Why do women in general seem to have such low self esteem?

Part of it is patriarchy. Women are told from a young age to work towards standards based on looks and flirtiness rather than on real standards of intelligence and talent. Patriarchy really does have a wide spread affect on women.

I think it’s because of the media’s portrayal of women. All women are expected to look a certain way to be “pretty”. Open up any popular magazine at the check out aisle of the grocery store or turn on your tv and all you see are skinny, well endowed, perfectly made-up and styled people. Women feel like they have to imitate and live up to these expectations of what beauty is. They get these feelings starting from childhood, and they only get worse.

@zenvelo I’m not too sure on the whole patriarchy thing. That word, coupled with how rad feminists use it, has made almost made me think of it as some formal conspiracy or something. I will have to try and find more info on that some day when I have time, I don’t really know enough to comment more, but thanks for the input.

@Carinaponcho I agree with you totally, there is a very specific look to the people on TV and in magazines. However, why does that not affect guys? I have seen the diet coke adds and black and white perfume adds, but neither I or any of my male friends seem to be trying to look like those men.

I’ve thought of this a lot because I’m noticing my niece going through self-esteem issues currently and as young as nine years old.

Part of the psychology, I truly believe, is a lack of father’s in their children’s life, especially for women. That is your first male approval/ love and your model of your ‘ideal man’ for a lot of women.

Additionally, I do think the stereotypical female perfection is in our face so much that it has to be affecting our perception of ourselves as physical specimans rather than women with feelings and hearts and ideals and dreams, equal to a man’s.

It’s very hard for me to enjoy the female role since I’m not reallyl a girly-girl. Doing my hair sucks, getting it highlighted sucks and it’s expensive, painting of the nails is annoying, shaving or laser is a pain, the entire thing reeks of me preparing myself for male approval at work and home. If you don’t have that ‘look’ though you are at risk at work and in your love life, so it’s a no-win siutation.

I think if you watch this you’ll get a sense of what women face in the media – and have faced even before the advent of advertising agencies.

It’s partially the media, partially the stereotypes that come from our male-dominated culture..and as @KNOWITALL alludes to – it does seem to be connected to how girls and their fathers interact.. Not sure why girls value themselves based on the opinions of others—but it happens and it happens first with our fathers.
And, honestly, I think it’s also because even today in 2013 women do not have full equality.
Women do not make the same amount for the same work (aka: gender pay gap). How can I value myself as good as a man doing the same job as I am if my company doesn’t even pay us the same amount?

I was sitting in the backseat last night with my nearly 4 year old granddaughter coming home from Epcot. She was watching a Disney movie about fairies. I don’t remember the title. She had on headsets and was mesmerized, tired and mouthing the words to the songs. I couldn’t hear the movie, I could only see Tinker Bell and the other animated characters. I started thinking that I should pay more attention to the movies she watches in my presence and not just throw on a movie because she like to watch “something.”

All the princesses were beautiful and slender and had some talent. There was one princess who stood out because she was heavier than the rest and it looked like, I had no sound, but it looked like she was an outcast and a bad person. At the end of the movie, I noticed the girl gets boy type thing going on and wondered to myself if that is what I want to help teach this little person. Happy endings are being pretty and getting a boy? No way Jose.

It is so much fun to watch her play dress-up and twirl and prance around in crinoline and lace, but I want her to be strong and self assured and smart and healthy and kind and generous. There are so many more important things in life than being pretty.

@KNOWITALL GA, thanks.

I am specially interested by the part where you talk about preparing for approval at work and at home. However, I’m not sure if it is for male approval, or just approval by society. Other women are usually the first to notice other womens’ standards in looks.

It is true however, that a woman has to do much more to “look good” than a man in our culture. If I want to “look good”, all I have to do is pick up a white shirt from a good-will charity shop, slip a tie on, wet my hair a little, and I’m ready for a job interview or accepting an oscar.

I think it is for a lot of reasons.

