Why Women Have Sex (34 page)

Not surprisingly, body image concerns play a major role in propelling women to buy and try all the latest diet advice and supplements—a $50 billion industry, in North America alone. A poor body image causes some women to develop eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa (self-starvation) and bulimia nervosa (binge eating and purging). Less well known is the fact that how a woman feels about her body significantly impacts all aspects of her sexuality. Studies among U.S. college women reveal that those who rate themselves as unattractive are less likely to have a sexual partner, probably because women who are dissatisfied with their bodies are self-conscious and experience anxiety about someone viewing them naked. Consequently, they sometimes avoid rather than pursue sexual opportunities. Even among college students who are in sexual relationships, women with negative body images have less frequent sex and experiment less sexually than their positive-body-image peers.

Of course there are always exceptions. Some women with poor body images deliberately seek out sexual activity to try to make themselves feel better about their looks. Two women in our study exemplify this motive for having sex:

To be honest, I wanted the affection of another person, if only for a short time. The few times I have had sex for attention, I wasn’t feeling
attractive or sexy. I thought that if this man wanted to have intercourse with me, then he must find [me] somewhat attractive and sexually appealing. After the act was over, I felt empty, not used in any way, but still empty. I guess it was because I was realizing that just because a man had sex with me, it didn’t make me any happier.

—heterosexual woman, age 23

I have never been skinny, but I am not obese. It is difficult for me to believe that anyone would want to have sex with me. Apparently that has not been the case, as I have had sex with what others would deem as “desirable” men. After my last long-term relationship ended (we were talking about marriage), I quickly took up with a very good-looking man who treated me like crap, but who I had sex with a lot because it made me feel good to know that someone this attractive and successful would want to have sex with me.

—heterosexual woman, age 32

In addition to altering how willing a woman is to engage in and experiment with sex, a negative body image can adversely affect a woman’s actual sexual response. Women with poor body images have lower sex drives, more problems becoming aroused, and greater difficulty achieving orgasms. A study conducted in the Meston Sexual Psychophysiology Lab had eighty-five college women come into the lab one at a time and privately fill out questionnaires about their sexual functioning and their body image. The body image questionnaire asked how they felt about their weight and various aspects of their sexual attractiveness. Then, in rooms by themselves, the women read an erotic story and rated how “turned on” the story made them. Women who felt good about their bodies experienced much more sexual desire in response to the stories than did women who felt bad about either their weight or their level of attractiveness. The women with poorer body images also reported having lower desire in real-life situations with their partners.

If a woman’s view of her body changes over time, it can also change her level of sexual desire and her body’s response during sex. Dr. Patricia
Barthalow Koch and her colleagues at Pennsylvania State University assessed changes in the sexuality of more than three hundred middle-aged women across time. They found that over a period of ten years, approximately 57 percent of the women reported a lessening of sexual desire, 58 percent reported actually engaging in sex less often, 40 percent reported enjoying sex less, and 32 percent reported having more difficulty with orgasms. The researchers then looked to see what might explain the decreases in sexual functioning among so many women. Guess what? Body image played a major role. The more a so many woman perceived herself to be less attractive than she was ten years earlier, the more she reported a decrease in sexual functioning over the past ten years. The reverse was also true. The more a woman judged herself to be attractive, the more likely she was to report an increase in sexual response and sexual activity over the previous ten years.

When a woman is too focused on how her body looks during sex or how her partner may be evaluating her body, she becomes distracted from the pleasurable sensations that can help her to become aroused and have an orgasm. Training women to refocus their attention on pleasurable sensations during sex is a key part of many successful sex therapy techniques. Challenging the woman’s often unfounded beliefs about what her body
should
look like and helping her to view her body in a more accurate and objective manner are also effective treatment techniques. A study of thirty-two clinically obese women who underwent a thirty-one-week weight-loss program demonstrated the link between body image and sexual functioning. In addition to losing a substantial amount of weight, women completing the program experienced huge improvements in body image and sex drive, and actually engaged in sex more frequently. When they were later asked why they thought their sexual functioning improved after the program, almost three-quarters of the women said that it was because they felt better about their bodies.

Much has been written about the media’s role in contributing to women’s dissatisfaction with their bodies. We seem to be on a first-name basis with women who are celebrated primarily for being thin and pretty, but does anyone know the name of the most recent woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for literature? (It was Geraldine Brooks, in 2006.) So let’s take a closer look at the images against which women usually
judge their bodies. Runway models are typically five foot ten or taller and average 120 to 124 pounds in weight. Many young (and not so young) women dream about looking like them. But the reality is that only about 5 percent of all women have the genetic makeup to achieve that body type—no matter how much they diet, exercise, undergo plastic surgery, or develop a health-destroying eating disorder. Pictures of waiflike movie stars, with shoulder blades poking through their sweaters, grace the gossip and fashion weeklies, looking, as one feminist Web site calls it, “impossibly beautiful.” So impossibly beautiful, in fact, that photo-altering software programs are used to slim and tuck cheeks, arms, stomachs, and legs while magically expanding bra cup sizes. The ideal has become so pervasive in the entertainment industry that in some cases, photos have to be altered to make women’s hip and collar bones less pronounced.

Even Barbie can be implicated. As it turns out, researchers have calculated that if Barbie were life-size, she would be five foot nine and her measurements would be 39-18-33. She would weigh no more than 110 pounds, which means she would have so little body fat that she would not menstruate. Ken and his plastic descendants should be forewarned of the risks her oh-so-shapely body has on her reproductive abilities. Perhaps the distorted bodies of the Bratz dolls, which feature oversized heads and tiny bodies that are truly physically impossible, will break the cycle.

