From Jessica at Feministing comes some interesting information about men, women, and body image. As you know I spend a lot of time asking people to honestly assess their bodies rather than assume that, because we see this flaw or remember that incident, we’re unattractive. Turns out body image may have an effect on people’s decisions to have protected or unprotected sex.

Apparently, young men who feel good about the way they look are more likely to have unprotected sex with multiple partners while young women with a positive body image were less likely to have risky sex. Interesting.

The men who were most satisfied with their appearance, and the most appearance-oriented — meaning they were highly invested in their looks and considered appearance to be important — were also the most likely to have sex without condoms and to have sex with multiple partners, Dr. Eva S. Lefkowitz of Pennsylvania State University in University Park and colleagues report.

...Among young women, in contrast, those with a more positive body image were less likely to engage in risky sexual behavior, Lefkowitz and her team found.

I think this is interesting stuff, but there’s a part of me that’s wary about an alternate conclusion that could be reached from this study—that women have “riskyâ€? sex if they have low self-esteem. If risky is defined as having multiple partners, the argument that women who “sleep aroundâ€? actually just hate themselves isn’t exactly new.

See the whole post here.

It’s disappointing that increased self-esteem doesn’t seem to help young men, but overall I believe this still warrants encouraging people to be more realistic about their attractiveness. It’s certainly a good reason to challenge people of either gender who are unrealistically harsh on themselves.