Women: Beliefs in one’s sexual power lead both to negative (via self‐objectification, eating less) and positive (via sexual subjectivity, more sexual desire and pleasure) consequences for mental health

Sex is power belief and women’s mental health: The mediating roles of self‐objectification and sexual subjectivity. Matthias De Wilde, Annalisa Casini, Robin Wollast, Stéphanie Demoulin. European Journal of Social Psychology, November 12 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2643

Abstract: Sex is power belief (SIPB) positively relates to self‐objectification. This research aims at expanding this finding. We propose that SIPB involves an instrumental view of one’s own body (i.e., self‐objectification) that leads women to experience the negative consequences classically associated with self‐objectification. We further suggest that SIPB positively relates to sexual subjectivity—multidimensional sexual self‐perceptions and positive sexual experiences—and that such relation counterbalances some of the negative effects of SIPB. We examine the effect of SIPB on women’s negative eating attitudes and sexual satisfaction, and test the mediating roles of self‐objectification and sexual subjectivity in three studies (N1 = 121, N2 = 296, N3 = 320). Results supported our predictions that beliefs in one’s sexual power lead both to negative (via self‐objectification) and positive (via sexual subjectivity) consequences for women’s mental health. The discussion focuses on the potential consequences of SIPB at both individual and collective levels.


 General Discussion

The overall aim of the present research was to provide a more complete and nuanced
picture of the relationship between SIPB and SO. More precisely, across three studies, we
aimed to examine the consequences of SIPB on women’s health (i.e., negative eating
attitudes and sexual satisfaction) and to assess two possible underlying mechanisms of these
relationships (i.e., SO and sexual subjectivity).
Results of studies 1, 2 and 3, indicated that SIPB was positively related to SO.
Women who perceive that their body is a source of power are more prone to focus on the
observable part of themselves and to consider it as important for their self-concept (i.e., selfobjectify).
These results are in line with the idea that some women consider that matching
beauty and thinness standards is a stairway to power over men (Erchull & Liss, 2013b, 2014).
Indeed, media in contemporary occidental society teach women from an early age that
sexualized behaviors are rewarded (Murnen & Smolak, 2012) and that they can – or even
should – feel empowered when expressing and displaying their sexuality (Erchull & Liss,
2013ab; Tolman, 2012). In this sense, these results replicated prior findings from Erchull and
Liss (2013a) which reported a positive correlation between SIPB and SO. In addition, our
results are in line with prior studies that reported a positive relationship between variables
conceptually close to SIPB (e.g., beauty as currency and enjoyment of sexualization) and SO
(Calogero, et al., 2017; Erchull & Liss, 2014).
Moreover, in line with the literature on SO (Moradi & Huang, 2008; Roberts et al.,
2018), results of studies 1, 2, and 3 showed that the positive relationship between SIPB and
SO is related to deleterious consequences for women’s health, such as increasing women’s
negative eating attitudes and decreasing women’s sexual satisfaction (considered as a health
indicator; Higgins, Mullinax, Trussell, Davidson, & Moore, 2011). This result legitimates the
concern of scholars about the illusory nature of feeling a sense of power using their body
(Calogero & Siegel, 2018; Gill, 2008, 2012; Liss et al., 2010; Anderson, 2014). Accordingly,
our results indicate that SIPB is related to women’s attempt to comply with men’s
expectations (e.g., negative eating attitudes). Further, some scholars claimed that women who
experience a sense of power through the use of their body have actually internalized
extremely deeply the objectifying perspective of society (e.g., Gill, 2012) and that this source
of power is implicitly reserved to women who best fit men’s expectations (Gill, 2008). Our
findings support scholars’ concerns with the fact that women’s desire, pleasure, and
subjectivity could be devalued by the message that their sense of power is, in fact, a “false
consciousness marketed to them by a sexualized advertising culture” (Lamb & Peterson,
2012, p. 705). Taken together, these results converge with the idea that, subjectively
empowering or not, SO remains deleterious for women’s health and sexual functioning.
In addition, on top of the deleterious consequences SIPB has via SO, results of
Studies 2 and 3 also indicated that SIPB positively relates to sexual satisfaction via an
increase in sexual subjectivity. Consistent with Peterson’s claim (2010), our results show that
beliefs in one’s sexual power increase women sense of empowerment, their subjective right
to feel attractive and sexually desirable (Horne & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2006), their perception
of efficacy and entitlement to sexual desire and pleasure (Tolman, 2002, 2012), and their
sexual self-reflection (Zimmer-Gembeck & French, 2016). Because increased sexual
subjectivity relates positively to one’s sexual satisfaction (Horne & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2006;
Zimmer-Gembeck & French, 2016), this translates into a positive relationship between SIPB
and sexual satisfaction and an overriding of the deleterious consequences SIPB has on sexual
satisfaction via an increase in SO. Interestingly, additional analyses reported in studies 2 and
3 seem to underline the important driving role of two sub-components of the sexual
subjectivity construct in the relationship between SIPB and sexual satisfaction, i.e., sexual
body esteem and perceived sexual efficacy. Future research should be conducted to further
replicate this unexpected results, and to provide a better understanding of these relationships.