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"In my heart, I think a woman has two choices: either she's a feminist or a masochist." --Gloria Steinem
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Mar
25
Feminists Judge Beauty Differently
Filed Under beauty myths, feminism, media, objectification | Posted by Cara |
When I saw the headline Feminists More Open-Minded on Weight, I expected an article on the fat-acceptance movement (which the Times had reported on fairly recently). But no, this time, feminist open-mindedness on weight has apparently been proven!
I’ll say up front that I did not pay $30 to read the study in full, but here is the abstract:
The present study examined the effect of feminist ascription on perceptions of the physical attractiveness of women ranging in body mass index (BMI). One-hundred and twenty-nine women who self-identified as feminists and 132 who self-identified as non-feminists rated a series of 10 images of women that varied in BMI from emaciated to obese. Results showed no significant differences between feminist and non-feminists in the figure they considered to be maximally attractive. However, feminists were more likely to positively perceive a wider range of body sizes than non-feminists. These results are discussed in relation to possible protective factors against the internalisation of the thin ideal and body objectification.
Well, cool. I buy that. Actually, it makes a lot of sense to me. After all, the first step to changing your perceptions is understanding where they come from.
But based on the Times description of the study, there’s something a little weird going on here:
The photographs were of 10 women, faces concealed and wearing tight gray clothing, who ranged in body mass index from emaciated to obese.
I can only assume that this is part of the methodology, the idea being that the faces of the women could skew the results away from an assessment based merely on body size. But regardless, it does strike me as kind of fucked up to ask women to assess the “attractiveness” of other women only after their humanity has been erased. Of course, we’re asked to judge women in this way on a daily basis; women are constantly carved up and served to us as generic bodies and body parts. We see overweight women with their heads cut off from the field of vision as some form of “respect” every time there’s a story on obesity in the nightly news. We see thin women displayed sexually with their heads obscured or cropped out of the photograph for public titillation. One almost has to wonder if a few of the feminists in this study noticed the trend, got annoyed and overcompensated. After all, this premise seems to buy into the basic if false presumption that you can judge a woman’s attractiveness based on body parts that do not include her head.
And what the hell is up with the tight clothing? Obviously they were trying to not skew perceptions by dressing the larger women in looser clothing — but wouldn’t it have made sense to dress all of the women in well-fitting clothing? It seems to me that clothes showing body size and shape but not clinging to the skin would be fair to every woman, where as the tight clothes buy into a preference towards a certain body type, what with the popular idea that thin women should show off as much as possible and overweight women should wear giant sacks..
Anyway, if anyone has full access to the study, I’d be interested to learn just how much wider the feminist range of “attractive bodies” was to the non-feminist range– and whether it extended further for both over and under-weight bodies, or only one direction. Also, did the women actually identify as “non-feminists,” or did they just answer the question “are you a feminist” with a “no”? I’d say that there’s a clear difference between a woman who says “I’m not a feminist” (most women, sadly) and a woman who says “I’m a non-feminist” (Laura Schlessinger).
The Times does provide us one extra bit of detail about the results — and what a stunning conclusion it leads us to.
The study participants were asked to identify the thinnest and heaviest women they considered “physically attractive.” They were also asked to say which woman they thought was most attractive.
Feminists and nonfeminists tended to agree on which woman was the most attractive. But that woman was described by the researchers as somewhat underweight, suggesting that even feminists cannot fully avoid societal pressures to be thin.
Well I’ll be damned. Who would’ve thought that feminists were real people subject to socialization just like everyone else? Next thing you know, it’ll turn out that feminists have faked orgasms, worn lipstick, changed their last names upon marriage and been all human and everything.
UPDATE: Feminist Advatar answers many of my questions in the comments.
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9 Comments so far
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"No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body." --Margaret Sanger
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"Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less." -- Susan B. Anthony
At the risk of invoking the old stand by excuse that says “looks may not be her best feature”, I will just say that a great personality counts for quite a bit! I don’t say that in jest, nor to account for deficits in perceived attractiveness, but to underscore the idea that it is troubling the faces were obscured, as personality, carriage, and comfort in ones own skin are all contingent to a large degree upon face.
Full disclosure here, as a gay man some would say I may not be the best arbiter of female attractiveness, but if I had to judge a faceless body in tight, ill fitting clothes, there are not many examples I can think that I would refer to as “attractive”, even if it was the traditionally positioned “attractive” tall and svelte size 2.
Cara’s point that the humanity is stripped in this example by obscuring the face, is not a small concern. For me, is the root of attraction.
Ok so I read the study. People were asked to identify as feminists by answering the question ‘would you describe yourself as a feminist?’ -yes, no, unsure (unsure not counted for purposes of the study).
The demographic characteristics (age, weight, education, pay) of both groups were similar, although interestingly non-feminists were better educated, but feminist better paid (who says it doesn’t pay off!!). No characteristic other than feminist identification was found to influence people’s sense of attractiveness.
