Heterosexual Female and Male Body Image and Body Concept in the Context of Attraction Ideals

Literature Review Heterosexual Male and Female Body Image Heterosexual males have been largely overlooked in socio-cultural research on body image. The primary focus of body image scholarship has centered on women across sexual orientations and homosexual men. Specifically, the majority of research on body image has concluded that gay men and heterosexual women experience the most body dissatisfaction (Brand, Rothblum, & Soloman, 1991; Conner, Johnson, & Grogan, 2004; Feingold & Mazzella, 1998; French, Story, Remafedi, Resnick, & Blum, 1994; Muth & Cash, 1997; Siever, 1994). Similarly, Morrison, Morrison, and Sager (2004) conducted a meta-analysis, synthesizing the research on body image and sexuality. Their analysis also found that gay men experience less body satisfaction than heterosexual men and heterosexual women experience slightly less body satisfaction than lesbian women. Furthermore, in the instances where heterosexual male body appears in the literature, it is placed in opposition to research about homosexual men (Lakkis, Ricciardelli, & William, 1999; Silberstein, Mishkind, Striegel-Moore, Timko, & Rodin, 1989). Despite the dominance of women and homosexual men in the body image literature, there are studies that focus on heterosexual male body image. Much of this research focuses on the increased importance of muscularity within the context of hegemonic masculinity. Many suggest that the influence of the media has exponentially increased body dissatisfaction among men. The increased cultural focus on muscularity has subsequently driven some men to self-objectify; this self-objectification has lead to body image disorders such as muscle dysmorphia (Baird & Grieve, 2006; Grieve & Helmick, 2008; Mussap, 2008; Walker, 2009; Wienke, 1998). Although the study of heterosexual male body image in and of itself is significant, we are focusing on it in the context of heterosexual female body image. Our research is intended to fill a gap in the literature and explore the relationship between heterosexual female body image and heterosexual male body image. In particular, we explore how perceptions of opposite-sex attraction ideals impact male and female body image differently. We also consider the social context in which these ideals emerge and are communicated to males and females. Our research suggests that larger issues of gender and power are at play in the differing embodiments men and women experience. The Social Construction of Hegemonic Femininity and Masculinity Drawing on sociological constructionist scholarship we contend that masculinity and femininity are contingent, mass-mediated constructs enacted by men and women. Pfohl (2008) theorizes the core of constructionism as follows: "Things are . partially shaped and provisionally organized by the complex ways in which we are ritually positioned in relation to each other and to the objects we behold materially, symbolically, and in the imaginary realm. The ritual historical positioning of humans in relation to cultural objects and stories that we both make and are made over by--this, perhaps, is the elementary form of an effective social construction. This elementary form casts a circle of believability around artificially constructed accounts of the world. At the same time, the believability of the social constructions that lie inside the circle depends on what the circle expels to the outside. In this sense, social constructions are, at once, constituted and haunted by what they exclude" (2008, pp. 645-646). We apply this conception to the study of masculinity and femininity as sets of rules for "doing gender" (Lorber, 1994; West & Zimmerman, 1987) that are defined as "feminine" and contrasted with the "masculine," and vice versa. Lorber (1994, 2008) contends gender is a culturally and historically specific organizing principle for creating a gendered (and hierarchical) social order. …