Watching Women’s Bodies, Watching Women’s Selves

For several of the women I interviewed, fear of negative evaluation was felt most deeply when it came to their appearance, their body, and their size—the first half of this chapter sees this interplay fleshed out. Despite the body seemingly being a mainstay of the socially anxious woman’s experience, interviewees indicated that their apprehension about others’ appraisals often extended to how they were perceived as a whole person. The chapter’s second half therefore frames women’s social anxiety as the fear of their entire performance being negatively evaluated. As participants expressed these ideas, social media was recurrently cited as compounding, and being intertwined with, their difficulties. It therefore forms a motif throughout this whole chapter.