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MATH IS HARD! More evidence for the social construction of women's "natural" abilities comes in the form of an American Psychological Association study on the impact of sexualized media on girls and young women. Salon's Broadsheet blog reports:
The report also mentions a particularly fascinating study in which college students were put into dressing rooms and asked to "try on and evaluate" either sweaters or bathing suits. Then the subjects were left alone for 10 minutes, while still wearing the sweaters or the bathing suits, and asked to complete a math test. The women wearing swimsuits did "significantly worse" than their sweater-wearing counterparts; among men, there was no difference in performance. The APA concludes that this study demonstrates that "thinking about the body and comparing it to sexualized cultural ideals disrupted mental capacity" -- which happens more frequently in young women than in men.Though their own nudity had no effect on the men, I think the researchers left out the crucial study question of whether women in bathing suits also disrupted men's cognitive performance.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
