Objectifying Women Hurts Men

A new research study out last month found that men who few objectifying images of women actually have in increase in their own body self-consciousness.

In her first study, Aubrey measured male exposure to 'lad' magazines, such as Maxim, FHM and Stuff, which she observes contains two main messages: the visual, which mostly contain sexually suggestive images of women; and textual, which contain articles that speak in a bawdy, male voice about topics including fashion, sex, technology and pop culture. Aubrey also measured male body self-consciousness (a participant's awareness and tendency to monitor one's appearance) and appearance anxiety (the anticipation of threatening stimuli). Participants were asked questions such as "During the day, I think about how I look," and then asked the same questions a year later.

"We found that reading lad magazines was related to having body self-consciousness a year later," said Aubrey. "This was surprising because if you look at the cover of these magazines, they are mainly images of women. We wondered why magazines that were dominated by sexual images of women were having an effect of men's feelings about their own bodies."

To help answer this question, Aubrey collaborated with University of California-Davis Assistant Professor Laramie Taylor. The researchers divided male study participants into three groups. Group one examined layouts from lad magazines that featured objectified women along with a brief description of their appearances. The second group viewed layouts about male fashion, featuring fit and well-dressed male models. The final group inspected appearance-neutral layouts that featured topics including technology and film trivia.

"Men who viewed the layouts of objectified females reported more body self-consciousness than the other two groups," Aubrey said. "Even more surprising was that the male fashion group reported the least amount of body self-consciousness among the three groups."

This is yet another example of why violence against women is not just a "women's issue," but is instead a people issue. We've seen how violence hurts everyone, and now we see how the objectification of women hurts everyone. Join the violence against women movement not just because of the women in your life, but for your nephews, sons, and grandsons too.