Maite Perurena: the stone lifter's daughter and the public gaze

Digital objectification: the case of Maite Perurena

All it takes is for someone to be the child of a well-known figure for part of the internet to feel entitled to comment on their life, their age and their body. Maite, the daughter of Iñaki Perurena, the famous stone lifter, is now going through that routine: comments ranging from crude jokes to speculation about her age, from "in her thirties" to "44", as if her birth certificate were public property.

The contrast is almost literary. Her father has spent his life lifting rocks weighing hundreds of kilos; she has been saddled with the weight of other people's gaze, the hardest one to erode. The online conversation contributes no relevant information about Maite, or about stone lifting: it only shows how women are still treated as objects of scrutiny when they are linked to a famous surname.

Some try to sell it as innocent fun, locker-room humour among equals. But when the person in question has given no sign of wanting to take part, the joke becomes silent harassment. It is not a new phenomenon, nor by any means exclusive to this case: the rule is old, only the stage changes.

What is most jarring is the casualness with which it is assumed that a private person must put up with jokes about her looks for the sole offence of carrying a well-known surname. Meanwhile, the stone lifter keeps lifting stones; the daughter, however, carries something heavier: public judgement with no appeal.