"}\nPublicly displayed, sexualized depictions of women have proliferated, \nenabled by new communication technologies, including the internet and \nmobile devices. These depictions are often claimed to be outcomes of a \nculture of gender inequality and female oppression, but, paradoxically, \nrecent rises in sexualization are most notable in societies that have \nmade strong progress toward gender parity. Few empirical tests of the \nrelation between gender inequality and sexualization exist, and there \nare even fewer tests of alternative hypotheses. We examined aggregate \npatterns in 68,562 sexualized self-portrait photographs (\u201csexy selfies\u201d)\n shared publicly on Twitter and Instagram and their association with \ncity-, county-, and cross-national indicators of gender inequality. We \nthen investigated the association between sexy-selfie prevalence and \nincome inequality, positing that sexualization\u2014a marker of high female \ncompetition\u2014is greater in environments in which incomes are unequal and \npeople are preoccupied with relative social standing. Among 5,567 US \ncities and 1,622 US counties, areas with relatively more sexy selfies \nwere more economically unequal but not more gender oppressive. A \ncomplementary pattern emerged cross-nationally (113 nations): Income \ninequality positively covaried with sexy-selfie prevalence, particularly\n within more developed nations. To externally validate our findings, we \ninvestigated and confirmed that economically unequal (but not \ngender-oppressive) areas in the United States also had greater aggregate\n sales in goods and services related to female physical appearance \nenhancement (beauty salons and women\u2019s clothing). Here, we provide an \nempirical understanding of what female sexualization reflects in \nsocieties and why it proliferates.\n\n