First I will address what you said about your girlfriend having a much better body than you. I think I can state that most men are very visual, and argue we girls pick up on that. Men turn their heads when a sexy girl walks by, they want the lights on, they watch during sex, they don’t just have their eyes closed and think about how much they love the person they are inside of. Sure once they fall in love they don’t care as much about the outside package, but we see that pretty girls get the attention, especially true when we are teenagers. Men as they mature are less focused on the pursuit of pretty and just wanting to get into our pants.

But, back to when we are teens. Girls as they go through puberty, well, it is obvious we are going through it. We see other girls have bigger breasts. Or, our hips are big and our shoulders are narrow. Does our hair look as good (as the actresses with all those false pieces of hair and hair extensions)?

We are to some extent judged based on looks before someone gets to know us as individuals.

The standards for pretty are much more difficult and complicated than the standards a man has for attractive. It takes more work and more money for women.

Plus, women are half naked in the media all the time, and a lot of it is photoshopped. We are fairly bare in magazines, on TV, on the movie screen (body doubles are used for sex scenes a lot of the time) tons of unrealistic visuals are out there.

If we don’t even think about looks and just about self esteem related to how sure we are about ourselves and willingness to try something new, or even challenge someone who disagrees with us; maybe some of it is hormonal? Some of it socialization. We see our mom’s who were more subservient in relationships and willing to put their own careers on hold, etc, and we become our moms in some ways, because same sex role models do have influence. As time change, this changes.

Men often do dismiss women as hysterical, nagging, or annoying, even now. We can’t point out anything negative without being told we are negative or a pest. Well, saying we can’t point out anything is too extreme, but I think you probably know what I mean. So we get conditioned to say nothing, or at least less to avoid conflict. It’s a loss of a feeling of power in my opinion.

@poisonedantidote Actually I thought of it quite a bit last week while on vacation. I don’t wear make-up much outside of work or some social occasions and my guy friends are ready to go out in twenty minutes or less, while I’m still fixing my hair or something.

Women are much easier for me to ‘make love me’ because most judge you at first, but after they know you, they don’t care much about your appearance (I’m not a slob or anything at all.)

My younger male boss and my all male hierarchy in corporate America ‘feels’ that women should dress professionally (means nice clothes, hair, make-up, nails) even for a job that doesn’t pay much (I make about 29k a year now unfortunately.)

It really sucks because trying to keep up with clothes, make-up, nails and all that does cost a lot, yet they don’t pay us equally, so a lot of women can’t afford to even work a professional reception or secretarial job.

@geeky_mama After watching that video, I can’t understand why we don’t have more gender reversed adds, they would probably get much much more attention.

I would also have to say however, that I don’t really see anything wrong with any of the modern adds in that video, apart from the one where they use a woman as a piece of furniture. Sure the old ones are diabolical by today’s standards, but I was not around back then, so I can’t really comment on them. I would also be 100% in favor of having the reverse ones made.

See, in my opinion, it is not bad to show a naked woman with “BODY” written on it, and “use” her as an object, because she freely agreed to do that for money, money that as a famous model she does not even really need. So, it’s ok, because that is just her, so yea, that woman is really being an object. I don’t see why what she does, should affect how other women are seen. But yes, maybe after having it on mass on every channel and every poster for decades, is having a big effect, maybe even bigger than I think, but I still can’t pin it all on just the TV and magazines.

Sheryl Sandberg recently wrote a book about women and one thing she pointed out was little girls are told they are bossy, said in a negative tone, when they are taking the lead. Little boys get comments they will be leaders or a CEO one day. She tells a story about a mom who tells her little girl that if she gets promoted to higher positions at work less people will like her, and her little girl says, “then don’t get promoted.” Something like that, I don’t remember the exact words.

@geeky_mama, I loved the video. Advertisers spend big bucks for those ads because they sell products. Why is that? I also noticed the music was just as guilty as the advertisements.

@JLeslie, remember the question that flo posted about the little girl saying “Worry about yourself, please.” Or whatever it was. People on Fluther made comments about what a brat and tyrant she was. LOL

It’s more acceptable for women to gripe and complain. Men are taught to hide emotion, so you don’t know they have low self esteem, in general.

