Understanding the influence of media representations is a major focus of modern psychology, especially regarding how women view their bodies. Embracing feminist ideals helps people recognize and push back against unrealistic beauty standards. Taking a feminist stance does not automatically eliminate insecurities about your appearance. A new study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology reveals that while women who identify as feminists are more likely to criticize idealized body types, they remain vulnerable to the negative psychological effects of those standards.
Through traditional advertising and social media platforms, people are constantly exposed to images that emphasize thinness, youth, and physical perfection. These traits are almost unattainable to the average person. The repetition of these images causes many women to feel coercive pressure to conform. Psychologists call this process internalization.
Through internalization and social comparison based on appearance, unrealistic beauty ideals can take a toll on mental health. Women often judge their bodies unfavorably against the glowing models they see on their feeds. This habit increases self-objectification. This happens when a person begins to see himself or herself simply as an object to be judged by others. Over time, these pressures can lead to depressed mood, body dissatisfaction, and an increased desire for cosmetic surgery or extreme dieting.
Many advocates suggest moving the culture toward a broader definition of beauty. They suggest emphasizing diverse features rather than adhering to a single, narrow aesthetic. Commitment to feminism is often suggested as a psychological buffer against harmful gender norms. Because feminism inherently involves advocating equality and resisting traditional constraints, some believe that feminists are immune to the psychological trappings of food culture and beauty standards.
Joshua Teng, a psychology researcher at the University of Bath, led a new study to test this hypothesis. Teng and his colleagues Maugorzata Gotłowska and Melissa Atkinson wanted to map out exactly when and how feminism would protect people from harmful media. They approached this topic through a framework called the multiple identity perspective. This perspective suggests that not all feminists have exactly the same psychological profile.
Rather, one’s response to cultural norms may be determined by how one’s feminist identity intersects with one’s identification with women as a general social group. Some women have dual identities. This means that I feel a strong sense of belonging to both feminists and women as a whole. There are also unique feminists who have a strong feminist identity but feel less attachment to traditional women’s social groups. The researchers suspected that these different identity profiles might shape people’s reactions to manipulative advertising.
To collect the data, the research team recruited 433 women into an online experiment. Before viewing the media, participants completed a questionnaire measuring their level of identification with feminists and their level of identification with women as a group. Participants self-reported the strength of these identities on a numerical scale. The researchers then randomly assigned participants to view one of two sets of images.
The first group viewed 15 images of models that fit traditional aesthetic ideals. These models were uniformly young, thin, and unblemished. The second group viewed a matched set of non-idealized images. These alternate images featured models with voluptuous bodies, visible skin conditions, or aged faces. The researchers then asked participants a series of questions to measure their emotional responses, beliefs about beauty, and feelings about their bodies.
The results confirmed that viewing idealized images generally impairs self-esteem. Overall, participants exposed to traditional models felt less powerful than those exposed to diverse models. The idealized image made them feel tense and unattractive. These same participants also reported stronger immediate motivation to engage in weight management behaviors and change their appearance.
The researchers then examined how feminist identity influenced these responses. Women who scored high on feminist identity responded to traditional images with strong feelings of unfairness. They experienced a spike in negative emotions characterized by irritability and anger. These participants were highly motivated to challenge media portrayals of women and advocate for broader notions of physical beauty.
In terms of ideological resistance, a strong feminist identity worked exactly as expected. Participants recognized harmful messages and actively rejected them at a societal level. But when researchers looked at how women evaluated their bodies, they found a striking disconnect. Feminist identity did not lead to higher state body satisfaction or stronger body awareness.
Indeed, high feminist identification was associated with less favorable comparisons between participants’ own bodies and the models in the photographs. Feminist worldviews allowed women to recognize the manipulative nature of advertising, but it didn’t stop them from feeling bad about themselves in that moment. The protective effects of feminism seem to apply more to how people evaluate society as a whole than to how they evaluate their own reflections.
The researchers then analyzed the second aspect of identity. They looked at participants who identified strongly as women as a general category. This particular group was shown to have increased vulnerability to idealized advertising. When exposed to traditional models, participants high in female identification were much more likely to support the idea of themselves undergoing cosmetic surgery.
The research team also evaluated distinctively feminist and dual identifier theories. Distinct feminists, those who identified high with feminists but low with women, tended to adopt the broadest conceptualization of beauty. Some of the data originally suggested that this particular group had stronger psychological resistance. After applying strict statistical corrections, the differences between these subgroups were not statistically significant. In other words, researchers could only view this pattern as a tentative trend.
There are several limitations to how these findings should be interpreted. The relationship between feminist identity and body image was measured correlationally. Researchers can confidently say that these traits and responses are associated within the population. They cannot conclude that acquiring a feminist identity will lead to a particular reaction to magazine covers.
It is also possible that the relationship will go in the opposite direction. People who already have a broader concept of beauty may be naturally drawn to feminist groups. Furthermore, the average participant in this sample scored relatively high on both identity scales. This made it somewhat difficult to find large numbers of participants who fell into the low-scoring categories, potentially skewing the demographic balance.
Future research may track individuals over time. Observing how feminist identity development interacts with body image during key life stages such as adolescence and perimenopause may provide useful insights. Teens are highly influenced by social comparison, and longitudinal studies may reveal whether long-term feminist education has a long-term buffering effect on eating disorders. Other researchers might investigate how the specific content of an individual’s feminist beliefs alters their vulnerability to media pressure.
Resistance to gender norms does not imply personal absolution from gender norms. Humans are social creatures who absorb the expectations of the culture in which they live. Activism provides a lens through which to criticize unrealistic standards, but it takes a tremendous amount of self-control to completely suppress unfavorable self-comparisons. Political identity can change the way a person sees the world, but dismantling internalized beauty ideals is another psychological battle.
The study, “Feminists Resist Unrealistic Beauty Standards, But Not Invulnerable to Their Negative Consequences,” was authored by Joshua J. Teng, Maugorzata A. Gocłowska, and Melissa J. Atkinson.
