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Gay women feel under less pressure to have ‘the perfect body’ than heterosexual or bisexual women, according to a new study presented yesterday (15 July 2009) at the British Psychological Society Psychology of Women’s Section annual conference.

The study of 472 women found that heterosexual women were significantly more aware of pressures on their appearance than the bisexual or lesbian women. The lesbian women in the study also internalised social ideals of attractiveness significantly less than heterosexual or bisexual women.

The women were also questioned on their levels of body satisfaction and eating issues, but there was no difference between lesbian, bisexual and heterosexual women.

“This result was surprising,” said Caroline Huxley of the University of the West of England, who conducted the study.

“As the heterosexual women were more affected by media, more aware of social pressures on appearance and they internalised social ideals of attractiveness more than the lesbian women, we would expect we to see a difference in the levels of body satisfaction and eating behaviours,” said Huxley. “We did not see this in our study.”

“One possible explanation could be that although the pressures felt by the heterosexual women affected their appearance satisfaction and eating behaviours, lesbian women faced different pressures that impacted similarly on how they felt about their bodies and their eating behaviours, resulting in the similar levels we found across all of the women in the study.”

Posted in: Health |