Future Directions for Research and Practice

This volume has showcased the vast interest in self-objectification as a topic of scientific inquiry and social action from scholars across perspectives. Objectification theory has emerged as an important systematic framework for investigating the effects of sexual and self-objectification among women. Multiple perspectives on the underlying causal forces that bring about self-objectification were described, and a common theme across these perspectives is that the sexual objectification of women’s bodies offers the most direct link to women’s self-objectification. There is clear evidence that self-objectification is associated with a wide variety of negative consequences, threatening the healthy development and well-being of girls and women across multiple domains of living. Less is known about how to counteract self-objectification, but we hope that the ideas put forth in these chapters will inspire more empirical work in this direction. We conclude this volume with several further perspectives on the topic of self-objectification with the hope of informing scholarly and applied pursuits in this critical area of women’s lived experience