Not surprised.

So, I found this interesting article that related a woman's body image to their sexual satisfaction. I thought I'd share it with you guys! 

Pujols, Yasisca, Cindy M. Meston, and Brooke N. Seal. "The association between sexual satisfaction and body image in women." The journal of sexual medicine 7.2pt2 (2010): 905-916.

Pujols and colleagues' research was conducted in the hopes of finding a correlation between body image and body esteem on sexual satisfaction. They found that negative body image resulted in reporting lower sexual satisfaction, but played no role in having sexual difficulties. A distinction should be made clear here: sexual dissatisfaction refers to one's attitudes towards their sexual experiences, while sexual difficulties are issues such as low sex drive and uncomfortable sex.

Body esteem plays an important role in sexual dissatisfaction because women with distorted body image tend to be more distracted by their own appearance during sex, than the actual sexual experience. The article spoke about women's bodies being more scrutinized in the media and in society than a man's. Their research explored spectatoring-- where an individual focuses on their appearance and body during sexual activity. They think that due to society's standards of beauty, women with low body esteem are found to commit spectatoring more often than men.

Because of these factors, it was found that having high body esteem and good body image allowed for higher sexual satisfaction. These findings can be used to treat women with sexual dissatisfaction, by targeting their issues with body esteem and body image instead of trying to diagnose a medical condition. It offers great insight into how one's body esteem can play a role in other aspects of one's life.

Is it bad that I'm not surprised at all? They mentioned that because the media and sociocultural norms target a woman's body more than a man's, that men don't experience sexual dissatisfaction as often. It's a shame that the media still tries to portray the "perfect woman" instead of just being real. This was meant to be a short annotation, so we'll get more into this next week. Until then, stay beautiful!