@Blackberry Good point, a lot of men do have low self-esteem as well. I think I dated most of them -lol

@bkcunningham Yes, there is indeed a very obvious formula for little girls cartoons and movies. I have also noticed, that if you go in to a toy shop to get a toy for a little girl, it is more or less foretold that you are going to be buying something pink.

You can also say the same about boys movies, even if you can’t say the same about the color of their toys.

However, here is my problem with movies and the gender roles in them. I don’t see, why movies would be so effective at programming us to follow gender roles, but so ineffective at programming us to try to follow other movie stereotypes and common themes and formulas.

For example, why would we be affected by the gender roles and want to look a certain way, but not act a certain way? Why would it make a girl want to get the boy, but not make the cowardly boy want to train hard and beat up the bullies and win the day?

@bkcunningham I don’t remember it. Maybe I’ll do a search.

@JLeslie I agree with all those observations, I just don’t think we have found the root of it yet. I think there are many causes and contributing factors, but I am starting to wonder if it is a cycle. Is TV programming the culture, or is culture controlling the TV, so to speak.

I have seen documentaries on tribes, that live so deep in to the jungle that most have never seen anyone from outside of the tribe, or never seen a white person, and never had TV or electricity even, yet they all seem to have rituals to look pretty. The men will just walk around with their dick in a leaf-wrap, but the women have to make themselves pretty skirts, make necklaces for themselves, or grind up bugs and plants to paint themselves in certain ways.

I can’t help but wonder if all those things you mention are causing the problem, or if we are causing all those things, deep in our humanity some place.

@poisonedantidote THAT ^ was soooo funny I almost spit my water out….lol

‘The men will just walk around with their dick in a leaf-wrap’

@Blackberry I agree with that.

However, for the benefit of the discussion, I’ll come out and admit, that I have very low self esteem myself. I would love to look like that “hot” guy in the diet coke add. However, for some reason, I just say “oh well, fuck it”, and eat another pie, and just don’t care in the same way at all that a woman cares.

I am quite observant, and I am not dumb, and I know the majority of my male friends have low self esteem too, like…. come on dudes, you have not had a girlfriend in 7 years and your reason for not going out looking is because “I’m not looking for someone right now”, really? No, its low self esteem.

So yea, I think probably all guys have some degree of self esteem issues too, and its true we don’t talk about it so much, but we seem to have a different version of it, at least from what I have seen in life.

I don’t know quite how to explain it. If I could change my body, I would make big changes with lots of things that I don’t like, but at the same time, I really don’t care. It would be horrible, if all my teeth fell out, and I got real fat, and grew a big tumor on my face, but if it happened, I would just keep going.

If a girl gets a single spot on her face, that is it, she freaks out and can’t go to the party. There is no way she will be pretty and get the boy with a spot on her face in her mind, and she freaks out. On the other hand, a guy has a massive acne explosion on his face just before the party, and even though socially he is equally affected, in that he wont be getting the girl, he just looks in the mirror and thinks “oh well, I guess no one is ever going to love me and I’ll die alone”, then shrugs and goes to the party to enjoy himself.

EDIT:

Women seem to have low self esteem strain A, men seem to have low self esteem strain B.

@poisonedantidote I think testosterone, physical strength, and not getting stuck getting pregnant has a lot to do with how the self esteem thing all began. In more primitive culture women are at a disadvantage, unless they are lucky enough to have men who respect them and men who are not so insecure they fear women having some sort of equality. In cultures where technology and brain matters more than brawn, women start to gain more self esteem I think.

@poisonedantidote A lot of my male friends are much hotter than they give themselves credit for. Not all women want the ‘typical’ hot guy because they’re usually arsehats to date, trust me. There is a lot to be said for a guy who makes you feel special and loved and treasured just as you are, and that can help you be a better person as well. So you are 20 lbs overweight, who cares, that’s completely superficial and who wants to be loved for superficial reasons, not me.

Ladies say where’s all the nice single guys. Men say where’s all the nice single women. Everybody’s at at home wishing they were hotter. Ah the irony.

