Master The Skills Of Women’s Relationship To Their Own Beauty And Be Successful.

Women’s Relationship To Their Own Beauty

The Real Truth About Beauty study began by exploring to what extent women perceive and experience themselves as beautiful, and the reasons why.

Specifically, the study tried to determine: how comfortable women are with using the word to describe themselves; their level of satisfaction with their own beauty; its impact on their sense of well-being; and, how important it is to them.

The initial part of the study specifically asked women to reflect on their own beauty. It was only later in the study that women were asked to reflect on beauty as a concept or in relation to others.

Thus, at the outset of the study – before women had a sense of the subject matter of the investigation – the objective was to obtain as accurate an understanding as possible of women’s relationship with their own beauty, unmediated by ideals or stimulus that encouraged deeper reflection on the concept.

Ownership of the Word “Beautiful”

Study data reveal that “beautiful” is not a word women willingly associate with themselves. In the study, women were given a list consisting only of positive or neutral adjectives to describe their looks (including; “natural,” “average,” “beautiful,” “sexy” and “gorgeous”) and asked to choose the one they felt most comfortable with.

By an overwhelming majority, women around the world are most comfortable using the words natural (31%) or average (29%) to describe their looks.

· Only 2% of women around the world choose beautiful to describe their looks, fewer even than choose “attractive” (9%), “feminine” (8%), “good-looking” (7%) or “cute” (7%).

· Analysis reveals that this lack of identification with “beautiful” holds across all age groups, with only 4% of 18-29 year-olds choosing “beautiful” as a word to describe their looks.

A country-by-country analysis reveals that there are interesting distinctions between the two most popular descriptors of “average” and “natural.” “Natural” is the descriptor of choice among Canadian, Italian, French, Argentinean and Japanese women, while Brazilian, Portuguese, British and Dutch women are most likely to describe themselves as “average.”

6% of Brazilian women choose “beautiful” to describe themselves – the highest number among all countries studied.

Deeper probing on this issue revealed that four in ten women around the world strongly agree (8, 9, or 10 on a 10-point scale) that they do not feel comfortable describing themselves as beautiful.

NOTE: Throughout this study, we have used “strongly agree” data meaning that women had to select 8, 9, or 10 on a 10-point scale where 1 was “completely disagree” and 10 was “completely agree.”

This is in keeping with research convention. From the perspective of the lay reader, it is important to remember that - in all cases - “strongly agree” represents very firmly held beliefs—not simple accord.

Thus, “beauty” is not only a word that women are very unlikely to choose to describe their looks; it is also one which many actually feel “uncomfortable” using to describe themselves. This level of “discomfort” illustrates the degree to which women have become distanced from today’s idea of female beauty.

· Importantly, women feel this way regardless of age. Thus 40% of 18 to 29 year-olds strongly agree that they do not feel comfortable describing themselves as beautiful, with 43% of 30 to 44 year-olds and 42% of 45 to 64 year-olds also feeling this way.

· A country-by-country comparison reveals that women from Great Britain are more likely than women from other countries to feel uncomfortable describing themselves as beautiful, followed by women from Argentina, Italy and the U.S.

Self-Evaluations of Beauty and Physical Appearance

The Real Truth About Beauty study went on to conduct an assessment of how women evaluate their own beauty. Throughout this exploration, women were asked to evaluate both their beauty and their physical attractiveness.

This was partly to determine how women assess themselves, and partly to discern whether women evaluate their “beauty” any differently from their “physical attractiveness.” While similar assessments of both would not confirm a causal connection (i.e., beauty is based solely on physical appearance), it would suggest that women think about the two in similar ways, seeing them as having a great deal of overlap and perhaps as being interchangeable.

Results show that, overall, women do not rate their own “beauty” and their “physical attractiveness” differently across various measures (such as evaluation and satisfaction). Thus the two concepts appear – in these respects – interchangeable.

Data show that the vast majority of women rate themselves “average” in terms of their “beauty” and their “physical attractiveness.”

· Almost three-quarters of women (72%) rate their beauty “average” and 69% rate their physical attractiveness “average.”

· Overall, 13% see themselves as somewhat less or much less beautiful or physically attractive than others.

· 16% of all women think of themselves as “somewhat more” or “much more” physically attractive than others.

Apart from the similarity in the ratings across both concepts, the very substantial number of respondents opting for “average,” indicates that women prefer not to distinguish themselves from other women in terms of either their beauty or physical attractiveness.

Country comparisons reveal that women in Japan are significantly more likely to rate their beauty and their physical attractiveness poorly compared to other women.

They are significantly more likely to think of themselves as “somewhat less” or “much less” beautiful or physically attractive. Indications from numerous other studies as comparative subjects among the Japanese are that these relatively depressed scores for Japan are reflective of a broad and consistent cultural trend.

While it is noteworthy that most women see themselves as at least “average” in attractiveness, these results must be interpreted in light of an extensive body of research.

Which finds that people in most Western cultures (but not East Asian cultures, such as Japan) tend to rate themselves as significantly “above average” in virtually every domain. Thus, women’s self rating of physical attractiveness is lower than their predicted self rating in other domains.

