Women’s bodies are increasingly exposed on the media and on social media. 86% of Italians are convinced of this. And if 79% of the population believes women are freer than once to show off, even on social networks, to promote themselves autonomously, for 78% of people, women increasingly represent themselves as a ‘sexual object’. Women use the body as a weapon of seduction for 76% of people and ‘nothing has changed compared to the past’ for 73% of Italians. This is the opinion of the Italians interviewed in the first survey, statistically representative of the population, dedicated to public opinion on the female aspect and conducted by Yoodata / Polytech Italia and presented today in a webinar attended by Maura Gancitano, philosopher, essayist; Alessandro Amadori, psychologist and scientific director of Yoodata; Roy de Vita, head of plastic surgery at the Regina Elena cancer institute in Rome, and Mariangela Dal Pra, managing director of Polytech Italia.
The survey shows that women are considered ‘victims of exposure on social media’ for 73% of adults and 80% of 15-26 year olds, Generation Z which turns out to be the most fragile. The vicissitudes of neofeminism and movements such as #MeToo ‘were not enough to change perspective’, declares 63% of women and 57% of men in our country. The female aspect continues to be the center of attention, with criticism or appreciation, even ‘off social media’ for 4 out of 10: inappropriate comments are referred above all in the family (for 43% of Italians who have suffered judgments on their appearance ), on the street (35%), at work and at school/university (16%), among friends (16%) and on social networks (12%).
39% suffered from criticism about weight, 13% from compliments, 12% from thinness, 10% from body shaming, 5% from age, 4% from sexist/discriminatory comments based on appearance, as well as criticisms of ‘ugliness’, stature, hair, nose, face, eyes, physical defects, teeth, breasts, and more.
What concerns “the representation of the female body in Italy does not change, this study tells us. Indeed it is getting worse and is increasingly confused”, comments Maura Gancitano. “If on the one hand we have more tools to understand how dangerous judgments on the female body are, also thanks to social media, on the other we continue to receive messages that tell us that we must do everything to have a perfect body. This has a negative effect especially on the younger generations, who are subjected to an enormous amount of stimuli and models”.
The study, Gancitano continues, “also reveals, however, that the main source of criticism of girls’ bodies, inch by inch, is the family and unfortunately very little is said about this. It is from the family that our bodies begin to be looked at and judged, sometimes also out of an instinct to protect against external criticism, but in any case with a negative effect on mental health”.
“Women’s sensitivity to criticism and other people’s judgments decreases with age”, underlines Alessandro Amadori who oversaw the research. “They are above all the boys and girls of Gen Z, who are between 15 and 26 years of age , i.e. the same protagonists of the new ‘utilitarian’ relationship with the body and its exhibition, who believe that women who expose their bodies on traditional media and social media today run a high risk of being victims and sexual objects. the generation that shows greater acceptance and confidence with the aesthetic scalpel who consider it a way like any other to change their appearance, on a par with tattoos”, he concludes.
#Women #social #networks #criticized #weight