Men Hate Their Bodies When Looking at Women

We’ve heard study after study on how the inundation of the contemporary ideal form can affect how a girl or a woman feels about her own body. When shows like Baywatch were introduced to Pacific Asia, the numbers of women who felt uncomfortable with their bodies shot through the roof–and unfortunately eating disorders did too. I know I’ve certainly felt pressure to hit the gym more and fit into that wedding dress. The exposure of unrealistic body types as the ideal has had a horrible impact on generation after generation of women. And it’s not just the women who are negatively affected by these images, but men too.
Jennifer Aubrey , an assistant professor at Missouri University, has focused her research on self-objectification , or taking stock of the worth of one’s body in how others view it. In her most recent study, she’s found that men are likewise impacted by viewing objectifying material. The difference is that men don’t feel self conscious when viewing other idealized men, but when looking at idealized women . This seemingly backwards finding is explained in the article. Aubrey hypothesizes that men feel the pressure of finding an attractive woman, and in order to attract the ideal women in the media, they would have to have the ideal bodies themselves.
I find it interesting that both heterosexual women and men self-objectify in order to attract the other sex, but that it comes out in competely opposite ways. Women view their own sex, and men the other sex, before they feel that pressure.
This is all yet another reason to break down the media framework of objectifying women . For further information about objectification of women in the media, you have to watch Killing Us Softy . Jean Kilbourne talks about decades of objectification in advertisement, and she has changed my view on all things media.