One of the biggest challenges for adolescent girls is developing an effective sense of self amid the sexualizing gaze of popular culture, their peers, and society at large. There is now evidence that the everyday process of contending with, and placating, this sexualizing gaze imposes cognitive costs that can negatively impact girls’ performance on the kinds of mentally demanding tasks required to excel in school and the workplace. In this episode of Into the Fold,Dr. Rebecca Bigler (pictured above), professor of psychology at The University of Texas, discusses her recent study, in which a sample of adolescent girls is asked to conduct a mock news broadcast. We delve into its compelling finding that the preoccupation with being “hot” (i.e. conventionally attractive, feminine and sexually available) can come at the expense of job-related performance. As Bigler sees it, our media-saturated culture has given rise to an idealized feminine type that is more much hypersexualized than in the past...
[For more of this story go to https://hoggblogdotcom.wordpre...in-adolescent-girls/]
Comments (0)