There are several theories of human embodiment. One of the most interesting and potentially useful in terms of body awareness, gender identity, and interpersonal relations is the Body Conceptualization Theory. This theory posits that men and women experience their bodies in different ways. The essential distinction is that women tend to experience their bodies more as an object of discrete parts while men experience their bodies as a process. The difference is between the body as experienced as a group of parts versus the body experienced holistically by its functions. This makes the female view of body-self one of a narrower, object-oriented one while the male view is more encompassing (Franzoi, 1995).
It is well documented that people tend to see the entire, global totality of a structure first and then the parts or local details afterward. The female body, however, violates this rule because several of its parts are highly sexualized, specifically breasts, waist, legs, and buttocks. Viewers of female bodies, both men and women, have a sexual body part recognition bias in which they see women’s sexual body parts in isolation from the entire body. The same viewers, however, see the male body as a whole rather than its sexual parts (Gervaise et al., 2011, 20122; Seitz, 2002; Tanaka & Farah, 1993).
Women are subject to a disproportionate focusing on their physical traits in both their everyday lives and in the media (Archer et al., 1983; Kozee et al., 2007). This then leads to self-objectification and objectification by others. Research evidence strongly indicates that when a woman focuses on her own physical appearance, she will, in turn, begin objectifying herself. One experiment had male and female test confederates “ogle” female test by gazing at them from face to body as opposed to just gazing at only their faces. After these experiences, women performed less well on math problems, became more passive in their behaviors (Gervais, Vescio, & Allen, 2011), and less supportive of the notion of women’s civil rights (Calogero, 2013). These results indicate that self-objectification is a quasi-unconscious response on the part of women (Heflick & Goldenberg, 2014). This is the basis for the view that the female body concept is one of body-as-object. (I have written more on the problem of objectification in another lecture-blog: Objectifying Yourself and Others.)
Men are less vulnerable to self-objectification than women to a degree for several reasons. First, they are treated less as sexual objects outside of specific situations. They report lower concerns about their appearances and their trait for self-objectification is weaker. They can be negatively impacted by objectification, but the effects are far weaker than for women. This centrality of the body-as-process in male body concept was demonstrated in a study by Tucker (1983) in which he found that college males’ degree of muscular strength was not only related to positive body esteem, but it was also related to more positive general self-esteem, social confidence, and self-satisfaction.
Yet, men do have some vulnerability to objectification. First, media images emphasizing the aesthetic appearance of the ideal male body over its performance abilities causes male views to experience body dissatisfaction. Two studies of male adolescents viewing male models in advertisements in Sports Illustrated confirmed this (Farquhar & Wasylkiw, 2007). It found that the graphic images were increasingly emphasizing the body-as-object rather than body-as-process. Those images that emphasize the former tend to foster body dissatisfaction while performance images of the body-as-process were uplifting (Farquhar & Wasylkiw, 2007). One special exception is in the case of gay men who are more sensitive than heterosexual men to objectification, but still less than women. In short, there is a significant gap between men and women in how they construe the effects of objectification (Newheiser, LaFrance, & Dovidio, 2010). Research has found that men are especially vulnerable to television images fueling body image dissatisfaction more so than images from other media (Allen & Mulgrew, 2020). In any event, the male body is increasingly objectified in this medium and that is indeed troubling.
Closing Thoughts
The cultural conditioning of the body as a static object for aesthetic or erotic evaluation is a more powerful force than valuing the body as a dynamic process of physical performance. Because cultural standards of the ideal body form are so narrow and extreme, they are nearly impossible to meet and so self-evaluations of women of their own bodies tend to be predominantly negative. Overall, men and women have more positive attitudes toward the functionality of their bodies (i.e., process aspects) than they do for different body parts (i.e., object aspects). This explains in part why women score lower in body satisfaction than men. Women who are highly feminine and have strongly internalized the cultural body standards will experience more body image disturbance than others.
The situation, however, is not just a simple dichotomy of male = process = good and female = object = bad as masculinity and femininity are extremely complex states of somatic experience, personality, and social roles and so have a wide range of variation. The key is the degree to which a person identifies themselves as masculine or feminine. For example, men with more feminine personality traits are more attuned to their bodies as objects than are women with low femininity scores. In other words, male or female, gay or straight, no one escapes the unwanted condition of normative discontent which is the worldwide state of generalized body unhappiness (Tantleff-Dunn, Barnes, & Gokee-Larose, 2011). This normative discontent is based on meeting the cultural standards for what constitutes physical beauty, female and male. Yet, focusing on body functionality over body appearance offers many benefits for body image health. Finally, current techniques of improving body image include a de-emphasis of physical beauty—or a cognitive reframing of it along healthier and more realistic lines—along with exploring the value and joy to be found in the body’s functionality (Shane, 2023).1
Paul Shane, Ph.D., LMT
Director, Academic Content
References
Allen, A. & Mulgrew, K. (2020). Differential media effects on male body satisfaction and mood. Australian Journal of Psychology 72(1), p. 3-10.
Archer, D., Iritani, B., Kimes, D., & Barios, M. (1983). Faceism: Five studies of sex differences in facial prominence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 45, p. 723–735.
Calogero, R. (2013). Objects don’t object: Evidence that objectification disrupts women’s social activism. Psychological Science 24, p. 312–318.
Farquhar, J. & Wasylkiw, L. (2007). Media images of men: Trends and consequences of body conceptualization. Psychology of Men & Masculinity 8(3), p. 145–160.
Franzoi, S. (1995). The body-as-object versus the body-as-process: Gender differences and gender considerations. Sex Roles 33(5/6), p. 417-437.
Fredrickson, B. & Roberts, T. (1997). Objectification theory: Toward understanding women’s lived experience and mental health risks. Psychology of Women Quarterly 21, p. 173–206
Gervais, S., Vescio, T., & Allen, J. (2011). When what you see is what you get: The consequences of the objectifying gaze for men and women. Psychology of Women Quarterly 35, p. 5–17.
Gervais, S., Vescio, T., Förster, J., Maass, A., & Suitner, C. (2012). Seeing women as objects: The sexual body part recognition bias. European Journal of Social Psychology, DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.1890.
Heflick, N. & Goldenberg, J. (2014). Seeing eye to body: The literal objectification of women. Current Directions in Psychological Science 23(3), p. 225-229.
Kozee, H., Tylka, T., Augustus-Horvath, C., & Denchik, A. (2007). Development and psychometric evaluation of the Interpersonal Sexual Objectification Scale. Psychology of Women Quarterly 31, p. 176–189.
Newheiser, A., LaFrance, M., & Dovidio, J. (2010). Others as objects: How women and men perceive the consequences of self-objectification. Sex Roles 63, p. 657-671.
Seitz, K. (2002). Parts and wholes in person recognition: Developmental trends. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 82, p. 367–381.
Shane, P. (2023). Principles of Somatic Psychology: A Transdisciplinary Approach for the Holistic Healthcare Professions. Brecksville, OH: Center for Bodymind Education.
Tanaka, J. & Farah, M. (1993). Parts and wholes in face recognition. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 46, p. 225–245.
Tantleff-Dunn, S., Barnes, R., & Gokee-Larose, J. (2011). It’s not just a “woman thing:” The current state of normative discontent. Eating Disorders 19(5), p. 392-402.
Tucker, L. (1983). Muscular strength and mental health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 45, p. 1255-1360.
Revised 02-01-26