The study did illustrate a difference between the way in which women evaluate their body weight in comparison to their beauty and physical attractiveness.

Despite mostly categorizing themselves as “average” on beauty and physical attractiveness, almost half of all women (47%) rate their body weight as “too high” – a trend that increases with age.

This is particularly the case in the U.S. (60%), Great Britain (57%) and Canada Despite mostly categorizing themselves as “average” on beauty and physical attractiveness, almost half of all women (47%) rate their body weight as “too high” – a trend that increases with age.

· This is particularly the case in the U.S. (60%), Great Britain (57%) and Canada (54%).

· Italian and Argentinean women are most likely to say their weight is “just right.”

· Italian and women are most likely to say their weight is “just right.”

Thus we can see that a particular aspect of physical appearance can elicit very different ratings from women, and also how a perceived sense of being overweight is of concern to literally millions of women in the countries studied.

It is important to recognize that, while these assessments often reflect hard data on overweight and obesity levels in many of the countries, this study does not demonstrate whether the women who are medically overweight/obese are also those who feel overweight.

· It is worth noting the significant disparity between perception of overweight and medical reality in Japan and, to a lesser extent, Canada.

Personal Satisfaction with Beauty, Physical Appearance and Life in General

The study also explored how women feel about their beauty and physical appearance – specifically whether they are happy with these and how important it is for them to be happy with these.

Importantly, almost half of all women (48%) strongly agree (8, 9, or 10 on a 10 -point scale) with the statement that: “When I feel less beautiful, I feel worse about myself in general,” clearly illustrating the impact these feelings can have on overall self-esteem and happiness.

The study assessed levels of satisfaction among women regarding their beauty, physical attractiveness, facial attractiveness, and body weight and shape.

· The study finds that women make little distinction between their own physical attractiveness, facial attractiveness and beauty when reporting levels of overall personal satisfaction.

The majority of women around the world remain only somewhat satisfied with their beauty (58%), physical attractiveness (59%) and facial attractiveness (58%). This large “somewhat satisfied” response is comprised of women who could be “happier” with their beauty and appearance – although it would be a mistake to classify them as “unhappy.”

· It is likely to be women from this group who are most receptive to messages about beauty and appearance in the media and popular culture because, although they derive some satisfaction from how they look, they certainly believe they could be more satisfied, and may well strive to be so.

Just 13% of all women say they are very satisfied with their beauty, 12% with their physical attractiveness, 17% with their facial attractiveness and 13% with their body weight and shape.

· Across countries studied, a comparatively higher level of satisfaction with beauty and physical and facial attractiveness is found in Argentina, the U.S., Canada and the Netherlands.

· In comparison, women in Japan have the lowest levels of satisfaction with their beauty and physical and facial attractiveness.

The majority of women are significantly less satisfied with their body weight and shape than with their beauty and physical attractiveness.

· While 71% are somewhat or very satisfied with their physical attractiveness and beauty, only 57% of women worldwide are somewhat or very satisfied with their body weight and shape.

The exception to this rule is Japan – where only one in five women are satisfied with their physical attractiveness, beauty and their body weight and shape.

To further explore satisfaction with beauty and appearance in relation to satisfaction with other dimensions of life, women were read a list of different aspects of their lives (in randomized order) and asked to rate their level of satisfaction with each on a 10-point scale.

Results show that women are most happy with their health and with their relationships – with family, friends and romantic partners.

· A notable exception is Japan – where romantic relationships receive extremely low satisfaction scores. This may be due to the fact that the Japanese translation for “romantic relationship” used in the study has far more idealized connotations than in the English version and is thus perceived as harder to achieve by Japanese respondents.

Relatively speaking, women are least satisfied with their physical attractiveness, body weight and shape, beauty and financial success.

· Again, it is instructive to compare women’s satisfaction with physical appearance against the extensive literature on life satisfaction and well-being. Large scale surveys in the United States, Western Europe and other Westernized countries find life satisfaction ratings to be in the 70-80% range.

· This suggests that satisfaction with appearance is lower than overall satisfaction with life. Indeed, in this study, the only domain women are less satisfied with is their financial success.

Levels of satisfaction for beauty, appearance and financial success still show about a third of women claiming that they are “very satisfied” (i.e. choosing 8, 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale).

· Thus, we see approximately two-thirds of women who could be happier than they currently are with these key dimensions of their lives.

We can conclude from these results that, while their own beauty and physical appearance are not the primary drivers of women’s well-being, they are important players.

Importantly, the study shows that the majority of women are only “somewhat satisfied” with their beauty, indicating – again – that there is a desire for improvement. This improvement would contribute not only to their satisfaction with their appearance but presumably to their satisfaction with life as a whole.

· Data on women’s evaluation of their own beauty and physical appearance is at parity– suggesting that they feel similarly about each. This indicates that there may be ways in which women equate one with the other when they are evaluating themselves.

· Indeed, if beauty and physical attractiveness are seen as congruent concepts, there is a reticence on women’s part to call themselves “beautiful” or to use any close synonyms such as “attractive,” “pretty” or “good-looking.”