Flabless Is Fabulous: How Latina and Anglo Women Read and Incorporate the Excessively Thin Body Ideal into Everyday Experience

Abstract

This paper examined how Latina and Anglo women negotiate excessively thin, female images in the media. Twenty-four Latina and Anglo women participated in focus groups in which they were asked questions about beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors regarding the mediated ideal body in magazines. Glaser and Strauss's (1967) constant comparison method showed that the women's beliefs and attitudes came from primarily negotiated readings of the mediated ideal, but they had more hegemonic readings with regard to behavior. Furthermore, Latina women's exposure to Hispanic culture, with its alternative feminine ideal, as well as to the dominant Anglo culture, enabled them to resist the mediated ideal more than could Anglo women.