First-time sex can be like a double-edged sword — it makes or breaks your self-image, depending on whether you are male or female. Usually, college-going males become more satisfied with their appearance after first sexual encounter, while the opposite is true of their female counterparts. “We’re not talking about 12-year-old girls having sex, so it’s striking that even among these young women —who are 17 or older when they first had sex —their images of themselves went down,” said Eva S. Lefkowitz, who led the study. “If on average they’re feeling worse about themselves, it says something about their development of healthy sexuality and healthy sense of self and being,” added Lefkowitz, associate professor of human development and family studies at Penn State University, US.
Overall, researchers found that women became happier with their physical appearance from first to fourth year in college, and men became less satisfied with their appearance over the same time period, the Journal of Adolescence reports. However, researchers found the opposite directly after students had sex for the first time —males were more satisfied with their appearance and females were less satisfied. In previous studies, researchers found positive body image can reinforce risky sexual behaviour in male college students, said Sara A. Vasilenko, graduate student in human development at Penn, according to a Penn statement. Researchers surveyed 434 students asking them about their “attitudes and experiences in relationships with other people.” All students were traditional freshmen —age 17 to 19 years —at the start of the project. The researchers administered the same survey to these students four times over the course of their college careers.