@poisonedantidote I think it may equally affect guys. They just don’t show it. But if you say that there is a difference I would have to go back to the patriarchy argument.

@Carinaponcho The difference, is only a personal subjective observation. Maybe it affects my male friends stronger than me.

I’m not sure, if as I am getting older, I am getting more confident, and therefore it affects me less, or if for males it is different. When I was younger, self esteem issues would affect me more than they do now, but it never affected me as much as it affected females my own age.

It is almost like if male self esteem problems are 10 years ahead of female self esteem problems, in that it affects us less with time.

However, I don’t think it is just a matter of getting used to it. They say women mature faster, and maybe men harden up faster to self esteem issues, but I somehow don’t think so. I feel more like if men almost have a different version of what self esteem is, on a very fundamental level.

My reasoning for it being different, is children, very young children who can only just talk. If you get 10 little girls say age 3 to 5, and you say to them, “you are a very ugly girl”, I bet most of them will cry, but if you get 10 little boys the same age, and tell them they are very ugly, they would probably shout back that “no you are ugly” or deny it or something.

I know children are very easy to influence, and maybe by the age of 3 they could already be totally influenced by gender roles, but it does seem the difference starts very very early on in life either way.

@poisonedantidote I think the expression “girls mature faster” means girls consider consequences earlier than boys and become more resposible earlier than boys. It’s kind of part of the same thing, women consider consequences are more risk aversive, and that kind of goes along with more possibility of being more fearful. Men think they can’t die (when they are young) that they will win, they have more confidence in their abilities even if it goes against logic. I still say testosterone plays a role, maybe also the male brain and how it is wired.

Great question and too many answers to read. So hope this is not a repeat. I had this very conversation with my boy friend this evening.

I think it is a mix of media, peer pressure (from other women) the over sexualization of the female body and a lack of internal barometers of what makes us OK.

Not all women (thankfully) buy into the ‘I need to be skinny and look a certain way in order to be loved or accepted or to get that job.

But sadly many studies and research has actually proven that people who are perceived as more attractive get higher paid jobs and an easier life all round.

@JLeslie and @bkcunningham The ad with the little girl saying, “worry about yourself,” was more likely mimicking a parent responding. There were two girls in the family and inevitably they start telling Mom or Dad , “She did this” or “She did that.” And the parent responds “Worry about yourself, please.”

I think the first model for girls is their mother. Second, their friends, who may be led by ads, or movies etc. This continues with grown up friends, except the ladies dress more for the boys or men in their lives. Ah, the freedom of dressing for your own self. You’re not trying to impress anybody. That doesn’t come until you are truly who you are. Early or late, it’s a tremendous relief. “I’ll wear purple if I want to!”

I think the media plays a big part. Images that we see of the “ideal” body are usually young girl models that are extremely thin thanks in part to their genetic make up and thanks also to their age (15–20, usually). The rest of the women (probably 99.99% of us) average size 12 or size 14, and that’s on a woman who probably averages about 5 foot 4, as opposed to a model who is about 5 foot 10.

Notice how we see plenty of older men anchors on the evening news, but women, mostly, not over around age 40, except for a rare few like Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer.

Many women that I know in my personal life (including myself on occasion) accept things in relationships that should not be acceptable. Even here on Fluther, despite the OP’s opinion that Fluther is full of strong women, I read many questions from women who have boyfriends and husbands who seem to treat them like shit, and yet the woman is on here asking what she should do. I know of women (not myself thankfully) who are clingy, hysterical, jealous, and chasing men they “love” for all the wrong reasons, despite signs that they should look elsewhere. I think this may be, in part, due to biology (women historically needing the man to provide, while the man is able, if he wants to, to go around and spread his seed).

Just my opinions.

Well, here is the thing, now, with medical advancement those young girls who have had to make a special effort to stand out won’t need to do anymore. You don’t need to worry about attracting a mate and surviving though the most gruelling, life threatening process of your life. We can freeze sperm and make child birth more survivable! Yes, ladies. No longer do we need to keep these aggressive, smelly, messy, demanding, overbearing pets and put up with their machismo or stupid antics. We don’t need 3 women for every one man of child bearing age to carry on our species. Give me a turkey baster, some willing aunties and a grannie or two and we are set. Amazonia, here we come.

