On the evening of Thursday 19 June 2025, the Oxford Union came together to debate the motion: ‘The Commodification of Women’s Bodies has Gone Too Far.’ The chamber was packed, anticipating hearing from the all-women speaker panel comprising social media content creators, authors, activists, and ex-fashion models.
Prior to the main debate, members of the Union discussed the emergency motion ‘This House Would Have a Hot Girl Summer.’ This involved a back-and-forth on whether the actions typically associated with being a ‘hot girl’ or having said brand of summer are empowering or the inverse—a theme that continued throughout the night. One notable male member spoke up to advise women: “do up your hair, put on some makeup, and wear a reasonable skirt.” After that concluded, the primary debate of the evening began.
Opening the argument for the proposition was Amina Bellalem from Hertford College, who outlined the key areas where women’s bodies can be seen as commodified: surrogacy, sex-work, and plastic surgery. In surrogacy, she said that women are “relegated only to their biological functions” as “purchasable goods”, and that sex work “does not value women’s agency” with many workers entering the industry as minors. Finally, Bellalem suggested that normalising “dangerous body modifications” creates impossible standards of beauty, with filters and editing apps meaning that women are now competing with “digitally altered versions of themselves.” The Oxford student pre-empted opposition arguments that a woman choosing her commodification is empowering, describing such ideas as the “veneer of individual empowerment.” Hence, fundamentally, “the commodification of women’s bodies is not empowering. It is exploitation.”
Then, opening the argument for the opposition, was Maya Kapila from Christ Church. She claimed that we are policing women’s choices by saying that they cannot commodify their bodies, with women reclaiming their commodification as a form of empowerment. She proposed it “shameful” that we are holding up “patriarchal ideals,” pointing out how long sex-work has been a profession, and asking: “Why is OnlyFans now seen as the breaking point?” Kapila suggested instead that women now have the power to assert their own boundaries, dictate the nature of their work, and keep their rewards. The speaker asserted that many are in a state of “moral panic” only occurring as women gain control, insistent on “policing women’s autonomy.” Instead, women should focus on reclamation to keep “setting the terms and reaping the rewards” of commodification.
Continuing the case for the proposition, was Cameron Russell: activist, fashion model, and the author of ‘How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone.’ Russell made the case that the notion that a person is a body from which to extract profit is inhumane, no matter if you are “driving a car or selling sex.” She argued against the popular counter argument to the motion that commodification of women’s bodies is not exploitation if the commodified person chooses to participate in it, noting that participation in commodification often comes down to “survival and strategy in a system that affects everyone.” Further, by choosing to support the commodification of women’s bodies, we make it more difficult for other people to escape this system, but our participation is not just as simple as deciding to sign up: “participation is not a choice between like options.” Russell closed her speech by noting that instead of shaming the women who participate in such activities, we must “tenderly peel apart the body from the exploitation of commodification.”
Continuing the argument for the opposition was Dana Thomas: culture and style journalist and author of works such as ‘Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes.’ She directly contradicted the opposition by claiming the commodification of women’s bodies “is not a form of exploitation”, as it can “in fact empower women” since “beauty is a woman’s superpower.” Thomas began her speech with an anecdote of her time as a teenage fashion model in the 1970s, pointing out that she made a lot of money, and it could have been seen as the commodification and exploitation of a teenage girl, but it was her choice, and “life is not so black and white.” Russell went on to ask the chamber how many members were wearing makeup, asking why we follow such practices. The speaker said that we do it to fulfil “sexual availability.” Unquestionably ‘adorn[ing]” ourselves with “fetishized objects.” She concluded, perhaps controversially, that you can in fact empower a woman by “commodifying her and making her seem sexually available.”
After the floor speeches, continuing the case for the proposition was content creator Leana Deeb. Deeb has 19 million social media followers, posting video content about fitness, mental health, and modesty on her platforms. She shared her journey on social media to demonstrate that the idea that commodification of women’s bodies is exploitation is something that she knew from the beginning. This was because she claimed that showing her body was the fastest way to succeed: “I started to understand what sells,” the speaker said; “I was being rewarded for exposure, not for who I truly was.” The speaker said that she felt all she “had to offer in the world was how [she] looked,” choosing to delete all of her content and restart, championing modest fashion and wearing the hijab. Echoing earlier proposition arguments, Deeb claimed that women’s choices are “shaped by what the system rewards” and therefore we need to normalise a world where women are empowered, no matter what they wear, instead of by “views, body angles and engagement rates.” The speaker ended her speech by proposing that “covered and uncovered women can stand together and redefine what strength looks like,” causing the chamber to burst into applause.
Closing the opposition was Liz Dzjabrailova, known as TheWizardLiz, a social media content creator with a cumulative following exceeding 22 million, who promotes women’s self-confidence and “princess treatment”. Her case, which supported the idea that “turning women’s bodies into products to buy and sell” is not always exploitative, began powerfully as Dzjabrailova recounted anecdotes of misogyny and objectification she involuntarily suffered during childhood. After working on “reclaiming her power and confidence” in adulthood, Dzjabrailova said she became the first multi-millionaire in her family. Despite her self-made success, the creator claims “men will equate female pain with male power,” with male members of her audience starting rumours that she made her money from sex-work: “society’s biggest enemy is a successful woman who refuses to remain silent.” Dzjabrailova claimed that “thinking that girls can stop sexualisation
is a mistake” and instead that “to make money off men’s lust is how to put their weakness against them,” going as far to note that “we are looking towards a female dominated society because of how weak men are.” She concluded on the message that women are now deciding what success looks like for women, after years of patriarchal control: “many women in these industries choose to be there… they are not just participants. They are businesswomen,” and so “we do need feminism, and we do not need men.” Dzjabrailova’s speech was densely packed and hard-hitting, resulting in much of the chamber rewarding her with a standing ovation–despite the contradictory verdict on the overall debate.
Overall, the evening platformed what I see as a relatively diverse perspective of intelligent female voices, speaking in front of the all-woman officer team. In my opinion, most of the speakers arguing for both the proposition and opposition shared the core value of wanting to support and empower women as autonomous agents, their views diverging only on the ability of self-managed sex-work and other potentially commodifying practices to be considered empowering. The inverse correlation between empowerment and commodification going ‘too far’ seemed to be undisputed. The result of the debate came to 133 votes to 98 in favour of the proposition. This means that the Oxford Union believes that the commodification of women’s bodies has gone too far.