In all times women were paying much attention to their appearance regardless of their ethnicity. However, each ethnicity has its own image of a beautiful body determined by its cultural and social values. Nowadays, there are many studies on how women of different ethnicities perceive an ideal body and how they assess themselves in relation to this ideal image. In our modern society the latter is imposed also by the media which portrays skinny models as being perfect and ideal. The main issue investigated by most of psychologists in burgeoning literature devoted to this subject is the attitude of women of different ethnicities toward this ideal body image, or whether they feel any dissatisfaction with their actual body shape or they are quite satisfied with it.
This review is focused on four major studies of dependence of female body perspective on her ethnicity carried out by American scholars. Most of authors choose a meta-analysis as a method of their investigation which is not surprising due to a plethora of works devoted to this subject. One of the largest studies, which embraced 5,773 works on problems of body dissatisfaction and ethnicity , was carried out by Shelly Grabe and Janet Shibley Hyde from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The purpose of this huge work was to challenge the common belief that the attitude of women toward her weight depends on her ethnicity. Already in the abstract of the study the authors say: “The findings directly challenge the belief that there are large differences in dissatisfaction between White and all non-White women and suggest that body dissatisfaction may not be the golden girl problem promoted in the literature” (Grabe & Hyde, 2006, p.622). After reviewing plenty of sources discussing this issue the authors conclude that most of scholars tend to consider White women as much more dissatisfied with their bodies, in particular with their weight, than their Black or Hispanic counterparts. To verify whether this belief is true, the two psychologists carry out a substantive analysis of the above-mentioned works taking into account both published and unpublished sources. To make their study as independent as possible, Grabe and Hyde use a number of scales as measures for evaluating dissatisfaction, e.g. the BDS-EDI, the FRS, the BASS-MBSRQ, etc. (Grabe & Hyde, 2006, p.626). Moreover, they make combinations of samples dividing the investigated women into pairs: White/Black women, White/Asian women, Black/Asian women, Black/Hispanic women and Asian/Hispanic women to score the body dissatisfaction of each ethnicity by means of higher or lower scores (Grabe & Hyde, 2006, p.628). In accordance with this meta-analysis represented by the authors in a number of tables, it may be concluded that all those women “do not differ significantly in their levels of body dissatisfaction” (Grabe & Hyde, 2006, p.632). Despite of such conclusion, Grabe and Hyde do not think that we may “close the door on the issue of Black-White differences in body dissatisfaction” (Grabe & Hyde, 2006, p.635) since from their standpoint, Black women are merely not studied enough in this aspect or White women are often mixed with Latin and Asian women which makes studies results unreliable.
Another study carried out by Taona P. Chithambo and Stanley J. Huey focuses on weight and attractiveness perception among overweight women and promote a so-called buffering hypothesis suggesting that “aspects of Black culture protect Black women against media ideals that promote a slender female body type; therefore, Black women are expected to exhibit higher body esteem than White women” (Chithambo & Huey, 2013, p. 1). The authors carry out their investigation based on surveys made by participants in Wave IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. For measuring women’s discrepancies of weight perception the psychologists utilize as the base of their investigation Body Mass Index, or BMI, to ensure the objectiveness of their study. In addition, they take into consideration the race of investigated women, their weight perception and their self-rate attractiveness. (Chithambo & Huey, 2013, p. 2). As a result of a thorough analysis the authors make a conclusion which was predicted by them in the very beginning of their work: Black women, despite of being considerably heavier than their White counterparts, feel more attractive and are less inclined to dieting or eating disorders than White women. All this, in the authors’ opinion, is due to the fact that obesity was always seen as a sign of good health and wealth in Black culture whereas thinness symbolizes poverty and instability therein. Therefore Black women are less dependent on the ideal looks portrayed by the media and more focused on personal features than White girls.
A similar work written for a marketing journal by a group of scholars: Diana L. Haytko, R. Stephen Parker, Carol M. Motley and Ivonne M. Torres, states that Black women in contrast with their White, Hispanic and Asian counterparts, feel much more satisfied with their body and tend to follow more their cultural beauty image than promoted patterns of skinny models. In the beginning of their study, the authors try to understand why women in general pay more attention to their appearance than men. Based on two well-known theories – Social Comparison Theory by Festinger (1954) and Objectification Theory by Fredrickson and Roberts (1997), - they conclude that women are more inclined to compare themselves with “ideal”, or unrealistic, images of celebrities to more correspond to men’s expectations, to be more desired by them and that women are always viewed and evaluated by others. (Haytko et al., 2014, p. 4). All in all, they draw the same conclusions on discrepancies between Black and White women. Meanwhile, their study of Hispanic women is rather new and interesting due to the fact that the authors analyze such women in light of acculturation, or enculturation, in the American society which makes them to perceive their body like their American white counterparts (Haytko et al., 2014, p.6). After carrying out an investigation with 263 individuals of various ethnicities the scholars conclude that all of them feel the pressure of an ideal look promoted by the media and suggest that the companies use more “human” shapes in their advertisements to attract more customers.
The last investigation which was included in the present literature review, was executed by Madeline Altabe who studied “multiple ethnic groups for comparison and measures for the assessment of multiple dimensions of body image” (Altabe, M., 1996, p.153). She carried out her study based on college students of the University of South Florida, males and females, who had to complete questionnaires in groups. As a result of the qualitative analysis she concluded that among all investigated samples “Caucasians and Hispanic showed the most disturbance” (Altabe, M., 1996, p. 157) as for their body perception whereas “African and Asian-Americans the least” (Altabe, M., 1996, p. 158). The author also confirmed that Black people had the most positive self-esteem in comparison to all other ethnic groups.
In summary, we may state that in all mentioned works the female body perspective was analyzed in light of her ethnicity and in all of them, except of the study carried out by Grabe and Hyde, the authors came to the conclusion that Black women are less inclined to associate themselves with some promoted media patterns of beauty than their White, Asian and Hispanic counterparts which is owned to peculiarities of Black culture where obesity was never a bad feature. Asian women, in common opinion of all authors, are more dependent on an ideal image of the body and are less satisfied with their appearances because historically and culturally such women always wanted to look like their White counterparts. As for Hispanic women, according to the reviewed studies, they feel more dissatisfied with their body than the Black ones but much less unhappy about their appearance than their White and Asian counterparts.
References
Altabe, M. (1996). Ethnicity and Body Image: Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis. Journal
of Eating Disorders.153-159.
Chithambo, T.,P., Huey, J.,S. (2013). Black/White Differences in Perceived Weight and
Attractiveness among Overweight Women. Journal of Obesity. V. 2013. 1-4.
Grabe, Sh., Hyde, J.,Sh. (2006). Ethnicity and Body Dissatisfaction Among Women
in the United States: A Meta-Analysis. Psychological Bulltin. V. 132. 622-640.
Haytko, D., L., Parker, R., S., Motley M., C., Torres I., M. Body image and ethnicity: A
qualitative exploration. Journal of Management and Marketing Research, V. 17. 1-20.
