Health · Mental Health · 4 hrs ago
How Body Shaming Can Affect Pleasure and Intimacy
Body shaming means criticizing or demeaning someone’s appearance, openly or indirectly.
The piece says it can lead people to fixate on perceived flaws and see themselves more negatively.
That can make closeness harder if someone fears a partner will notice those flaws.
It also links body shaming with anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure, because pleasure involves the body and its senses.
The piece traces negative ideas about bodies to social comparisons, old superstitions and religious or philosophical teachings that treated bodily pleasure as sinful.
It argues that sensual and sexual capacities are natural, and that turning people against their bodies can limit their ability to enjoy them.
Body shaming is linked to an unhealthy preoccupation with perceived flaws, reduced intimacy and difficulty experiencing pleasure, according to Psychology Today.
The article describes body shaming as criticizing or demeaning someone’s appearance, overtly or covertly.
It says body shaming can lead people to avoid closeness because they do not want others to see flaws they perceive in themselves.
The article connects difficulty feeling pleasure to negative attitudes toward the body and its senses.
It argues that bodily sensual and sexual capacities are natural and normal.
- Who
- People affected by body shaming, including a woman whose mother used a demeaning term for her vagina.
- What
- The article discusses how body shaming may affect self-perception, intimacy and the ability to feel pleasure.
- When
- Not stated.
- Where
- Not stated.
- Why
- The article links body shaming to preoccupation with perceived flaws and to beliefs that treat bodily pleasure as shameful.
This story does not have two clearly opposing sides.
This story does not have a timeline yet.
- Nerve endings
- Over 1,000 per square inch across the body, according to the article
- Taste buds
- 10,000 on the tongue, according to the article
- Smells
- The nose can discern another 10,000 aromas, according to the article
- Article outlet
- Psychology Today
What people are saying
Body shaming—criticizing or demeaning someone’s appearance, overtly or covertly—is linked to what psychologists call dysmorphia
the suppression of a woman’s sexuality
A weird little organ
sensual pleasure can never be without sin