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- Title
A "coca-cola" shape: cultural change, body image, and eating disorders in San Andrés, Belize.
- Authors
Anderson-Fye, Eileen P.
- Abstract
Eating disorders have been associated with developing nations undergoing rapid social transition, including participation in a global market economy and heavy media exposure. San Andrés, Belize, a community with many risk factors associated with the cross-cultural development of eating disorders, has shown remarkable resistance to previously documented patterns, despite a local focus on female beauty. Drawing on longitudinal person-centered ethnography with adolescent girls, this article examines why this community appears exceptional in light of the literature. First, community beauty and body image ideals and practices are explicated. Then, a protective ethnopsychology is proposed as a key mediating factor of the rapid socio-cultural change among young women. Finally, possible nascent cases of eating disordered behavior are discussed in light of their unique phenomenology: that is, having to do more with economic opportunity in the tourism industry and less with personal distress or desire for thinness. Close, meaning-centered examination of eating and body image practices may aid understanding and prevention of eating disorders among adolescents undergoing rapid social change in situations of globalization and immigration.
- Subjects
BELIZE; EATING disorders in adolescence; EATING disorders; BODY image; SOCIAL change
- Publication
Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry, 2004, Vol 28, Issue 4, p561
- ISSN
0165-005X
- Publication type
journal article
- DOI
10.1007/s11013-004-1068-4