Feminists hate “toxic” beauty standards but still fall victim to them

Understanding the impact of media representation is a major focus of modern psychology, especially regarding how women view their own bodies. Embracing feminist ideals helps people recognize and push back against unrealistic beauty standards. Taking a feminist stance does not automatically shield a person from feeling insecure about their own physical appearance. A new study published in Journal of Applied Social Psychology reveals that while women who strongly identify as feminists readily critique idealized body types, they remain vulnerable to the negative psychological consequences of those standards.

In traditional advertising and across social media platforms, people are constantly exposed to images emphasizing thinness, youth, and physical perfection. These traits are largely unattainable for the average person. The sheer repetition of these images leads many women to feel a mandatory pressure to conform. Psychologists refer to this process as internalization.

Through internalization and appearance-based social comparison, unrealistic beauty ideals can inflict heavy damage on mental health. Women often evaluate their own bodies unfavorably against the glowing models they see on their feeds. This habit increases self-objectification, which happens when a person begins viewing themselves merely as an object to be evaluated by others. Over time, these pressures can lead to a depressed mood, body dissatisfaction, and an increased desire for cosmetic surgery or extreme dieting.

Many advocates propose shifting the culture toward broader definitions of beauty. They suggest highlighting diverse features rather than adhering to a single, narrow aesthetic. Engaging with feminism is often suggested as a mental buffer against harmful gender norms. Feminism inherently involves advocating for equality and resisting traditional constraints, leading some to assume that feminists might be immune to the psychological traps of diet culture and beauty standards.

Psychology researcher Joshua Tenn of the University of Bath led the new investigation to test this assumption. Tenn and his colleagues, Małgorzata Gocłowska and Melissa Atkinson, wanted to map out precisely when and how feminism protects people from toxic media. They approached the topic through a framework called the multiple identity perspective. This perspective suggests that not all feminists possess the exact same psychological profile.

Instead, a person’s reaction to cultural norms might depend on how their feminist identity intersects with their identification with women as a general social group. Some women are dual identifiers, meaning they feel a strong sense of belonging to both feminists and women as a whole. Others are distinctive feminists, holding a strong feminist identity but feeling less attached to the traditional social group of women. The researchers suspected that these distinct identity profiles might shape how people respond to manipulative advertising.

To gather data, the research team recruited 433 women for an online experiment. Before viewing any media, the participants completed surveys to measure their levels of feminist identification and their identification with women as a group. Participants self-reported the strength of these identities on numerical scales. The researchers then randomly assigned the participants to view one of two sets of images.

The first group viewed 15 images of models who fit the conventional aesthetic ideal. These models were uniformly young, thin, and blemish-free. The second group viewed a matched set of non-idealized images. These alternative images featured models with fuller bodies, visible skin conditions, or older faces. The researchers then asked the participants a series of questions to gauge their emotional reactions, their beliefs about beauty, and their feelings regarding their own bodies.

The results confirmed that viewing idealized images generally harms self-esteem. Across the board, participants exposed to the conventional models felt less empowered than those who viewed the diverse models. The idealized imagery prompted feelings of nervousness and unattractiveness. Those same participants also reported a stronger immediate motivation to engage in weight-control behaviors and alter their appearances.

The researchers then looked at how feminist identification influenced these reactions. Women who scored high in feminist identification reacted to the conventional images with strong feelings of unfairness. They experienced a negative emotional spike characterized by annoyance and anger. These participants were highly motivated to challenge the media’s portrayal of women, advocating for broader concepts of physical beauty.

In terms of ideological resistance, a strong feminist identity worked exactly as expected. The participants saw the toxic messaging and actively rejected it on a societal level. But the researchers found a striking disconnect when they looked at how these women evaluated their own bodies. A feminist identity did not translate into higher state body satisfaction or stronger body appreciation.

In fact, high feminist identification was linked to less favorable comparisons between the participants’ own bodies and the models in the pictures. A feminist worldview allowed these women to recognize the manipulated nature of the advertisements, but it failed to stop them from feeling bad about themselves in the moment. The protective effects of feminism seem to apply to how people evaluate society at large rather than how they judge their own reflections.

The researchers then analyzed the second identity dimension. They looked at the participants who strongly identified with women as a general category. This specific group showed increased vulnerability to the idealized advertisements. When exposed to the conventional models, participants with high identification with women were far more likely to endorse the idea of getting cosmetic surgery themselves.

The team also evaluated the theory regarding distinctive feminists versus dual identifiers. Distinctive feminists, those with high feminist identification but low identification with women, tended to adopt the broadest conceptualizations of beauty. Some of the data originally suggested that this specific group possessed stronger psychological resistance. After applying strict statistical corrections, the differences between these subgroups were not statistically significant, meaning the researchers could only view this pattern as a tentative trend.

A few limitations shape how these findings should be interpreted. The relationship between feminist identification and body image was measured in a correlational manner. The researchers can confidently say that these traits and reactions are linked in the population. They cannot conclusively state that acquiring a feminist identity causes a specific reaction to a magazine cover.

There is a possibility that the relationship runs in the other direction. Individuals who already hold broader conceptualizations of beauty might be naturally drawn to feminist groups. Additionally, the average participant in this sample scored relatively high on both identity scales. This made it somewhat challenging to find a robust number of participants who fit into the lower-scoring categories, potentially skewing the demographic balance.

Future investigations could track individuals over time. Observing how a developing feminist identity interacts with body image during critical life stages, such as adolescence or perimenopause, could yield helpful insights. Teenagers are intensely affected by social comparison, and a longitudinal study might reveal if early feminist education offers any long-term buffering against eating disorders. Other researchers might explore how the specific content of a person’s feminist beliefs alters their vulnerability to media pressure.

Resistance to gender norms does not equate to personal immunity from them. Humans are social creatures who absorb the expectations of the cultures they live in. While activism offers a lens to critique unrealistic standards, it requires an immense amount of self-control to suppress unfavorable self-comparisons entirely. A political identity can change the way a person views the world, but dismantling internalized beauty ideals is a separate psychological battle.

The study, “Feminists Resist Unrealistic Beauty Standards but Are Not Invulnerable to Their Negative Consequences,” was authored by Joshua J. Tenn, Małgorzata A. Gocłowska, and Melissa J. Atkinson.