Abstract
Sexual self-consciousness, also known as spectatoring, can result in unpleasurable sexual experiences, sexual difficulties, and negative mental health outcomes. The purpose of this study is to investigate ratings and correlates of sexual self-consciousness (sexual embarrassment and sexual self-focus) among (N = 283) Black women ages 19–42 living in the South using objectification theory. Data for this study is from the quantitative phase of a larger explanatory mixed-methods study addressing pain, pleasure, and sexual anxiety among Black women. Descriptive statistics, bivariate correlations, and linear regressions were conducted. Demographic (age, education), partner, partner factors (marital status, gender of last sex partner), and sexual well-being factors (frequency of sexual pain, frequency of sexual anxiety, sexual satisfaction, history of sexual violence) were explored as correlates. Participants had higher scores on sexual embarrassment than sexual self-focus. The bivariate correlations showed that participants who reported higher sexual embarrassment were more likely to have non-male partners, be younger, report a history of sexual anxiety, more frequent sexual pain, and lower sexual satisfaction. Participants who reported higher sexual self-focus were older, coupled, had a male sex partner during last sexual encounter, and did not report a history of sexual anxiety. Implications for sex education, individual and couple sex therapy are discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams, P. E. (2010). Understanding the different realities, experience, and use of self-esteem between Black and White adolescent girls. Journal of Black Psychology, 36(3), 255–276.
Adams-Santos, D. (2020). Something a bit more personal: Digital storytelling and intimacy among queer Black women. Sexualities, 23(8), 1434–1456.
Anderson, J. R., Holland, E., Heldreth, C., & Johnson, S. P. (2018). Revisiting the Jezebel stereotype: The impact of target race on sexual objectification. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 42(4), 461–476.
Barlow, D. H. (1986). Causes of sexual dysfunction: The role of anxiety and cognitive interference. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 54(2), 140–148.
Betz, D. E., Sabik, N. J., & Ramsey, L. R. (2019). Ideal comparisons: Body ideals harm women’s body image through social comparison. Body Image, 29, 100–109.
Brand, A. M., & Waterink, W. (2018). The general Influence of sexual self-consciousness on sex drive in men and women. Journal of Women’s Health Physical Therapy, 42(1), 2–7.
Brotto, L. A., Basson, R., & Luria, M. (2008). A mindfulness-based group psychoeducational intervention targeting sexual arousal disorder in women. Journal of Sexual Medicine, 5, 1646–1659. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2008.00850.x
Brotto, L. A., Seal, B. N., & Rellini, A. (2012). Pilot study of a brief cognitive behavioral versus mindfulness-based intervention for women with sexual distress and a history of childhood sexual abuse. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 38, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/0092623X.2011.569636
Buchanan, T. S., Fischer, A. R., Tokar, D. M., & Yoder, J. D. (2008). Testing a culture-specific extension of objectification theory regarding African American women’s body image. The Counseling Psychologist, 36(5), 697–718.
Carter, A., Ford, J. V., Luetke, M., Fu, T. C. J., Townes, A., Hensel, D. J., Dodge, B., & Herbenick, D. (2019). Fulfilling his needs, not mine”: Reasons for not talking about painful sex and associations with lack of pleasure in a nationally representative sample of women in the United States. The Journal of Sex Medicine, 16(12), 1953–1965.
Collins, P. H. (2000). Gender, black feminism, and black political economy. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 568(1), 41–53.
Cunningham, A. (2018). Make it nasty: Black women’s sexual anthems and the evolution of the erotic stage. Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships, 5(1), 63–89.
Davis, S., & Tucker-Brown, A. (2013). Effects of black sexual stereotypes on sexual decision making among African American women. Journal of Pan African Studies, 5(9), 111–128.
Davison, T. E., & McCabe, M. P. (2005). Relationships between men’s and women’s body image and their psychological, social, and sexual functioning. Sex Roles, 52(7), 463–475.
Donovan, R., & Williams, M. (2002). Living at the intersection: The effects of racism and sexism on Black rape survivors. Women & Therapy, 25(3–4), 95–105. https://doi.org/10.1300/J015v25n03_07
Dove, M. W., & Wiederman, N. (2000). Cognitive distraction and women’s sexual functioning. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 26(1), 67–78.
Evans, E., & Dyson, D. (2015). From princess to queen: A Black feminist approach to positive sexual identity development. Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships, 1(3), 25–56.
Faith, M. S., & Schare, M. L. (1993). The role of body image in sexually avoidant behavior. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 22(4), 345–356.
Feiring, C., & Taska, L. S. (2005). The persistence of shame following sexual abuse: A longitudinal look at risk and recovery. Child Maltreatment, 10(4), 337–349.
Fredrickson, B. L., & Roberts, T. A. (1997). Objectification theory: Toward understanding women’s lived experiences and mental health risks. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21(2), 173–206.
French, B. H. (2013). More than Jezebels and freaks: Exploring how Black girls navigate sexual coercion and sexual scripts. Journal of African American Studies, 17(1), 35–50.
