[1] Valenti shares personal stories recounting her childhood and adolescence regarding her treatment as a sex object and the pernicious influence of sexism in her daily encounters.

[2] Valenti argues that most women face a similar reality of being shaped by—and making everyday decisions to minimize—male aggressions and sexual assault.

[2] Valenti was able to use Sex Object: A Memoir as a platform to focus on sharing experiences with readers, helping them understand how prevalent sexism is for young girls and women, and shedding light on the sheer size of this cultural problem.

Valenti selected the title despite fear of backlash,[5] some of which came to fruition with the book's publication.

[9] Reviewing the book in The New Republic, Rafia Zakaria described the book's strength in Valenti's reappraisal of her own experience with objectification, including her prior blindness to the phenomenon; Zakaria compared Valenti's critical reassessment of her own experiences to Adrienne Rich's observation that for women "'revision—the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction is more than an act of cultural history; It is an act of survival.'