Setting the bar: Divergent sociocultural norms for women's and men's ideal appearance in real-world contexts

“Appearance potent”? A content analysis of UK gay and straight men's magazines

“…Images of men who were in later life, were Asian or had a lot of chest hair and images of men that were dismembered (where the body but not face of the model is visible) may not have differed between the two magazines types as they featured equally rarely. These findings are in line with other media content analyses showing images of dismembered men (7%; Conley & Ramsey, 2011) nonWhite men (5%; Saucier & Caron, 2008), older men (5-7%; Buote et al, 2011;Saucier & Caron, 2008) and men with visible chest hair (1%; Saucier & Caron, 2008) are rarely featured.…”

“…These findings support other studies that suggest that Western objectification of the female body is ubiquitous; particularly so in media targeted at straight men (Buote et al, 2011;Conley & Ramsey, 2011).…”

“…Codes used in previous content analyses of images of men were adapted for use in the current study by making them more specific and/or comprehensive. These included age, facial attractiveness, and body type codes from Buote et al (2011), the nudity, chest hair and ethnicity codes from Saucier and Caron (2008), and the dismemberment and sexualisation codes from Rohlinger (2002). Additionally, codes for the type of articles and adverts featured were adapted from Saucier and Caron (2008), Taylor (2005) and Labre (2005).…”

Self-Defining Memories of Body Image Shame and Binge Eating in Men and Women: Body Image Shame and Self-Criticism in Adulthood as Mediating Mechanisms

“…These associations persisted while accounting for the effect of BMI, which, for women only, also presented a significant association with binge eating symptoms, indirectly mediated by body image shame and self-criticism. Although issues of selfobjectification are rising among men (Dakanalis, Clerici, et al, 2014), women may be more 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 vulnerable to the deleterious impact of the sociocultural messages that equate physical attractiveness with social attractiveness and acceptance (Buote et al, 2011). In fact, our study suggests that for women, experiences where they felt that due to their physical appearance they were negatively seen by others (e.g., as unattractive, inferior or defective as a social agent) may become associated with their self-evaluation and with a sense of self-inadequacy, as well as with self-directed anger and contempt and with desires to persecute or harm the self when facing setbacks or failures.…”

“…Nonetheless, in modern western societies women still face greater pressures than men do to approximate the images of idealized bodies as a means to reach social approval and acceptance (Buote, Wilson, Strahan, Gazzola, & Papps, 2011;Gatward, 2007;Gilbert, 2002). In fact, whereas conceptions of traditional masculinity convey the notion that men's worth is related to their abilities to be powerful, socially dominant, and physically effective (Kilmartin, 2007), women constantly face messages that their worth depends on how their physical appearance is perceived by others (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997), which negatively affects their selfevaluation, body image, and eating behaviour (Fitzsimmons-Craft et al, 2011;Dakanalis et al, 2015;Dakanalis, Clerici, et al, 2014; being seen by others as flawed, unattractive or inferior, as well as to the internal shaming process that includes severe self-criticism (Goss & Allan, 2009;Goss & Gilbert, 2002;.…”