Gagnon, J. H., Rosen, R. C., & Leiblum, S. R. (1982). Cognitive and social aspects of sexual dysfunction: Sexual scripts in sex therapy. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 8(1), 44–56.
Gómez, J. (2015). Rape, Black men, and the degraded Black woman: Feminist psychologists’ role in addressing within-group sexual violence. The Feminist Psychologist: Newsletter for the Society of the Psychology of Women (american Psychological Association Division 35), 42(2), 12–13.
Greene, B. (1995). Lesbian women of color: Triple jeopardy. In L. Comas-Diaz & B. Greene (Eds.), Women of color: Integratingethnic and gender identities in psychotherapy (pp. 389–427). New York: Guilford.
Hansen, N. B., Brown, L. J., Tsatkin, E., Zelgowski, B., & Nightingale, V. (2012). Dissociative experiences during sexual behavior among a sample of adults living with HIV infection and a history of childhood sexual abuse. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 13, 345–360. https://doi.org/10.1080/15299732.2011.641710
Hargons, C. N., Dogan, J., Malone, N., Thorpe, S., Mosley, D. V., & Stevens-Watkins, D. (2020). Balancing the sexology scales: A content analysis of Black women’s sexuality research. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 1–15.
Harris-Perry, M. V. (2011). Sister citizen: Shame, stereotypes, and Black women in America. Yale University Press.
Higginbotham, E. B. (1993). The politics of respectability. In Righteous discontent: The women’s movement in the Black Baptist church, 1880–1920 (pp. 185–229).
Hill, M. S., & Fischer, A. R. (2008). Examining objectification theory: Lesbian and heterosexual women’s experiences with sexual- and self-objectification. The Counseling Psychologist, 36, 745–776. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000007301669
Hooks, B. (1992). Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics. Taylor and Francis.
Hoyt, W. D., & Kogan, L. R. (2001). Satisfaction with body image and peer relationships for males and females in a collegeenvironment. Sex Roles, 45(3), 199–215.
Ingram, R. E. (1990). Self-focused attention in clinical disorders: Review and a conceptual model. Psychological Bulletin, 107(2), 156–176.
Jenkins Hall, W., & Tanner, A. E. (2016). US Black college women’s sexual health in hookup culture: Intersections of race and gender. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 18(11), 1265–1278.
Jerald, M. C., Cole, E. R., Ward, L. M., & Avery, L. R. (2017). Controlling images: How awareness of group stereotypes affects Black women’s well-being. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 64(5), 487–499.
Jewell, K. S. (1993). From mammy to Miss America and beyond: Cultural images and the shaping of US social policy. Psychology Press.
Kashubeck-West, S., Zeilman, M., & Deitz, C. (2018). Objectification, relationship satisfaction, and self-consciousness during physical intimacy in bisexual women. Sexual & Relationship Therapy, 33(1/2), 97–112.
Laganá, L., White, T., Bruzzone, D. E., & Bruzzone, C. E. (2013). Exploring the sexuality of african american older women. British Journal of Medicine and Medical Research, 4(5), 1129–1148.
Leath, S., Pittman, J. C., Grower, P., & Ward, L. M. (2020). Steeped in Shame: An exploration of family sexual socialization among black college women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 44(4), 450–467.
Masters, W. H., & Johnson, V. (1980). Human sexual inadequacy. Bantam Books.
McKinley, N. M., & Hyde, J. S. (1996). The objectified body consciousness scale. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 20, 181–215. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1996.tb00467.x
Meana, M., & Nunnink, S. E. (2006). Gender differences in the content of cognitive distraction during sex. Journal of Sex Research, 43(1), 59–67.
Moore, M. R. (2006). Lipstick or timberlands? Meanings of gender presentation in black lesbian communities. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 32(1), 113–139.
Patterson, K. L. (2004). A longitudinal study of African American women and the maintenance of a healthy self-esteem. Journal of Black Psychology, 30(3), 307–328.
Pepping, C. A., Cronin, T. J., Lyons, A., & Caldwell, J. G. (2018). The effects of mindfulness on sexual outcomes: The role of emotion regulation. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 47(6), 1601–1612.
Pulverman, C. S., & Meston, C. M. (2019). Sexual dysfunction in women with a history of childhood sexual abuse: The role of sexual shame. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12(3), 291.
Sanchez, D. T., & Kiefer, A. K. (2007). Body concerns in and out of the bedroom: Implications for sexual pleasure and problems. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 36(6), 808–820.
Sheets, V., & Ajmere, K. (2005). Are romantic partners a source of college students’ weight concern? Eating Behaviors, 6(1), 1–9.
Stephens, D. P., & Phillips, L. D. (2003). Freaks, gold diggers, divas, and dykes: The sociohistorical development of adolescent African American women’s sexual scripts. Sexuality and Culture, 7(1), 3–49.
Taub, J. (1999). Bisexual women and beauty norms: A qualitative examination. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 3, 27–36. https://doi.org/10.1300/J155v03n04_04
Taylor, T. N., Munoz-Plaza, C. E., Goparaju, L., Martinez, O., Holman, S., Minkoff, H. L., Karipak, S. E., Gandhi, M., Gonsalves, R., Bryan, T., Connors, N., Schecter, G., & Wilson, T. E. (2017). “The pleasure is better as I’ve gotten older”: Sexual health, sexuality, and sexual risk behaviors among older women living with HIV. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46(4), 1137–1150.
