An empirical investigation of gender, sexual attitudes, weight bias and body image

Abstract

An empirical investigation of gender, sexual attitudes, weight bias and body image 2 ABSTRACT This thesis will fill gaps in research exploring gender, weight bias, and body image. It investigates the potential consequences of having a negative body image (such as its association with sexual functioning), and how body image and attraction to different body types differ depending on gender and feminist identification. It also investigates how contact with overweight people 1 is related to weight bias. Traditionally, most body image research has focused on women,given that women typically report worse body image than men, and face substantive societal pressure to look a certain way (Feingold & Mazzella, 1998). However, increasingly research is demonstrating that men also feel appearance-related societal pressure and suffer from marked body image issues (Davison & McCabe, 2005). Consequently, in this thesis both female and male perspectives are involved throughout.In Chapters 1 and 3 I describe the literature that informed my research. Specifically, inChapter 1 I discuss research on body image, including outlining which factors predict having a negative body image, what the consequences of having a poor body image are, and gender differences associated with body image. In Chapter 3, I describe research on anti-fat prejudice, including interventions to reduce negative attitudes towards those who are overweight. In Chapter 2, I investigate how thinking negatively about one's body is associated with sexual problems.Female and male participants (N=519) completed questionnaires examining various aspects of sexual problems, as well as drive for thinness and drive for muscularity. Results indicated that for men as well as women, drive for thinness rather than drive for muscularity consistently predicted sexual dysfunction. This study provides the first evidence that drive for thinness can be associated with negative sexual experiences for men as well as women.In Chapter 4 I shift my focus to examine which factors might predict people finding a range of different body types attractive, and conversely, what might predict the extent to which people impose the thin ideal onto others. Heterosexual female and male participants (N=359) rated how attractive they found a variety of male and female figures. Participants also completed a feminist identity questionnaire. Results demonstrated that men who identified as feminists were more likely to report being attracted to a larger female figure, while feminist identification was unrelated to what size figure women found attractive. In line with past research, women rated the "most attractive" female figure as being thinner than that preferred by men. This study demonstrates that male feminism may have an indirect positive effect on women by relaxing men's standards for female beauty.1 In the interest of brevity, the word 'overweight' is used to encompass both overweight and obese people An empirical investigation of gender, sexual attitudes, weight bias and body image 3In Chapter 5 I...