) and her doctorate in psychology from Stanford University (1990).
Her work focuses on the objectification and sexualization of girls and women, self-objectification, and the consequences of these for living in and with the feminine, corporeal, body. The first paper she co- authored on this topic, Objectification Theory, was published in 1997 and argued that sexual objectification is a form of sexism wherein women and girls are treated as bodies, or collections of body parts, valued predominantly for their use or consumption by others, and provided a framework for understanding the cascade of psychological consequences that spring from the continuum of objectifying treatment that characterize women’s lived experience. This was the first paper to expand on existential philosophical treatments of related concepts (e.g., deBeauvoir, Dinnerstein, MacKinnon) to offer psychological science testable definitions and predictions for understanding of the psychic, interpersonal, and even political and socio- structural consequences of objectifying treatment and of self-objectification. Objectification Theory has been a highly generative contribution to feminist psychology and to gender studies more broadly, is the most cited article in the over 40-year history of the journal Psychology of Women Quarterly, and indeed helped the journal gain its standing as #1 in women’s studies.
In addition to her scholarly publications and teaching, she served on the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, the Task Force on Educating Through Feminist Research, and as President of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research from 2017-2019. She leverages her feminist existential psychological science as a consultant for reproductive health related product brands, and as an expert witness and consultant in legal cases involving objectification and the abjected feminine body as forms of sexism and gender discrimination.