Why women believe that all men love skinny supermodels
'11.01.2021'
Source: Air force
The problem of women's hatred of their own body under the influence of the media, which promotes practically unattainable ideals of beauty, has been known for a long time, reminds Air force.
However, as the American researchers Sarah Johnson and Rene Engeln, who published their work in the Sex Roles, found out, the delusion of many women also stems from the fact that they sincerely believe that all men are really crazy about skinny women.
Johnson and Engeln set up a series of their own experiments, but unlike all previous ones, they invited its participants (both women and men) to evaluate the photographs published in print, not of supermodels, but of ordinary women.
In the first case, a group of students - boys and girls in approximately equal proportions - were asked to rate the shapes and attractiveness of 13 women in photographs on a scale from 1 “too thin” to 7 “too fat”, and on the same scale from 1 to 7 from “Extremely ugly” to “immensely attractive”.
Then the participants in the experiment had to guess how the representatives of the opposite sex would rate the same women.
The researchers found that giving women in photographs generally the same ratings, participants in the experiment were not able to guess how the same photos would be evaluated by representatives of the opposite sex.
Scientists have called this phenomenon "parallel delusion" - that is, both sexes overestimate the ability of the opposite sex to idealize.
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Johnson and Engeln then set up a second experiment using the same design, but this time the age of the participants ranged from 18 to 86 years.
This time, there was already a noticeable difference in the ratings: women tended to rate models as too skinny, while men rated them higher for attractiveness.
However, when it was necessary to guess how the representatives of the opposite sex would appreciate these photographs, everything went according to the scheme of the first experiment. Both men and women assumed that the other sex would rate models higher than they actually did.
The study's authors are very hopeful that their discovery will help reduce the negative effects of the prevailing unhealthy beauty standards.
It is not enough just to explain to women that the ideals of female beauty presented by the media have little to do with reality, Johnson and Engeln believe. It is also important to help women realize that they overestimate men's preferences in the field of beauty.
