Images of beautiful women cause men to be more body-conscious of themselves

Physorg.com - Surprisingly, Female Models have Negative Effect on Men

We all know that images of culturally idealized women in magazines have a negative effect on body-image for women. The analogous theory was that culturally idealized images of men might have the a similar negative effect on men. Yet it was the same images of women from 'lad' magazines like Maxim, Stuff, FHM that were associated with greater concern with self-appearance for men. Men who viewed these female models alone reported the highest concern with self-appearance, more than the control group. The group of men that viewed the male models reported LESS self-appearance concern than the control group. The theory is that looking at culturally idealized women reminds men about what kind of person these women are attracted to, so they are concerned with being attractive to them. This is reinforced by the experiment that reduced this effect by showing average-looking men in the same image with these attractive women.