Sexual objectification versus empowerment: Examining the effects of sexualized women's facial expression on viewers' evaluations of social cognition and self-objectification.

Objectification scholarship highlights how traditional media portrayals oftentimes direct attention toward women's bodies and away from their faces which communicate important social information. This study sought to investigate how thin-ideal, white women's facial expression potentially attenuates the negative effects of appearing in a sexually objectifying manner using validated imagery. In a 2 × 3 between-subjects experiment (N = 1001 U.S. adult women; Mage = 42.56, SDage = 12.72), portraits of women varied in their sexualization (non-sexualized vs. sexualized) and facial expression (neutral expression, low-intensity smiling, high-intensity smiling) to better understand how these factors influence dimensions of social cognition (competence, warmth, authenticity), self-promotional attributions, and viewers' own self-objectification. Results revealed that viewers rated sexualized (vs. non-sexualized) women lower in competence and authenticity, as well ascribed more self-promotional explanations for their behavior. Moreover, exposure to sexualized women heightened viewers' self-objectification, regardless of facial expression. Results also indicated that smiling intensity positively influenced viewers' ratings of social cognition. However, there is little evidence that smiling intensity overrides the negative effects of sexualization. Implications for the sexual objectification of women are discussed.

How social media images of sexualized young women elicit appearance commentary from their peers and reinforce objectification.

Social media platforms like Instagram enable users to share, view, and provide feedback on images, including photographs of oneself (e.g., selfies). In a 3 × 2 between-subjects online experiment, we investigated how women evaluate and react to photographs of their peers on social media and the role that feedback might play in both objectification of others and oneself. U.S. adult young women (N = 256; Mage = 20.06, SDage = 1.57) viewed social media images of sexualized peers, non-sexualized peers, or landscapes (control). Then, they provided feedback on the images via social media hashtags (#) or not (tagging vs. no tagging). Results revealed that participants who viewed sexualized peers demonstrated the highest levels of state self-objectification and were more likely to dehumanize the women in the photos. Hashtags generated by participants indicated that those who viewed sexualized peers engaged in greater appearance-related objectification, specifically related to body parts, and sexual objectification than those who viewed non-sexualized peers. In addition, generating hashtags that specifically focused on body parts heightened viewers' state self-objectification. These findings illustrate the complexities of social media content production and consumption, particularly for young women.