Compared to men, women are more vulnerable to body image concerns and eating disorders. A recent study published in Frontiers in Psychology revealed that women apply stricter standards for themselves than others when it comes to body image, while men are largely satisfied with their own bodies.
Gender differences in body image may emerge from numerous factors, such as the presentation of male and female bodies in popular media, stereotypes, or social media messaging. Cognitive biases that enhance negative emotions can also contribute to dissatisfaction with one’s own body.
Prior literature suggests “women might apply stricter standards for themselves than for others in the opportunity to influence one’s own body shape,” write Mona M. Voges and colleagues. It may be that double standards, a specific evaluative bias, contribute to the observed gender differences in body dissatisfaction. In this research, double standard was operationalized as “difference between ratings of what appeared to be one’s own and someone else’s body according to the presented face.”
A total of 57 women and 54 men between ages 18-30, with a BMI ranging 18.5-30 kg/m2 (age representative average weight for men and women based on World Health Organization criteria), and absent of a current mental disorder were included in this work. Participants provided ratings to multiple questionnaires assessing body appreciation, drive for muscularity and thinness, body dissatisfaction, and disordered eating – including restraint, and concerns regarding eating, weight, and body shape.
Stimuli were generated by using images of three female and three male bodies of ideal, average-weight, and overweight body shapes, and one female and one male head. The researchers write, “each individual was photographed in provided gray underwear in a frontal view in front of a white background in four standardized poses with a neutral facial expression.”
To create individualized stimuli, photographs of each participant were taken and placed on the same-sex ideal, average-weight, and overweight body images. As well, the same-sex face was placed on the participants’ photos. Thus, each participant was presented with 16 body stimuli with their own face, 16 stimuli with the “other” face, and 12 stimuli of the opposite sex (to reduce repetition and memory effects). For each image, participants rated their emotional valence (very negative/positive), arousal (very calm/arousing), as well the body’s attractiveness (very unattractive/attractive), body fat (very little body fat/much body fat), and muscle mass (very little muscle mass/much muscle mass) on a 9-point scale.
Voges and colleagues found that both women and men had more negative emotional reactions with more arousal to overweight bodies. As well, overweight bodies were rated as less attractive, and with more body fat and less muscle mass when they had the participants’ own face compared to another’s. Overall, participants showed more self-deprecating double standards in valence, arousal, and body fat for overweight bodies than for average or ideal body shapes. However, women exhibited self-deprecating double standards for all body types (including their own).
Men showed self-enhancing double standards in valence and body attractiveness with regard to their own body. And while they rated the ideal body as more attractive than their own, identifying with this body did not result in self-enhancing double standards. The researchers suggest, “young men might have internalized the idea that their own body ‘fits them well’ and does not need to correspond to existing male body ideals in society.”
They add, “double standards related to one’s own body are more directly linked to body dissatisfaction and body appreciation than double standards related to other bodies, as most correlations were found for double standards related to one’s own body and not to the other bodies.”
One limitation is that participants had to partake in a photoshoot in their underwear and view stimuli of their own bodies as part of the study. As such, individuals with high levels of body dissatisfaction may have felt too intimidated to partake, potentially excluding this demographic from the present research.
The authors conclude, “Women, relative to men, are self-depreciating. When their own face is attached to differently shaped bodies, they apply stricter standards of attractiveness, which may account for the prevalence of body image disturbances in women.”
The study, “Giving a Body a Different Face—How Men and Women Evaluate Their Own Body vs. That of Others”, was authored by Mona M. Voges, Hannah L. Quittkat, Benjamin Schöne, and Silja Vocks.
