The modern world imparts physical attractiveness with great importance. The ideals of beauty are characterized by rigid limits and require considerable effort to achieve.
In this regard, there has been a widespread tendency to be dissatisfied with your own body over the past 30 years, especially among girls and young women, experts from the Moscow State University of Psychology and Education (MSUPE) concluded.
MSUPE scientists have reviewed previous studies on the social and psychological factors of body idealization. This made it possible to identify the key mechanisms and tools that promote unhealthy idealization of external attractiveness in society. The results of their study were published in the Psychological Journal.
“A significant contribution to body dissatisfaction is made by attitudes towards a certain type of female beauty, an emphasized sexually attractive body. This body [supposedly] exists for the pleasure of others, and its value directly depends on physical attractiveness,” Natalia Polskaya, associate professor and chair of clinical psychology and psychotherapy at the department of counseling and clinical psychology of the Moscow State University of Psychology & Education, said.
This mindset is called “objectification”. In girls who fall under its influence early, it can turn into self-objectification - a tendency to identify their personality with their body, and monitor physical attractiveness at the expense of internal sensations and objective indicators of health. Self-objectification promotes bodily alienation and shame.
According to experts, self-objectification on social media is the basis of behavior focused on appearance, with content dedicated to the body and appearance rapidly spreading and becoming a role model.
Scientists revealed that viewing, transferring and posting photos, videos and texts on social networks turned out to be tools for creating the latest standards of an ideal body. Most often, the images with hashtags “#thinspiration” (lit. “thinness inspiration”, motivating thinness) and “#fitspiration” (lit. “fitness inspiration”, motivating athleticism) serve as ideals.
The study has shown that the natural body is the body to be conquered, and suffering (from excessive exercise or strict diets) is romanticized as part of working on oneself, while the body's natural signs are ignored.
“Perhaps the main tool for body idealization is selfies. Taking and posting selfies allows users to explore and control our identity online, as well as get positive feedback from others through comments. Original images are often post-processed (retouched),” Polskaya said.
A woman poses for a selfie at Red Square on a sunny day amid the coronavirus outbreak in Moscow, Russia.
© Sputnik / Alexey Maishev
/ According to the authors of the study, the creation of an ideal self-portrait is a kind of act of “re-creating” oneself as a physically more attractive, socially more successful, psychologically more satisfied person. But in the real world, the attitude towards oneself and one's body worsens due to the awareness of the unattainability of the created ideal.
The researchers noted that this leads to a range of problems associated with body dissatisfaction, including increased anxiety and appearance-based rejection sensitivity, fear of negative appearance evaluation by others, and body shame.
Based on their review, the MSUPE researchers proposed two approaches to psychological intervention to prevent self-objectification and unhealthy practices of body idealization.
The first approach has to do with the development of psychological techniques to separate personal manifestations of body self-objectification from a healthy desire to look physically attractive and be liked by others.
The second approach concerns the introduction of psycho-educational programs, including media literacy, work with at-risk groups (e.g. teenage girls) and online communities, aimed at building awareness of the differences between the human nature and the sexualized, self-objectifying view of one's body as a thing whose value and function are assigned by someone else.
The study was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) under the research project No. 20-013-00429.