Stop looking at me! associations between men's partner‐objectification and women's self‐objectification, body shame and life satisfaction in romantic relationships.

A growing amount of empirical evidence shows that sexual\r\nobjectification can be elicited within the context of romantic\r\nrelationships, leading to adverse consequences for women's\r\nwell-being. However, most of this research assessed women's\r\nself-reported perceptions of being objectified by their romantic partner, while scant and not converging research has considered men's objectifying perceptions toward their romantic\r\npartners. Furthermore, little is known about the underlying\r\nmechanisms through which partner-objectification is associated with negative consequences for women. To fill these\r\ngaps, we involved a sample of heterosexual couples (N = 196)\r\nand investigated whether men's partner-objectification\r\nwould be related to women's self-objectification (in terms of\r\nself-surveillance) and, in turn, their body shame. Further,\r\nwe examined whether self-objectification and body shame\r\nmediated the relation between men's partner-objectification\r\nand women's undermined life satisfaction. Confirming our\r\nhypotheses, serial mediation analyses showed that partnerobjectification was associated with life satisfaction in women\r\nvia the indirect effect of self-objectification and body shame.\r\nImplications of these findings for literature on sexual objectification and relationship satisfaction are discussed.