The National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community. Statistics of Black Women and Sexual Assault, October 2018. Retrieved from https://ujimacommunity.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Ujima-Womens-Violence-Stats-v7.4-1.pdf
Thorpe, S., Tanner, A.E., Nichols, T.R., Kuperberg, A.T., & Payton Foh, E. (2021) Black female adolescents’ sexuality: Pleasure expectancies, sexual guilt, and age of sexual debut. American Journal of Sexuality Education. Advanced online publication.
Townes, A., Thorpe, S., Parmer, T., Wright, B., & Herbenick, D. (2021). Partnered Sexual Behaviors, Pleasure, and Orgasms at Last Sexual Encounter: Findings from a US Probability Sample of Black Women Ages 18 to 92 Years. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 1–15.
Townes, A., Fu, T., Herbenick, D., & Carter, A. (2019). 070 Painful sex among white and black women in the united states: Results from a nationally representative study. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 16(6), S26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2019.03.512
Townsend, T. G., Neilands, T. B., Thomas, A. J., & Jackson, T. R. (2010). I’m no Jezebel; I am young, gifted, and Black: Identity, sexuality, and Black girls. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 34(3), 273–285.
Tyree, T. C. M., & Kirby, M. (2017). THOTsBeLike: The construction of the new female sexual stereotype in social media (pp. 3–27). Social media: Culture, industry and identity.
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2019). Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups 2018 (NCES 2019-038), Degrees Awarded.
van den Brink, F., Vollmann, M., Sternheim, L. C., Berkhout, L. J., Zomerdijk, R. A., & Woertman, L. (2018). Negative body attitudes and sexual dissatisfaction in men: The mediating role of body self-consciousness during physical intimacy. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 47(3), 693–701.
van Lankveld, J. J. D. M., Sykora, H., & Geijen, W. (2011). Sexual self-consciousness scale. Handbook of Sexuality-related Measures, 566–568.
Vigil, K. E., de Jong, D. C., & Poovey, K. N. (2021). Roles of genital self-image, distraction, and anxiety in women’s sexual pleasure: A preregistered study. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 47(4), 325–340.
Wallace, S. A., Townsend, T. G., Glasgow, Y. M., & Ojie, M. J. (2011). Gold diggers, video vixens, and Jezebels: Stereotype images and substance use among urban African American girls. Journal of Women’s Health, 20(9), 1315–1324.
Ward, L. M., Jerald, M., Avery, L., & Cole, E. R. (2019). Following their lead? connecting mainstream media use to Black women’s gender beliefs and sexual agency. The Journal of Sex Research, 57(2), 200–212.
Watson, L. B., Ancis, J. R., White, D. N., & Nazari, N. (2013). Racial identity buffers African American women from body image problems and disordered eating. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 37(3), 337–350.
Watson, L. B., Lewis, J. A., & Moody, A. T. (2019). A sociocultural examination of body image among Black women. Body Image, 31, 280–287.
Watson, L. B., Robinson, D., Dispenza, F., & Nazari, N. (2012). African American women’s sexual objectification experiences: A qualitative study. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 36(4), 458–475.
West, C. M. (2002). Battered, black, and blue: An overview of violence in the lives of Black women. Women & Therapy, 25(3–4), 5–27. https://doi.org/10.1300/J015v25n03_02
Wiederman, M. W. (2001). “Don’t look now”: The role of self-focus in sexual dysfunction. The Family Journal, 9(2), 210–214.
Williams, T. T., Dodd, D., Campbell, B., Pichon, L. C., & Griffith, D. M. (2014). Discussing adolescent sexual health in African American churches. Journal of Religion and Health, 53(2), 339–351. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-012-9632-7
Wilson, B. D. (2009). Black lesbian gender and sexual culture: Celebration and resistance. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 11(3): 297–313. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/27784444
Winfrey-Harris, T. (2015). The sisters are alright: Changing the broken narrative of Black women in America. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Wyatt, G. E., & Butts, J. D. (1982). The sexual experience of Afro-American women. In Women’s sexual experience (pp. 17–43). Boston, MA: Springer.
Yehuda, R., Lehrner, A. M. Y., & Rosenbaum, T. Y. (2015). PTSD and sexual dysfunction in men and women. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 12(5), 1107–1119.
Funding
The study was partially funded by the Center for Positive Sexuality’s Race and Sexuality Grant.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Data Availability
The data used in this study is not available for the public.
Code Availability
The coding used in this study is not available.
Ethics Approval
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Consent to Participate
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants to participate.
Consent for Publication
Consent was obtained from all authors to publish this manuscript.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Thorpe, S., Dogan, J.N., Malone, N. et al. Correlates of Sexual Self-Consciousness Among Black Women. Sexuality & Culture 26, 707–728 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-021-09916-8
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-021-09916-8