Race influences women's body images
By Nancy Cook Lauer, FSU Communications Group
Jane, trying on a pair of size 12 jeans, stands before the three-way mirror in the department store dressing room, grimacing as she casts a glance over her shoulder.
"My stomach sticks out, my thighs are too fat, my buttocks too big," she complains, resolving once again to go back to fasting and diet pills until she's a "perfect" size 10.
Joan, just a few feet away, slides into a size 14 pair of jeans. "Oh girl, looking good," Joan smiles to herself. "This is just the thing to wear to that party."
While individuals are of course unique, the difference between the fictitious characters, Joan and Jane, might be as simple as black and white.
Jane agonizes over fitting into a size 10, but Joan's size 14 is more the average for American women overall, and her attitude is much less likely to lead to the extreme purging behavior her white counterpart may engage in.
That's the finding of an FSU researcher, who has been studying self-perception, eating attitudes and behaviors of white and African-American women. While there are indications this trend may be changing, FSU health education Professor Doris Abood finds that African-American women still are more likely to be bulimic and report binge eating at a younger age than are white women, but less likely to engage in the extreme purging - vomiting, using laxatives and diet pills - that often have adverse health consequences.
Abood, who surveyed 373 white women and 80 black women, found that the African-American women reported higher satisfaction with their bodies despite weighing more than white women of similar height.
"One possible explanation is African-American women thumb through black magazines that are less likely than white magazines to publish photos of extremely thin women," Abood said. "In fact, black women are more likely to see average weight and full-figured women, which may contribute to a more positive and realistic body image."
Because white women report lower body satisfaction and place more emphasis on thinness, "they tend to resort to extreme weight-control measures that can lead to digestive and dental problems and chemical imbalances," Abood said.
If Abood had her way, magazines read by white women would show "a whole array of body sizes," the way ones aimed at black women do.
In a perfect world, "I would want the media to be a lot more realistic in their portrayal of what a white female looks like," Abood said. "Otherwise, they're kind of a public-health menace."
But the times seem to be changing for black women as well.
Abood's findings suggest that while African-American women aren't expressing the number of pathogenic or eating disorders that white women are, they are more concerned with their body weight than past research indicates.
The study showed that a higher percentage of African-American women than white women reported they wouldn't be as preoccupied with food and weight if their peers pressured them less.
"The African-American culture that accepts substantial bodies may be slowly giving way to mass advertising that associates attractiveness with thinness," Abood said. "Tall, slender African-American women are beginning to be photographed along with full-figured women in black magazines."