Building a healthy sense of self-esteem often comes from taking stock of your personal strengths and abilities and being content with who you are and what you have to offer the world. But instead of focusing inward on oneself as a person, some people focus outward on external comparison to create their sense of self-worth. In addition to comparing their bodies to the ones plastered on billboards, they analyze how much they earn compared to others, what neighborhood they live in (and how their houses stack up against the proverbial Joneses), and what social circles they are accepted into. Based on psychological calculations, people then assess how worthy they are—in their own eyes and in the eyes of others.

As anyone who has experienced junior high school knows, this comparative rating and ranking isn’t just an adult pastime. Your friends affect how “popular” you are, even in grade school. For many young adults, self-esteem is closely linked to who their friends are and to their social standing among peers—a phenomenon captured in parent-frightening detail in sociologist Rosalind Wiseman’s book
Queen Bees and Wannabes
. As Wiseman notes, “a girl in the popular clique can duck a reputation as a slut even if she’s frequently having sex.” In our study, many women recalled situations where they engaged in sex to try to gain friends and influence their social acceptance:

I had a friend in high school who was really assertive, and really rebellious. She made it seem as if the only way I could be “cool” with her was if I shunned everything I thought was right and went on this track of having sex just to do it. Before I became friends with her, I was really naïve. I really knew nothing about sex and so I trusted her that things such as daring friends to have sex, and cheating on their girlfriends, and sleeping with every guy who showed interest were normal things to do. I would have sex just so that she would have more respect for me, since I was really poor in high school and thus had very, very few friends. I hated every experience I was having, and it took me five years to feel validated as a moral person again after I stopped being friends with her.

—heterosexual woman, age 22

Some women had sex to induce people to like them:

[I was] just young I think and wanted to feel like I was “someone,” [to] build my self-esteem through someone else. I thought I was a big shot and that this would make people in school like me. I realize now that I did use a lot of outside sources to try to make myself likeable . . . to fit in. And, at the time it didn’t work . . . [it] made me feel worse really. . . . I just wanted to be like all the other girls . . . or at least what my version in my head thought they were like.

—heterosexual woman, age 41

Some had sex to fit into a certain social group:

I felt like being a virgin excluded me from my social circle. I didn’t “get” things my sexually active friends did and felt I was often excluded from social activities for this reason. So, I had sex with someone older in order to gain acceptance into their social circle which consisted of older, highly educated individuals.

—heterosexual woman, age 26

As we’ve seen, women are often attracted to men of high status because with status come resources, a nice lifestyle, and myriad social benefits. From an evolutionary perspective, high status in a man might be a marker of good genes to pass along to children. But some women in our study sought out sex with a high-status partner for a completely different reason: They were not actually interested in pursuing a relationship with the person, or getting pregnant, or even reaping the material benefits that could follow. They simply wanted to raise their social status in the eyes of their friends by having sex with someone of high mate value:

The guy wasn’t super famous, just in a very popular local band that is working on an album for a major company. It was fun, he was a good lover and everyone knew what happened because I lived in a dorm and he came there when we were intimate. I just did it to make other girls envious. . . . It made me look cool.

—heterosexual woman, age 22

For other women, having sex with a high-status partner caused them to feel more desirable. In these cases, they had sex not to impress their friends or raise their social status, but to raise their own sense of self-worth. Sometimes it did not go as well as hoped:

The person I had sex with was a very wanted guy in my college years and any girl would be proud to say she was his date, or so I thought. After a fun night of drinking at the local nightclub (it was
ladies’ night, we drank for free!), I was feeling courageous enough to approach him and to start flirting a bit. Well, one thing led to another and we wound up back at his place for a night of sex. I was definitely willing, mainly because the liquor I had in me gave me the courage to let my insecurities about my looks go for that one glorious night. That glorious night wound up giving me an STD, a reputation, and a horrid hangover! Never again was I so foolish!

—heterosexual woman, age 32

But other times, it went even better than planned:

When I first met my husband I considered him “out of my league.” . . . I grew up very shy, nerdy, and hung out with the “skaters.” And here comes Mr. All American Boy—muscles, tall, tan, great smile—exactly who would never have paid attention to me if we went to high school together. We got back to my apartment after dinner and he brought in his bag and I casually told him that he could either sleep on the couch or I didn’t mind sharing my bed with him. He chose my bed and I didn’t hold back. . . . We ended up getting married six months later. Every once in a while I will catch myself looking at him doing something and think damn, I can’t believe he is my husband.

—heterosexual woman, age 24

Although some people seem to be born blessed with healthy self-esteem, psychological research points to several significant influences during childhood, including parental attachment, support, and attention. One study of 16,749 adolescents, for example, found that higher parental support and parental monitoring were linked to higher self-esteem in their children. Children’s
perceptions
of their parents’ level of attention to them is especially critical—parents who keep a loving but watchful eye and who are ready to react on short notice if needed. Perhaps this parental monitoring gives children the confidence to explore the opportunities and dangers of their environment and enable them to
grow into fully functioning adults. Not all women are happy beneficiaries of loving parental attention; some suffer from parental neglect. Low self-esteem sometimes causes women to make up for this attention deficit—seeking through sex the attention that they never got from their parents.