Married to the Eiffel Tower shed light on a sexuality I had rarely heard of- objectum sexuality. The women portrayed in the documentary felt a sexual and intimate connection to physical structures such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, and more. The only time I had previously seen someone with objectum sexuality was on a TV show called “My Strange Addiction”. This type of sexuality is clearly not common, thus justifying why it would be on a show depicting “strange” practices. After watching the documentary, I thought about Nakamura’s piece and her idea of racialization. She spoke about how World of Warcraft racialized the avatars, and the type of implications this had for the game. When racializing non-human avatars, it furthered a racist agenda for the game where Asian players were seen as the farmers and performing all of the labor, while other (White) players reaped the benefits of their work. Though it’s not exactly racialization, Married to the Eiffel Tower depicts people who sexualize non-sexual objects, thus opening another door for conversations around sexuality and sexualization of non-humans. Nakamura discusses how racialization opened a door to negativity in terms of racist rhetoric, but could it be possible that sexualization opens a positive door? When stretching the limits of what can be considered sexual and what people can be sexually attracted to, do conversations about this increase acceptability or offer a platform for people to further shame? I think in a sense it does both, which is completely natural for an idea that does not fall under a heteronormative narrative. Married to the Eiffel Tower truly demonstrates that anything is possible, and the extent to which sexuality occurs is limitless. To assume that sexuality ends on a spectrum of heterosexuality to homosexuality is limiting in itself.
