College Students’ Attitudes About Gender Typicality and Sexual Orientation

Previous research has shown that individuals’ gender typicality and sexual orientation are unique predictors of experiencing gender-based harassment (Gordon & Meyer, 2007; Li, Pollitt, & Russell, 2015; Rieger & Savin-Williams, 2012). Less work has examined gender typicality and sexual orientation as unique predictors of perpetrating gender-based harassment, and this work has focused primarily on adolescents (Horn, 2007; Horn & Heinze, 2019). To address this gap, the current study assesses college students’ attitudes towards hypothetical peers who differ in sexual orientation and gender typicality. 

Stereotypes of sexualized thin women have been well established in the literature and sexualized women are perceived as less intelligent, kind, and even less human than non-sexualized women (APA, 2007; Fox & Bailenson, 2009; Fox, Ralston, Cooper, & Jones, 2015; Stone, Brown, & Jewell, 2015). Most of this research only investigated stereotypes of thin sexualized women, as they are the most common in our culture. However, in the last decade the Body Positivity Movement has sought to expand what is considered beautiful and advocates for acceptance of all bodies. Many visual representations of this movement include plus-sized women wearing sexualized clothing, as a way to embrace their body. Previous research in our lab also found that stereotypes applied to sexualized women seem to depend on the body size of the women, such that thin sexualized women are stereotyped differently than plus-size sexualized women (Biefeld, Stone, & Brown, under review). This project seeks to replicate and extend our previous findings by investigating perceptions and stereotypes of sexualized thin and sexualized plus-sized women.