Sexystupid

Chronic attention to physical appearance leaves fewer cognitive resources available for other mental and physical activities. One study demonstrated this fragmenting quite vividly (Fredrickson et al., 1998).While alone in a dressing room, college students were asked to try on and evaluate either a swimsuit or a sweater.While they waited for 10 minutes wearing the garment, they completed a math test.The results revealed that young women in swimsuits performed significantly worse on the math problems than did those wearing sweaters. No differences were found for young men. In other words, thinking about the body and comparing it to sexualized cultural ideals disrupted mental capacity.

--Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls (warning: PDF).

The relevance of this to the "Styrofoam Tits" discussion should be obvious.

Link found via bruceb.