The ‘ideal’ body, for both groups, had a BMI of 18.45, which falls into the underweight category.
There were ten bodies ranging in weight from the medical categories of emaciated through to obese. Participants were asked to rate the bodies between 1-not at all and 9 extremely ‘physically attractive’. They were additionally asked which body was most physically attractive; which was the largest body they found physically attractive and which was the smallest body they found physcially attractive. Except for figures 3 and 4 (which were the underweight and normal weight), Feminists rated all ten bodies more attractive than non-feminists. This effect was particularly noticeable among the heavier bodies, suggesting that feminists found fatter woman significantly more attractive than non-feminist women. Feminist had a ’signficantly higher’ AR than non-feminists- which means they were more accepting of a wider range of body shapes.
The ten pictures are of real women who fall into different weight categories. They are all wearing identical leotards and leggings- not flattering but not dreadful either. From their body shapes, I am guessing they are wearing underwear underneath. They are standing faced forward with their arms held at 45 degree angles to their bodies. They have a black spot over their faces so they cannot be identified. The pictures are in grey-scale, rather than in colour. I am guessing that all this is so that the study participants rate body size and nothing else, including skin colour. As the researchers comment, as these are real women, there are differences in body shape, leg length etc, which could also influence people’s sense of what is attractive. It is a bit of a weird image, but you do get a good sense of these women’s lumps and bumps, which I think is kind of cool.
Anyway hope this helps.
Great info, thanks! Most if it is what I suspsected — namely that the women were “not feminists” rather than “non-feminists” and that the effect would be more pronounced the larger the women got. I am happy though to see that feminists rated all bodies more highly than the other women did. It’s also good to know that the weight demographics were similar — obviously if they weren’t, it could throw a big wrench in the whole thing.
I love how those who replied ‘no’ as to whether they identify as feminist are suddenly referred to as “NON-FEMINISTS”, dun dun dun… I definitely agree with your last paragraph as well, who knew feminists were also human? Blasphemy! Thanks to Feminist Avatar for filling in the gaps of the study, this was definitely interesting.
That is really interesting.
Question: does “non-feminist” mean something beyond just “non-” + “feminist”? Because you seem to take it mean “anti-feminist” or “sexist” or “chauvinist” or something, and I don’t see why.
Did this line from the Times article stand out in red, bold highlight to others as much as it did to me:
“…the findings added evidence to the argument that women who considered themselves feminists might be less likely to be taken in by the notion that the most important thing for women is to be thin.”
Firstly, not to be judgmental or exclusive, but any self-described feminist who does think the most important thing for women is to be thin is no feminist.
Secondly, are there actually people out there who think that the most important thing is for women to be thin? Not even stylish, beautiful, or graceful, never mind well-spoken, intelligent, witty, funny, socially concerned, judicious, a real balls-breaker, etc?
I think if we are to gauge the moment at which our civilization has fully disintegrated, it will be when half the population’s primary goal in life is to be as small as possible. Please, someone, tell me we’re not there yet?
[responding to three different people]
In good news, the authors of the paper recognise this. They say in the Discussion: “In general, this would seem to provide support for the suggestion that the thin ideal is so pervasive in contemporary cultures that even women who self-identify as being feminists are not protected against the internalisation of this ideal”
They also recognise the limitations of the single-item feminist self-ascription scale:
“A number of limitations to this study are also worth noting. First, single-item feminist ascription scales do not capture the complexity of feminist beliefs, and being a ‘feminist’ may mean different things to different people (McCabe, 2005; Swami & Tovée, 2006). This is also important because different aspects of feminist beliefs may be related to body image in different ways (Myers & Crowther, 2007). Future work would, therefore, do well to include multi-item feminist ascription scales (e.g., the Feminist Perspectives Scale; Henley, Meng, O’Brien, McCarthy, & Sockloskie, 1998), or failing that, a continuous single-item scale of feminist ascription. ”
The paper concludes:
“Although it may not be the perfect buffer against thin-ideal internalisation, feminism does appear to afford women a more inclusive perception of who is physically attractive. That is, feminist beliefs appear to allow women to counter the prevailing stigma attached to overweight and obese bodies, even if feminist women do not radically differ from their non-feminist counterparts in their perception of maximally attractive figures. Identifying specific aspects of feminism that influence the rejection of society’s objectification of the female body may prove important for the conceptualisation of positive body image.”
As an additional note, they are all pale-skinned. Pic here.
Oh, hell, yeah.
The reason for blacking out the faces makes sense to me, thanks Feminist Avatar. I’m glad that it was more about protecting the privacy of the volunteers than about dehumanizing them.
Blockng out the faces would have pretty much made it impossible for me to judge. Why? Because the first thing I notice about people is their eyes. Body type is very low on the priority list for me in terms of attractiveness of either sex.
I’ve had lovers who were waifish rail-thin, hard-bodies, and with pot-bellies. Maybe I’m an anomaly, but BMI just isn’t a deal-breaker for me..