magazine issue 2 2012 / Issue 14

“Look in my eyes. I said in my eyes!”: Antecedents and Consequences of (Self-) Objectification

• written by Philippe Bernard, Christophe Leys & Olivier Klein
• edited by Rosanna Guadagno

Self-objectification: Internalizing the objectifying gaze

In line with feminist theorizing (e.g., Bartky, 1990; Nussbaum, 1995), Objectification Theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) argues that the focus on female physical appearance embodied in media representations and the objectifying gaze leads to gender differences in the development of body image and attitudes towards physical appearance. As one’s peers and the media continually remind women of the importance of physical appearance, they progressively internalize the way people look at themselves and become increasingly preoccupied with their physical appearance. This internalization of a perceiver’s perspective produces what Fredrickson and Roberts (1997) call self-objectification. It is defined as focusing attention on aspects of one’s own body that can be viewed and evaluated by others (i.e., physical appearance, e.g., Quinn, Kallen, Twenge, & Fredrickson, 2006).

As a consequence, objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) predicts that women are more likely to suffer from the detrimental consequences of objectifying pressures. Self-objectification is operationalized as a stable personality trait (usually trough the Self-Objectification Questionnaire: cf. Noll & Fredrickson, 1998) or a as a state, via an experimental manipulation consisting, for example, in wearing a swimsuit vs. a sweater in front of a mirror (e.g., Frerickson, Roberts, Noll, Quinn, & Twenge, 1998; Quinn, Kallen, & Cathey, 2006). In an illustration of the detrimental effects of self-objectification, Fredrickson et al. (1998) demonstrated that for women (but not men), wearing a swimsuit (i.e., the state of self-objectification) heightened body shame, and impaired math performance, compared to wearing a sweater. These effects specifically occurred for individuals who already reported a high level of self-objectification.

Self-objectification is likely to exert a variety of psychological consequences among women especially, including body shame (e.g., Noll & Fredrickson, 1998) and eating disorders (e.g., Calogero, 2009). It also impairs psychological well-being (e.g., Mercurio & Landry, 2008), performance on tasks requiring peak motivational states (e.g., Fredrickson et al., 1998), self-efficacy (Gapinski, Brownel, & LaFrance, 2003), and sexual satisfaction (Calogero & Thompson, 2009; for a review, see Moradi & Huang, 2008).

Furthermore, women who self-objectify are more likely to objectify others, yielding a vicious circle. For example, women who are preoccupied with their weight and shape consider these dimensions as much more important than others when evaluating other women (Beebe, Hombeck, Schober, Lane, & Rosa, 1996). Strelan and Hargreaves (2005) found that self-objectification traits predict objectification when women evaluate other women: The more women focus on their appearance, the stronger they think that other women focus on theirs. Furthermore, Bernard, Gervais, Allen, Campomizzi, & Klein (2012b) found that the stronger people self-objectify, the more they perceive sexually objectified others similar to objects (i.e., self-objectification is associated to an impaired whole bodies recognition).