Men who crave social power are more likely to endorse strict beauty norms for women

A recent study published in the journal Sex Roles suggests that men who hold traditional beliefs about masculinity and value social power are more likely to believe women should invest heavy time and effort into their physical appearance. The findings provide evidence that societal beauty expectations for women are tied to broader desires to maintain gender hierarchies, though temporarily threatening a man’s sense of masculinity does not appear to immediately shift these beliefs.

Ece Akca, a researcher in the Department of Psychology at Ege University in Türkiye, designed this research to understand the psychological reasons behind the intense societal pressure on women to prioritize physical beauty. In modern societies, beauty standards often go beyond basic hygiene to include time-consuming and expensive practices like daily makeup application, body hair removal, and complex anti-aging routines.

“With the influence of social media, being beautiful and well-groomed has become highly visible in everyday life,” Akca said. “I gradually noticed that women, myself included, feel constant pressure around makeup and grooming. Even very young girls, still children, are applying makeup, filming videos of it, and using skincare products.”

Akca noted that observing these everyday behaviors sparked an interest in the deeper psychological mechanisms at play. “I realized this isn’t as innocent a ‘personal choice’ as it’s often framed to be, and that’s what led me to study this topic,” she said.

These societal expectations are known as prescriptive beauty norms. This concept refers to the socially enforced belief that women are obligated to desire beauty and dedicate significant psychological and financial resources to achieving it.

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Akca aimed to explore how these beauty norms connect to gendered power dynamics, specifically looking at the issue from the perspective of men. “The belief that women should be beautiful, and the pressure that comes with it, goes beyond the idea that it’s simply ‘a personal choice,'” Akca said. “It speaks to broader social realities, functioning as one of the variables shaping the power dynamic between women and men.”

Previous feminist and psychological perspectives suggest that framing beauty as a natural requirement of womanhood reinforces gender essentialism. Gender essentialism is the assumption that differences between men and women are biologically fixed, natural, and inherently meaningful. This type of belief system tends to help legitimize social structures where men hold more authority and women are expected to conform to subordinate roles.

To test the connection between beauty and power, Akca examined traditional masculinity ideology. This ideology is a set of cultural beliefs that connects true manhood to toughness, emotional restraint, independence, and social authority. The researcher also looked at social dominance orientation.

This term describes a person’s general preference for inequality among social groups, where they believe some groups should naturally dominate others. Because traditional masculinity focuses on maintaining power, the author suspected that men who strongly endorse these traditional male roles would also support prescriptive beauty norms as a way to maintain male-defined social hierarchies.

The project included two distinct studies conducted in Türkiye. In the first study, Akca analyzed survey responses from 183 male undergraduate students in a classroom setting. The participants completed a series of established questionnaires measuring their endorsement of traditional masculine roles, social dominance orientation, and prescriptive beauty norms.

The surveys also measured both hostile sexism, which involves overtly negative attitudes toward women, and benevolent sexism, which involves seemingly positive but patronizing beliefs that women are delicate and need male protection. The survey data showed a positive association between traditional masculinity beliefs and the endorsement of prescriptive beauty norms. This relationship remained statistically significant even after the researcher accounted for the participants’ levels of hostile and benevolent sexism.

The findings suggest that traditional masculine ideals uniquely contribute to the expectation that women should invest heavily in their appearance. The data did not, however, show that this relationship was indirectly explained by a general preference for social inequality.

Reflecting on men’s investment in these expectations, Akca noted a particular dynamic that stood out during her research. “What has always surprised me isn’t necessarily tied to a specific result, but rather the fact that men hold such distinct, strong attitudes on a topic that concerns women,” Akca said. “Even though beauty pressure is something women experience directly, men clearly have their own stances on it too.”

To build on these correlational findings, Akca conducted a second study involving an experiment with a final sample of 163 male participants recruited online. This study tested precarious manhood theory, which proposes that manhood is a fragile social status that must be constantly proven and defended. According to this theory, when men feel their masculinity is questioned, they often respond with psychological discomfort and try to reassert their dominance.

The researcher wanted to see if a temporary threat to a man’s masculinity would make him more likely to support strict beauty expectations for women. Participants in the second study completed a fake personality assessment about their daily habits and social reactions. The survey software supposedly fed their answers into an artificial intelligence program to generate an image reflecting their inner personality type.

In reality, the men were randomly assigned to receive one of two pre-set results. Half of the men were shown an image of a king, along with a message confirming their strong, authoritative, and traditionally masculine traits. The other half of the participants received feedback designed to challenge their masculinity.

They were shown an image of a princess and were told that their answers reflected delicate and sensitive feminine habits. Following this feedback, all participants answered questions assessing their social dominance orientation, their desire for social power, and their support for prescriptive beauty norms. The men in the princess group reported feeling significantly more discomfort and less satisfaction with their results than the men whose masculinity was affirmed.

Despite experiencing this psychological discomfort, the temporary threat to their masculinity did not change the men’s ideological beliefs. The participants who received the feminine feedback did not report higher scores on social dominance, power values, or prescriptive beauty norms than the men in the king group. Independent of the experimental feedback, the second study did reveal that men who highly valued social power and authority tended to show stronger support for women’s beauty norms.

Interpreting these findings requires keeping certain limitations in mind, especially regarding how the variables interact. “I don’t think there’s a specific point that’s likely to be misread, but I do want to flag a caveat about causality,” Akca said. “Although our findings relate power and masculinity ideology to prescriptive beauty norms, causality has not been established, and I’d like to reiterate that.”

The failure to see a shift in beliefs during the second study does not imply that masculinity and beauty norms are entirely disconnected. It suggests instead that deeply held ideological beliefs might be too stable to change after a brief, temporary threat in an anonymous online survey. The men may have experienced personal discomfort without feeling the need to immediately adjust their broader views on how society should be structured.

The research also relied on specific samples of men in Türkiye, meaning the results might not perfectly translate to other cultural contexts. Religious and cultural backgrounds heavily influence how people view gender roles and social hierarchies. In many cultures, beauty practices are seen as individual choices, but in others, they are viewed as strict moral or social obligations.

Scientists might also use more intense, real-world situations to test how men react when their social status is challenged. An anonymous online test lacks a public audience, which might lessen the feeling of lost social status. Testing these dynamics in a social setting could reveal different compensatory behaviors.

Understanding how these power dynamics operate could help therapists, educators, and policymakers find better ways to reduce appearance-related pressures in society. Moving forward, Akca intends to expand on this foundation to see how these factors continue to interact.

“I plan to continue working on this line of research,” Akca said. “Alongside examining its relationship with masculinity in more depth, by refining the manipulation and measurement models, I’m also planning to study beauty pressure in both women and men.”

The study, “The Role of Power, Social Dominance Orientation, and Masculinity in Shaping Endorsement of Prescriptive Beauty Norms,” was authored by Ece Akca.