Eur J Soc Psychol. 2019;00:1–15. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ejsp | 1 © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1 | INTRODUCTION Young women often report that being sexy and managing their ap- pearance to get men’s attention make them feel empowered (i.e., sex is power belief; Erchull & Liss, 2013a). Scholars and feminist theorists (Anderson, 2014; Erchull & Liss, 2014) have questioned whether such feelings should be considered as positive (Peterson, 2010) or, in contrast, as a result of a patriarchal discourse contrib- uting to women’s (self-)objectification (i.e., their [self-]treatment as sexual objects; Calogero, 2013a; Lamb, 2010). The positive relation- ship between “sex is power” beliefs (SIPB) defined as “the subjective belief that women’s beauty and sexuality can be a source of power over men” (Erchull & Liss, 2014, p. 40) and self-objectification (SO) has indeed been empirically well supported (Erchull & Liss, 2014; Liss, Erchull, & Ramsey, 2010). Yet, due to the relatively recent in- terest in the SIPB concept in social psychology literature, the psy- chological consequences of such a belief have not been extensively investigated. First, if SIPB is found to be systematically related to SO, it should be expected to have a negative effect on some of the well-documented consequences of SO (for a review, see Moradi & Huang, 2008; Roberts, Calogero, & Gervais, 2018). The present ar- ticle focuses on two of these consequences, namely negative eat- ing attitudes and sexual satisfaction. Second, as suggested by some scholars (e.g., Peterson, 2010), in addition to affecting SO, SIPB might also induce a sense of sexual subjectivity (i.e., those intrain- dividual self-perceptual aspects of women’s sexual health related to the fact of being the subject rather than the object of sexual desire; Horne & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2006). Because sexual subjectivity en- tails positive consequences for women’s sexual health, most notably on women’s sexual satisfaction (Zimmer-Gembeck & French, 2016), it could be that SIPB might positively affect sexual satisfaction via sexual subjectivity. In sum, in the present article, we aim to test, via three studies, the proposition that SIPB produces mixed consequences. More Received: 4 March 2019 | Accepted: 8 November 2019 DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.2643 RESEARCH ARTICLE Sex is power belief and women’s mental health: The mediating roles of self-objectification and sexual subjectivity Matthias De Wilde 1 | Annalisa Casini 1 | Robin Wollast 2 | Stéphanie Demoulin 1 1 Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium 2 Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Bruxelles, Belgium Correspondence Matthias De Wilde, Université catholique de Louvain, Place Cardinal Mercier, 10, L3.05.01, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Email: matthias.dewilde@uclouvain.be Abstract Sex is power belief (SIPB) positively relates to self-objectification. This research aims at expanding this finding. We propose that SIPB involves an instrumental view of one’s own body (i.e., self-objectification) that leads women to experience the nega- tive consequences classically associated with self-objectification. We further sug- gest that SIPB positively relates to sexual subjectivity—multidimensional sexual self-perceptions and positive sexual experiences—and that such relation counterbal- ances some of the negative effects of SIPB. We examine the effect of SIPB on wom- en’s negative eating attitudes and sexual satisfaction, and test the mediating roles of self-objectification and sexual subjectivity in three studies (N1 = 121, N2 = 296, N3 = 320). Results supported our predictions that beliefs in one’s sexual power lead both to negative (via self-objectification) and positive (via sexual subjectivity) conse- quences for women’s mental health. The discussion focuses on the potential conse- quences of SIPB at both individual and collective levels. KEYWORDS agency, health, self-objectification, sexuality, women