I had an ex years ago, and I treated her with so much respect and love, but in her words ‘something just wasn’t right’.
Then she started dating a drug dealer knobhead, and frequently called me up in the middle of the night crying telling me he’d hit her.
It makes me wonder if some women actually enjoy being treated like shit.
I don’t know where the low self esteem issues come from with cases like that.
I don’t think men will ever truly understand women.

I blame gender roles created by most cultures as the culprit. Toddlers even as young as two are fairly adept at already figuring out what their role in society is pertaining to the sex they’re born as. Do I think that most guys would like cars, guns, chasing girls and dangerous jobs? No. Do I think that most women want to be nurses, teachers, weak, unstable, dependent on a man? No.

When society brainwashes a boy or girl to like certain things while detesting others based upon their gender it seems to come out as males actually having certain preferences/dislikes, and the same with women based upon biological reasons. Hence we statements such as boys will be boys, and so on. Most cultures brainwash boys into being viscious animals and brainwash girls into believing that they’re weak.

@Paradox25 Actually there is some evidence that some of it is hard wired by gender. They have done studies on 2 year olds, maybe younger, but I know for sure 2 year olds that demonstrate boys are more likely to want a “boy” toy, and girls a “girl” toy. I know with my niece and nephew my nephew from the age of nothing liked hammers, screw drivers, and ticking watches, and my niece liked lipstick, pink, and dolls. I thought my nephew was going to hyperventilate and pass out when santa brought him a kids (made of plastic in blue and red plastic) workbench and tools. His sister could have cared less about that toy. I don’t think it is all socialization. I do think socialization plays a part, but it isn’t the whole thing”

Yes, @Sunny2, that is the video with the little girl I was referencing. What I was saying is when it was posted here on Fluther, some people said the little girl was a tyrant and a bad girl for speaking like that to her father. I just found those comments interesting in light of this question.

@poisonedantidote, earlier you said, “However, here is my problem with movies and the gender roles in them. I don’t see, why movies would be so effective at programming us to follow gender roles, but so ineffective at programming us to try to follow other movie stereotypes and common themes and formulas.

“For example, why would we be affected by the gender roles and want to look a certain way, but not act a certain way? Why would it make a girl want to get the boy, but not make the cowardly boy want to train hard and beat up the bullies and win the day?”

You’d have to give me an example of a movie or television show or cartoon or something where the message of a cowardly boy training hard to beat up bullies is relayed over and over to children in the same way the princess girl looks pretty and seductive and gets the boy is played over and over to children.

If that is what you meant, I have tried to think of an example where that is the message and I can’t come up with one.

@JLeslie I’ve seen many counterexamples of what you’ve posted pertaining to various children I’ve been around. I’m not sure how many times I’ve seen very small boys who had preferred to play with ‘girl’ toys while I’ve seen small girls who prefer to play with ‘boyish’ toys. Behavior patterns in many children I’ve been around have also convinced me that social gender constructs play a much greater role in the behaviors of each sex vs biological reasons.

Personally there is very little good that I see coming from forcing gender roles on people. I feel that my response answered the question too.

@Paradox25 Absolutely, it happens both ways, but the percentages in the study I read about showed boys tend to more often go for boy toys than girl toys even at the age of 2, and they used neutral toys in the study also. Girls tend to go more often for the girl toys. It wasn’t a blatant 90%+ of the time. Ugh, I wish I could find the study, I tried to search. I found this but it is not the article I had read. Probably there are many studies on the topic, some probably conflict with each other.

They’re socially dependent. Based on their biology and ensuing sexual roles, their nature is to submit to headship. If they were to resist submission, it would be harmful for their biological function. For this reason, they easily follow new trends because their goal is to submit to the most dominant. Therefore, a females self-esteem is determined by how desirable and appealing she becomes to the other and as a consequence by how she becomes a willing and capable social and cultural agent.

