Feeling ashamed about your own body. Female body-shaming is encouraged by social media. It implies that a girl or a woman who does not conform to specific ideologies around femininity is criticized and induced to be ashamed of her body-type (e.g., looks, size, weight, height, appearance, etc.).
Published in Chapter:
Fifty Shades of Pretty and Thin: Psychological Research on Gender Stereotypes in Media and Advertising
Andrea Carta (University of Pavia, Italy), Elena Carraro (Middlesex University, UK), Simona Adelaide Martini (Rocca-Stendoro Institute of Clinical Psychology, Italy), and Giulia Perasso (University of Pavia, Italy)
Copyright: © 2021
|Pages: 20
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-6458-5.ch011
Abstract
Today, gender representation in media and advertising could be responsible for creating and maintaining female stereotypes that have a negative impact on women's psychological and social well-being. From a psychological point of view, women have to face several issues including the objectification of their body, which could have negative effects on their mental, emotional, and physical health; furthermore, the portrayal of the female body as a sexual object could be associated with aggressive inclinations and behaviours against women, but also with cyber-bullying victimization in terms of body-shaming and revenge porn. Finally, it is relevant to consider how the use of gender stereotypes in advertising and media could lead to a distorted perception of gender roles, mostly based on outdated socio-cultural expectations of how men and women should behave and present themselves, that could be passed on to the next generations.