Too sexy for my coat

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When you see people dressed in clothing that seems inappropriate for the weather, you may ask yourself, “Aren’t they cold?”  The answer is, possibly not.

Women, in particular, have long endured physical punishment for the sake of fashion. This prompted Roxanne Felig from the University of South Florida to investigate the phenomenon of women who don skimpy outfits even on cold winter nights, seemingly impervious to the weather. 

In a new article titled, “When Looking ‘Hot’ Means Not Feeling Cold: Evidence That Self-Objectification Inhibits Feelings of Being Cold,” published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, Felig and her team discuss objectification theory, which posits, “As women attend to their appearance, fewer cognitive resources are available to focus on other stimuli or demands.” 

The researchers approached women who were standing outside clubs on chilly winter nights, asked them how cold they felt, and also asked them to complete a survey on women’s fashion. The researchers found that, controlling for other factors, women highly focused on their appearance showed no relationship between what they were wearing and their perception of temperature.

At one level, this is a fascinating example of embodied cognition – the metaphor of “feeling hot” may stem from feelings of physical warmth.

However, there are more concerning implications, as well, which the authors discuss at length. As they conclude, “If self-objectification renders women insensitive to discomfort associated with appearance-motivated choices, engagement in such behaviours may reflect more than simply calculated sacrifices for the sake of beauty, but instead a kind of numbing to real and lasting bodily harm accomplished by their own self-objectification.”