An online survey of Italian men found that body image self-consciousness contributes to sexual distress. In other words, being aware of how one’s body looks like during physical intimacy with one’s partner contributes to feelings of frustration, anxiety and worry regarding sexual activity. The study was published in the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy.
Sexual health contributes to one’s overall quality of life. Pleasant sexual activities are an important component of the overall well-being of a person. Due to this, sexual dysfunction or the lack of sexual satisfaction creates a potentially negative impact on the quality of life.
Studies of sexual health done on women have shown the importance of body image self-consciousness for sexual functioning. In extreme cases, negative body image self-consciousness can impair sexual functioning, but positive body image self-consciousness has been shown to contribute to better sexual functioning in both women and men.
Previous studies have found that body image dissatisfaction tends to be greater in women than in men. However, men are also affected by body dissatisfaction and the social imposed standards of masculinity and muscularity.
To explore the links between body image self-consciousness and sexual distress, Sofia Pavanello Decaro and her colleagues conducted an online survey of 212 Italian men, whom they recruited using flyers, social media posts and online resources. Mean age of study participants was around 30 years, and their ages ranged between 18 and 54.
Study participants completed an assessment of sexual distress that used items from the Sexual Complaint Screener for Men (SCS-M), of body image self-consciousness (Male Body Image Self-Consciousness Scale), partner-oriented sexual perfectionism (Multidimensional Sexual Perfectionism Questionnaire) and pathological narcissistic traits of vulnerable, and grandiose narcissism (Pathological Narcissism Inventory, PNI).
Results showed that sexual distress is associated with body image self-consciousness and both forms of narcissism assessed in this study. However, when other factors were accounted for, only vulnerable narcissism and body image self-consciousness contributed to predicting sexual distress.
Of these two, vulnerable narcissism, which represents the tendency to be highly self-conscious, insecure, and hypersensitive to rejection, was more strongly associated to sexual distress. Partner oriented sexual perfectionism i.e., the tendency to have very high expectations towards the partner’s sexual performance was not related to sexual distress, nor did it contribute to predicting it, once the other factors were accounted for.
An important aspect of this study is that it replicated the association between body image self-consciousness that previous studies reported in women, on a sample of men. However, the sample size was relatively small for a study of this type and all assessments relied on self-reports. Future studies might explore the topic using more complex study designs and also samples drawn from different cultures.
The paper, “Men’s sexual distress: the role of body image and vulnerable narcissistic traits”, was authored by Sofia Pavanello Decaro, Annalisa Anzani, Marco Di Sarno, Rossella Di Pierro, and Antonio Prunas.