fetishize

Verb

fetishize (third-person singular simple present fetishizes, present participle fetishizing, simple past and past participle fetishized)

1. (transitive) To make the subject of (often sexual) obsession.
   • Our society has fetishized personal wealth.
   • John's unteachers ignore the letter of their target text, while fetishizing the letter of their own.1998, Catherine Brown, Contrary Things: Exegesis, Dialectic, and the Poetics of Didacticism, page 48
   1. (transitive) To view or treat (someone) in a way that reduces that person to a sexually charged, racial stereotype; to racially objectify.
      • London, the only actor who feels like she’s playing a real character and not a public-service announcement, reacts realistically to scenarios where Shelley fetishizes her Blackness, but it’s all for naught.2023 January 27, Odie Henderson, “Bungle fever”, in The Boston Globe, volume 303, number 27, page G4, column 2
      • “Asian women on-screen, especially in America and Hollywood, have been so sexualized and fetishized for the benefit of other people’s stories or jokes,” Ashley says. “And we’re like, ‘We’re gonna go balls to the wall, further than anyone’s gone with Asian women.’”2023 June 15, Kat Moon, “Ashley Park’s Main Character Energy From ‘Joy Ride’ Is Here To Stay: ‘I’m Treating Myself Like A Lead Now’”, in Women's Health
2. (transitive) To make into a fetish, or magical object.
   • Isou and Lemaitre further introduced scriptural systems (metagraphics, or postwriting, and hypergraphy, respectively) that fetishize the graphic as irreducible to vocalization.2001, Steve McCaffery, Prior to Meaning: The Protosemantic and Poetics, page 171