I think it is because we have a lot to live up to. There are so many women out there who don’t care if a man has a wife, and so many men who don’t care that they are in a relationship. As a woman, we have pressure to look the best and be the best, so we keep our man and that he wont be tempted to look elsewhere.

Sure there may be all these studies etc on which gender prefers this toy or that toy. But when it comes down to it, everyone is different. Some boys will prefer to play with the toys that target their specific gender, some not and same with girls. But if a parent sees their little boy being draw to girls toys… are they going to embrace that at such a young age or tell them it’s wrong? Everyone is different, no one should assume that this gender is more susceptible to this over this etc. But people are constantly put down or degraded because they don’t fit into gender roles. I know I was. Because I didn’t have huge boobs or wear “girly” clothing or do all these things that girls are “supposed” to be into. So I think in some cases having low self esteem could be because of that.

If you’re constantly being degraded for being who you are, are you going to keep going down that road, or try and change to “fit in” and be like everyone else? It’s easier to give up than fight and when people don’t have much support, they give up more often than not to fit into social norms. Where are they supposed to get support from? The media? With advertisements in every single direction telling you how to be and what’s deemed attractive? Granted I found someone that supports me and doesn’t give two shits about what I wear, what my hair looks like or if I even shower regularly. He paints his fingernails and toenails whereas I’m not into that sort of thing. Would most people find that weird and be unaccepting of it? Yes. Because of the way our society is. Men are supposed to be “masculine” and women are supposed to be “feminine.” Whoever doesn’t fit into either of those categories is “gay.”

I blame society and media more than anything for women who have low self esteem. More often than not in most tv shows and movies… you see a chubby out of shape guy, who happens to be funny, landing the “hot” girl at the end. But you never see it the other way around, save some extremely rare cases. Our society tells us what’s attractive and what isn’t. You see all these guys oogling over women that look a specific way, so when you don’t fit that, you feel undesireable. It’s hard not to feel ugly when you’re bombarded with all these women that share the same features and look a specific way on television, in advertising, in movies, and in music. Not a lot of people are even aware of this and legitimately think that this is how things are supposed to be and that’s how they’ve always been… which makes it even worse.

@tomathon I find your answer completely offensive and I seriously hope you were kidding.

@viainfested Do you think it is untrue? Do you think pretty thin women have more fish in the sea looking at them and interested in them as a possible mate? I don’t mean there isn’t a match for everyone, I only mean that the attractive girls that come close to that ideal shown in the media, wouldn’t you say men at large generally do find that type more desireable at first glance?

Although, I will follow by saying that studies show people tend to seek their own level of attractiveness when it comes to SO’s. But, an SO is a little different than a guy picking you out in a room to flirt with.

@JLeslie My entire point above was that even as young as two children already start to become aware of their gender roles due to social constructs rather than biological reasons. I really do believe that if each sex was not obligated to play out their gender roles that we would notice boys and girls having more similarities than differences.

In fact there are quite a few books out there written by experts in the field of gender studies that I’ve read which seem to verify my points above. Don’t underestimate the power of even the youngest of children to apprehend their enviroment and what is expected of them.

@Paradox25 I absolutely agree environment has a significant effect. But, I also think there are some internally wired biological things at work also. Not only at birth, but also through puberty. I think the hormones have an effect.

@Paradox25, are you saying there have been studies that prove that gender roles aren’t biological?

@bkcunningham No, actually there are studies which have clearly demonstrated that boys and girls do think differently pertaining to certain things, and very much so. My biggest argument is that the similarities are rarely brought up, and that personality is a major factor as well. The two latter points have also been demonstrated. I also still believe that cultural influences and expectations still play a major role too.

I do think it is morally wrong to tell someone, just because of the sex they were born as, that they should take up hobbies, interests, jobs, etc that they aren’t interested in. I still believe society does a great deal of molding behavior patterns into each sex. People don’t want to look bad or odd in the eyes of their peers, and many experts in the field of gender studies have said what I’d posted above.