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Javier E

For Teenage Girls, Swimsuit Season Never Ends - The New York Times - 2 views

well.blogs.nytimes.com/...rls-swimsuit-season-never-ends

swimsuit girls self-image concentration test physical psychology

shared by Javier E on 11 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • That’s what researchers in a classic study from 1998 found when they put female and male undergraduates in dressing rooms with a mirror and either swimsuits or sweaters in a range of sizes. The students were instructed to try on the assigned clothing and wear it for a while before filling out a sham evaluation of the apparel.
  • To confirm that they were detecting a detrimental effect of wearing a bathing suit, and not anxieties about math, researchers ran a second study. This time, instead of math questions, they used a test of the capacity for focused attention and again found that women wearing swimsuits scored lower than women wearing sweaters
  • In short, when young women are prompted to reflect on their physical appearance, they seem to lose intellectual focus.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Having to take a test in swimwear seems not to distract most young men, but it does distract many young women, almost certainly due to the absurd beauty standards to which they are disproportionately subjected. In the words of the researchers, the swimsuit study effectively demonstrated “the psychological costs of raising girls in a culture that persistently objectifies the female body.”
  • Now, swimsuit season, especially for adolescent girls, no longer ends with summer because girls are using social media to share carefully crafted bikini shots all the time.
  • these are images with which girls become especially engaged. According to Dr. Walsh, “Girls are not comparing themselves to media ideals as much as one would expect, but they are making micro-comparisons to their peers. It’s not me versus Gisele Bündchen in a bikini, it’s me versus my good friend Amy in our bikinis.”
  • A new review of studies looking at the psychological effects of social media found that young people who spend a lot of time appraising their friends’ online photos ultimately feel worse about their own bodies.
  • Online imagery allows adolescents to observe one another in detail and gives unprecedented power to the age-old teenage preoccupation with appearance. We want to help our teenagers minimize the harm that can come from social media use, but the deluge of digital activity can make it hard to know where to start.
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