French women love their bodies less and less, especially in the summer when they wear swimwear, according to an Ifop study on physical barriers at the beach this Wednesday, June 21.
Although the body positive movement still praises the body, the physical instructions are a painful wake up call in the summer. For a growing number of French men and women, showing their partially naked body on the beach is a source of shame and sometimes even an insurmountable ordeal. And the latest Ifop/Flashes study for VoyageAvecNous.fr, published this Wednesday, June 21, confirms this once again. According to this latest work, 62% of women pull their stomachs to move on the sand.
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Devaluation, complications and worries
Hair removal, sports or even diets… The survey investigated the origin and consequences of the “summer body” trend, in other words, the pressure of the perfect body in summer. To conduct its observations, the polling institute collected responses from a representative sample of the French population of 1,006 people aged 15 and over between June 1 and June 5, 2023, via a self-administered questionnaire.
As a result, the French value their bodies less and less. 47% say that they do not like it, and among those who admit it, more than 60% are women. And this negative perception seems to have progressed significantly among the fairer sex, as the incidence has increased by 14% in 10 years, notes Ifop.
In this regard, the prospect of being exposed to the views of others at the beach or swimming pool worries half of respondents (49%) as summer approaches. More than men are subjected to body pressure, women suffer more from it, up to the point of causing stress, sleep disorders, even depressive episodes during this period (35%).
Instructions to the perfect body, especially when exposed to the other’s gaze, therefore remain very important despite messages that encourage better acceptance.
Louise Jusyan, Senior Researcher, Policy/Media Department, IFOP
A “summer body” that resists
While some choose beach concealment strategies such as wearing sarongs, shorts, or tucking their stomachs in to get around, the vast majority continue to prepare their bodies to better expose them through physical activity. A goal motivates more men (65%) than women (59%). When it comes to food, the pattern is reversed, and it is the fairer sex who watches “her line” more. 59% of them say they follow a summer diet, compared to 46% of men. The same observation for hair growth. A large majority of women surveyed (83%) say they make a special effort to remove hair, which almost 1 in men surveyed agrees with.
According to Louise Jussian, senior researcher at IFOP’s Politics/News division, these figures show that the cult of the perfect body is still very strong in the summer, even if it shows a “slight loss of momentum”. “Instructions for the perfect body, especially when it is exposed to the gaze of the other, therefore remain very important, despite the messages that encourage better self-determination, he lamented in the press release of the study. (Which) unfortunately leads to the vast majority of women who don’t love their bodies experiencing various disorders: depression, crying, insomnia when the summer season approaches, but is synonymous with rest and relaxation.
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Source: Le Figaro
