Every week, I speak with clients who tell me that their looks interfere with their sex life.
They wish they weighed less, had more hair on their head and less everywhere else, or had a bigger this or smaller that. During sex, some of them keep their T-shirts on and the lights off.
The literature says that people’s objective beauty has little connection to how much they enjoy sex. Lots of nice-looking people don’t enjoy sex, and lots of plain-looking people do.
What does apparently matter is how people feel about their bodies. Regardless of what they actually look like, people who feel attractive want sex more, have sex more, and typically enjoy it more. Studies show that this is true for both men and women. (1)
On the other hand, people who judge their bodies harshly (regardless of what they actually look like) are less likely to desire sex, and less likely to believe that they are sexually desired.
Although unfortunate, this is understandable: Sexual enjoyment depends on being present. Concerns about your looks are the opposite of being present: It involves self-consciousness, worrying about a partner’s (lack of) enjoyment, and judging yourself.
So it’s true that if you feel unattractive, it’s harder to enjoy sex. But in a world of media images and looksmaxxing; popular enhancements to skin, teeth, and hair; steroids, peptides, testosterone, and GLP-1s; fitspiration videos and cosmetic surgery, who feels attractive enough?
Now, Add Social Media
And then, there’s social media. Interestingly, it’s not simply the raw number of minutes watched each day that drives body dissatisfaction (and therefore reduced sexual enjoyment). A crucial part of what undermines users’ sex lives is how much they compare their appearance to others.
When people compare themselves to movie stars, they’re looking at another species of human being. But on social media, people are invited to compare themselves to non-celebrities—allegedly ordinary people you could supposedly look like if only you tried harder. That’s what makes social media so deadly for many people’s body image, and therefore their sex life.
Here’s an interesting experimental finding: After viewing social media profiles of attractive age-peers, participants felt worse about their own bodies than participants who viewed less-attractive profiles. (2)
In fact, repeated exposure to being evaluated on appearance causes people to internalize an outside observer’s viewpoint of their own body. Social media users who do a lot of comparing unconsciously learn to judge themselves the way they imagine others judge them. They develop a habit of monitoring their own appearance until, as uncomfortable as it is, it seems normal.
Predictably, people who engage more frequently with social media report competitive pressure to curate an attractive online persona, encouraging others to do their own self-harming comparisons.
So the problem isn’t just “social media” in the abstract; it’s the self-surveillance and comparison habits it cultivates.
Thus, if you want to enjoy sex more, you need to decide that you’re attractive enough, whatever that means to you. Even better, decide that how you look is irrelevant to your eligibility for sexual satisfaction. It would also help to view less social media, and when you do, make a conscious decision that you won’t compare yourself to your (supposed) peers.
Because your sexual satisfaction is at stake—which isn’t trivial, is it?
