Enjoyment of sexualization: is it different for men?

Abstract

We elucidated the Enjoyment of Sexualization (ES) construct in a sample of 206 female and 118 male undergraduate students. Our male ES Scale had high reliability, and confirmatory factor analyses indicated that a univariate structure was appropriate for both men and women. ES added to the prediction of self‐esteem and number of sexual partners (but not body shame) after controlling for self‐objectification; gender did not moderate these relationships. The relationship between ES and number of sexual partners was moderated by attractiveness such that individuals who believed themselves to be more attractive had more sexual partners at high levels of ES. Furthermore, ES was distinguishable from the conceptually‐related self‐objectification construct with regard to Big Five personality. Finally, results suggested that ES might be less harmful than self‐objectification.

I “like” the way you look: How appearance-focused and overall Facebook use contribute to adolescents' self-sexualization

“…The sexual appeal of men has become a central feature in contemporary traditional media (e.g., Leit et al, 2002;Ward et al, 2015) and social media, with men increasingly focusing on their own sexual appeal in the selfies they post online (Döring et al, 2016). Such findings confirm earlier reports of boys' being motivated to alter their bodies in order to approach the ideal (e.g., McCabe & Ricciardelli, 2001) and men's enjoying sexualization just as much as women do (Visser, Sultani, Choma, &, 2014;. Additionally, this study's findings corroborate earlier body image research indicating that there are no differences between women and men in how social media relate to body image outcomes, such as enjoyment of being perceived as a sex object and body surveillance (e.g., Manago et al, 2014;Vandenbosch & Eggermont, 2012).…”

The Influence of Sexual Objectification Experience on Chinese Female College Students’ Selfie-Posting Behavior: A Mediated Moderation Model

“…So, sexual objectification experience is one of the important factors to predict female students' selfie-posting behavior. Mediation analysis showed that Enjoyment of Sexualization plays a partial mediating role between sexual objectification experience and selfie-posting behavior, which verified hypothesis H2 and is consistent with the previous research (Barnett, Maciel, & Gerner, 2018;Visser, Sultani, Choma et al, 2014). Impression management theory points out that individuals tend to adopt strategies to control others' impressions on themselves to achieve a good impression (Liu, 2006), such as presenting or publishing information that is beneficial to their body image.…”

Objectifying Women’s Bodies is Acceptable from an Intimate Perpetrator, at Least for Female Sexists

“…In addition, it could be fruitful, as suggested by Calogero and colleagues (2009), to carry out qualitative studies in which participants face in-depth interviews or focus-group situations with real experiences in order to provide insight into the lesser-known aspects involved in women’s reactions to different kinds of comments/compliments. In the future, it may also be advantageous to extend these studies to include men so as to explore not only how they feel when receiving objectification messages (Visser, Sultani, Choma & Pozzebon, 2014), but also how they perceive objectification when they make comments on women’s appearance and sexual body. There also needs to be more in-depth research done into other forms of interpersonal objectification (e.g., objectifying gazes, Gervais, Vescio, & Allen, 2011; cat-call remarks, Chaudoir & Quinn, 2010), both within and beyond romantic relationships, a virtually uncharted area of research to date.…”