Math Scores Suffer In Swimsuit – But Only If You’re Female
Christopher Philip
In 1998 a group of researchers had women and men wear either a swimsuit or a sweater. Once on, the subjects were asked to evaluate themselves in a mirror as if they were actually purchasing the garment. Afterwards and while still wearing the swimsuit or sweater, they completed a math test. The math test was also done while not wearing the swimsuit or sweater. Self esteem and body shame was also self-rated in both conditions.
An interesting finding occurred such that while the men were totally unaffected in math scores while wearing the swim trunks, the women’s performance in math plummeted. At the same time, women’s shame increased significantly. Why is this so? How can wearing certain attire affect performance so profoundly? Why are only women affected?
The authors draw on “objectification theory” which says that people are reduced to simple body parts and dehumanized. Sexual objectification happens whenever parts of the body are judged as representing the whole body rather than what is contained within the self. In turn, bodies are reduced to objects serving the exclusive pleasures (viewing pleasure) of others.
As the media often portrays women as objects, particularly as sex objects, say the authors, women tend to view themselves as such and this negatively affects their self view. As evaluation continues throughout life, women are often directionally affected by exactly how others view their external qualities. This has the result of affecting their self esteem.
The authors continue that narcissistic tendencies can results as an adaptive strategy whereby women focus on their outer appearance in effort to gain and exploit a system that unfairly see their external appearance rather than other qualities.
In self objectification women tend to look at themselves through the eyes of others and evaluate themselves as if they are viewed in that way. This can result in much shame for women who either can’t meet society’s unrealistic expectation for them, or if their distorted view of themselves does not match the level of attractiveness they desire. This may lead to disordered eating and even depression. Low self-esteem is another fall-out from failed attempts to rectify body image ideals.
Wearing particularly revealing clothing, or clothing that draws attention to one’s body image requires mental effort from women and this causes them to focus more on their insecurities rather than specific tasks such as math.
Through a culture of sexism, say the authors, women begin to see themselves as objects and evaluate themselves based on superficial qualities rather than internal qualities.
Digging Below The Skin
Overall the results support the idea that women, but not men self objectify. But why is this so? The authors would have us believe that women self objectify because of salient and persistent media messages.
However, this is a proximate answer and will suffice in explain only a small portion of how “objectification” actually works. The idea of objectification says that other people are at fault for the motivations held by individuals. However, this fails to explain why people would adopt motivations which are clearly posited to be negative and damaging to self esteem and normal functioning.
This is where we must dig beyond the skin of objectification theory to find more meaningful answers. What does a beautiful body really mean to men, women and the media?
A beautiful female body is healthy and fertile. It tells men that it is a body that carries potential reproductive benefits to him should he be able to convince her to accept his courtship. To other women, a beautiful body represents something she covets, but also something she envies especially if it is not her body. Thus, while men covet women’s sexual bodies, women also covet sexual female bodies such that it is something they may both emulate, but if not, compete against it. This makes female beauty something that women both envy and attack. This is why it is common from women to have a love-hate relationship with their own bodies as well as the bodies of other women.
Should a women in their proximity not fit the ideal female body, she may act in one of two ways, either ridicule and shame her based on her looks or ignore her while not permitting her into her circle of associates. On the other hand, when men see women who do not fit their beauty standards, they habitually simply ignore her. In either respect, when women do not fit beauty standards, they suffer greatly.
That being said, we haven’t dealt completely with the ultimate reason women self-objectify. Beauty, as we see, is a great source of power for women. The women whom wield beauty are the ones desired by men for their reproductive qualities and by the same desires create envy in other women vying for the same attention. This is not a conscious process, but rather something that stems from evolutionary programming. It should also be noted that when women are beautiful, other women relinquish power to her on their own accord.
Should men’s physical appearance gain attention from women, then men too would envy other more attractive men, emulate them, and compete with each other on physical appearance. However, nature favoured men with more utility than beauty as this signaled better and more valued qualities to female choosers. Therefore, men compete more in terms of resource acquisition than the attainment of physical beauty.
The second element that makes the entire objectification of women possible is women’s biological sensitivity to objectification. It’s not as if women couldn’t, if they desired, drop out of the race to be noticed by both men and women and vie for power – however, nature programmed women to act in ways that facilitates the process. Women have far more estrogen than testosterone and it begins circulating in much larger quantities around puberty. It is also well known that self esteem plummets at puberty with girls, but does not show the same effects as boys despite their boost of male sex hormone testosterone. However, testosterone doesn’t create insecurity, it creates resourcefulness and a desire to compete. If anything, testosterone creates overconfidence and (annoyingly) boisterous cockiness. Ultimately, competition is a trait that favours men’s ability to beat other men in effort to attract attention from women. Thus, men don’t suffer from objectification as women do, however, they do still suffer, but due to the hormonal difference, exhibit their suffering through competition and anger as driving emotions, not loss of self-esteem and shame as do women. Watch for anger in men as a signal of suffering – it’s more obvious than you might think!
In short, women and girls’ loss of self esteem and self objectification is the direct result of evolutionary programming and biology and not as “objectification theory” holds, the result of media’s focus on unrealistic beauty standards. As self esteem plummets around puberty where women begin to sharpen their focus on reproduction, and estrogen ramps up significantly creating an environment conducive to competition for mates and against those of like mind, the net result is a culture which fosters objectification and the behaviours associated with it.
In other words, objectification is a network of rules unilaterally rewarded by men, but willfully followed, created and enforced by women.
To a lesser or more extent, sexual objectification is also favoured through biology in terms of greater health and fertility benefits to men whom seek it.
To rectify the issue, all men, rich, poor, handsome, and ugly could, in theory, randomly mate with women thereby reducing the incentive and pressure to be attractive and reducing women’s competitiveness to match the ‘expectations’ of men, but this would take thousands of years to achieve. This also assumes that physical beauty is not a true marker for health and fertility. If it is the case that attractive women are also healthy and more fertile and men mate with women randomly, then we may simply end up uglier than before, with even greater health and fertility issues to deal with!
This is an odd solution but given that it is biological in nature it implies that it can not be solved by simply wishing the media pressure away, as biology will ensure that it continues to resurface again and again.
One should also note that women also place “unrealistic” expectations on men and do not randomly assort with them. Rather, women chose men whom fit specific criteria they deem valuable to them and their reproductive strategies which happen to be somewhat polarized when compared to men’s values. While men do not seem to suffer, and while women and men do not wish to focus much attention on their suffering, it is not to say that they do not, they simply show it in ways other than shame, making it less visible (usually anger and depression).
Image Credit: PROJECT_MANAGER
Resources
Fredrickson, L. Barbara, Tomi-Ann Roberts, Stephanie, M. Noll, Diane M. Quinn and Jean M. Twenge. That Swimsuit Becomes You: Sex Differences in Self-Objectification, Restrained Eating, and Math Performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1998. 75(1): 269-284.