Current research on construction of the female body focuses on non-Hispanic women in the United States. The idealized Latina body, however, is rapidly becoming commodified and objectified in global popular culture. Using standardized and open-ended surveys and group and individual interviews, the author examines the negotiation of sociocultural ideals and body image by adolescents at the intersection of gender, race, and beauty. These young women hold racist beauty ideals but are flexible when judging the appearance of real-life women. They perceive two competing or complementary prototypes of beauty, one white and one Latina. This study fills a gap in the literature on beauty and the body by examining a non-U.S. sample that does not fit into the usual Black-white dichotomy of race.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
“Andes lite”: Did you also know.... 2002. Foreign Policy, January-February, pp. S27-S29.
2.
Bond, S., and T. Cash. 1992. Black beauty: Skin color and body images among African American college women. Journal of Applied Social Psychology22:874-888.
3.
Bordo, S. R. 1989.The body and the reproduction of femininity: A feminist appropriation of Foucault. In Gender/body/knowledge: Feminist reconstructions of being and knowing, edited by A. M. Jaggar and S. R. Bordo. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Brook, B. 1999. Feminist perspectives on the body, edited by P. Abbott and C. Wallace. London: Longman.
6.
Butler, J. 1993. Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex.” New York: Routledge.
7.
Casanova, E. M. 2002. Women’s magazines in Ecuador: Re-reading “la Chica Cosmo.” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture22:89-102.
8.
Chapkis, W. 1986. Beauty secrets: Women and the politics of appearance. Boston: South End.
9.
Currie, D. H. 1999. Girl talk: Adolescent magazines and their readers. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
10.
Duke, L. 2000. Black in a blonde world: Race and girls’ interpretations of the feminine ideal in teen magazines. Journalism and Mass Communications Quarterly77 (Summer): 367-392.
11.
El País de los Prejuicios. 2001. El Universo, 3 June, pp. 8-9.
12.
Expreso. 1998. Mujeres: la Pinta es lo de Menos? In Mujer y Familia en la Prensa Ecuatoriana de 1996. Quito, Ecuador: Abya-Yala Ediciones.
13.
Franco, J. 2001. Bodies in contention. NACLA Report on the Americas34 (March/April): 41-44.
14.
Franzoi, S. L., and S. A. Shields. 1984. The Body Esteem Scale: Multidimensional structure and sex differences in a college population. Journal of Personality Assessment48:173-178.
15.
Grosz, E. 1994. Volatilebodies: Toward a corporeal feminism. Bloomington:Indiana University Press.
16.
Jaffee, L. L., and J. Mahle. 1995. Adolescent girls: Factors influencing low and high body image (part 2 of 2). Melpomene Journal14 (Summer): 35-42.
17.
Kenrick, D. T., and S. E. Gutierres. 1980. Contrast effects and judgments of physical attractiveness: When beauty becomes a social problem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology38:131-140.
18.
Landázuri, M. 1991. Women, ideology, and language in the Ecuadorian print media. Working paper no. 218 (February), Women in International Development, East Lansing, Michigan State University.
19.
Lovejoy, M. 2001. Disturbances in the social body: Differences in body image and eating problems among African American and white women. Gender & Society15:239-261.
20.
Makkar, J. K., and M. J. Strube. 1995. Black women’s self-perceptions of attractiveness following exposure to white versus Black beauty standards: The moderating role of racial identity and self-esteem. Journal of Applied Social Psychology25:1547-1566.
21.
Milkie, M. A. 1999. Social comparisons, reflected appraisals, and mass media: The impact of pervasive beauty images on Black and white girls’ self-concepts. Social Psychology Quarterly62:190-210.
22.
Miller, E. L. 1969. Body image, physical beauty and colour among Jamaican adolescents. Social and Economic Studies18:72-89.
23.
Molloy, B. L., and S. D. Herzberger. 1998. Body image and self-esteem: A comparison of African-American and Caucasian women. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research38 (April): 631-644.
24.
Myers, P. N., Jr., and F. A. Biocca. 1992. The elastic body image: The effect of television advertising on body image distortion in young women. Journal of Communication42 (Summer): 108-133.
25.
Negrón-Muntaner, F. 1997. Jennifer’s butt. Aztlán—A Journal of Chicano Studies22 (Fall): 181-195.
26.
Ofusu, H. B., K. D. Lafreniere, and C. Y. Senn. 1998. Body image perception among women of African descent: A normative context? Feminism and Psychology8:303-323.
27.
Parker, S., M. Nichter, M. Nichter, N. Vuckovic, C. Sims, and C. Ritenbaugh. 1995. Body images and weight concerns among African American and white adolescent females: Differences that make a difference. Human Organization54 (Summer): 103-114.
28.
Rahier, J. M. 1998. Blackness, the racial/spatial order, migrations, and Miss Ecuador 1995. American Anthropologist100 (June): 421-430.
29.
Rosenberg, M. 1989. Society and the adolescent self-image, 2d ed. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
30.
Stein, J. 1998. Q+A: Jennifer López. Time, 5 October.
31.
Stutzman, R. 1980. El Mestizaje: An all-inclusive ideology of exclusion. In Cultural transformations and ethnicity in modern Ecuador, edited by N. E. Whitten. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
32.
Trepagnier, B. 1994. The politics of white and Black bodies. Feminism & Psychology4:199-205.
33.
Twine, F. W. 1998. Racism in a racial democracy: The maintenance of white supremacy in Brazil. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
34.
Wade, P. 1997. Race and ethnicity in Latin America. London: Pluto.
35.
Wade, T. J. 1991. Race and sex differences in adolescent self-perceptions of physical attractiveness and level of self-esteem during early and late adolescence. Personality and Individual Differences12:1319-1324.
36.
Weitz, R. 2001. Women and their hair: Seeking power through resistance and accommodation. Gender& Society15:667-686.
37.
Wolf, N. 1991. The beauty myth: How images of beauty are used against women. New York: William Morrow.
