When a Look Is Never Just a Look: How Objectifying Gazes Influence Women’s Choices
Saturday, August 23, 2025.
It starts with a glance. Not the quick, casual kind, but the one that lingers—measuring, scanning, assessing. For most women, it’s a familiar experience.
A new study in the Asian Journal of Social Psychology confirms that this gaze is more than harmless attention: it sparks measurable anxiety about personal safety.
Yet the findings also reveal a paradox.
That spike in safety anxiety doesn’t always dampen women’s choices to self-sexualize, especially when the man is described as attractive or high in status.
In other words, risk and reward collide in the space of a single look.
What Is Self-Sexualization?
Research from China shows that a sexually objectifying gaze increases women’s safety anxiety—but doesn’t always reduce self-sexualization when the man is attractive or high status. Learn how culture, objectification, and self-presentation intersect in dating and relationships.
Self-sexualization is the act of deliberately presenting oneself in a sexually suggestive way—wearing revealing clothing, striking provocative poses, or curating seductive images for social media.
Why women self-sexualize: attention, approval, social standing, or potential economic benefit.
Psychological impact: repeated self-sexualization can lead to self-objectification, where women view themselves primarily through the eyes of others.
Risks: research links self-objectification to body dissatisfaction, appearance anxiety, and impaired cognitive performance.
For some, self-sexualization feels like empowerment; for others, it’s another demand of a culture that never stops measuring women by how they look.
Culture and the Media’s Role
From glossy ad campaigns to music videos, sexualized images of women are everywhere. Media culture normalizes objectification and increases the likelihood that women will self-sexualize. Still, motivations vary: some embrace it as personal choice, others comply because of social pressure. Either way, the cultural backdrop makes the objectifying gaze nearly impossible to escape.
Inside the Experiments
Researchers Dingcheng Gu and Lijun Zheng set out to test whether safety anxiety from objectification would actually shift women’s behavior in dating scenarios.
Study One: 147 women imagined a blind date with a man described as either high or low in socioeconomic status. Some women were told he gave an objectifying gaze. Afterwards, they chose between a modest dress or a revealing one.
Study Two: 181 women read a nearly identical scenario, but this time the man’s attractiveness was manipulated rather than his wealth or status.
The Results: Safety vs. Status
The pattern was striking:
The sexually objectifying gaze always increased safety anxiety.
Women self-sexualized less (chose the modest dress) when the man was unattractive or low status.
But when the man was attractive or high status, women’s self-sexualization stayed high—even though their anxiety levels were elevated.
In other words, women didn’t simply withdraw under the pressure of objectification. They weighed both the risks and the potential rewards.
The Ledger Women Keep
These findings suggest that women in dating contexts are running an internal ledger:
Column A: safety and vigilance.
Column B: possible gains in status, approval, or resources.
The numbers rarely balance neatly. Instead, women navigate both sides at once, deciding when the potential benefits outweigh the unease. It’s not recklessness—it’s strategy.
Why This Matters for Relationships
The research highlights a deeper truth: objectification isn’t just a fleeting moment of discomfort. It shapes how women navigate dating, intimacy, and even risk. Women’s choices aren’t simply about desire or modesty; they’re about cultural survival strategies in a world that sexualizes them while rewarding those who comply.
Caveats and Cultural Context
Of course, these findings come with limits:
The studies were based on imagined scenarios, not lived experiences.
The participants were all young Chinese women, so results may not generalize to other ages or cultures.
Still, cross-cultural research suggests similar patterns elsewhere: women often balance personal safety with potential social or economic gains when facing objectification.
Final Takeaway
A glance may last a second, but it carries centuries of cultural baggage. Women’s responses to objectification aren’t simple reflexes—they’re calculations.
And those calculations reflect less about an individual women’s “preferences” than about the pressures of living in a culture where even a glance has to be managed.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
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Fredrickson, B. L., & Roberts, T. (1997). Objectification theory: Toward understanding women’s lived experiences and mental health risks. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21(2), 173–206. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1997.tb00108.x
Gu, D., & Zheng, L. (2024). Effects of sexually objectifying gaze on women’s self-sexualization in a mating context: The tradeoff between safety pursuit and resource pursuit. Asian Journal of Social Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.12687
Moradi, B., & Huang, Y. P. (2008). Objectification theory and psychology of women: A decade of advances and future directions. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 32(4), 377–398. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2008.00452.x
Tiggemann, M., & Slater, A. (2001). Objectification theory: An examination of its application to appearance-related body image concerns for women. Sex Roles, 64(1), 60–69. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-010-9763-6
Ward, L. M., Seabrook, R. C., Manago, A., & Reed, L. (2016). Contributions of diverse media to self-sexualization among undergraduate women and men. Sex Roles, 74(1), 12–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-015-0532-8