Cultural components of body dissatisfaction in ethnically diverse women : moving beyond weight focused body image

Cultural body dissatisfaction concerns salient to ethnic minority women are often unrecognized or overlooked by researchers and healthcare providers conditioned to view body dissatisfaction as synonymous with weight dissatisfaction. A culturally-inclusive understanding of body dissatisfaction has broad implications for better identifying individuals at risk for developing eating disorders and comorbid conditions, reforming etiological frameworks of eating pathology and body image disturbance, increasing efficacy of preventative approaches and treatment interventions, and decreasing ethnic health disparities. The purposes of the current investigation are twofold; to illustrate the salience of cultural body dissatisfaction concerns and weight-focused body dissatisfaction concerns among a sample of Black, Latina, Asian, and White female undergraduate students, and to explore the extent to which ethnic group membership, BMI, sociocultural appearance-related pressure (i.e., family, peers, and media), weight-focused body dissatisfaction concerns, and cultural body dissatisfaction concerns predict eating disorder symptomology, body dysmorphia, and cosmetic surgery attitudes among ethnic minority participants. MANCOVA analyses and hierarchical linear regressions were used to analyze data obtained from online survey responses of 313 diverse undergraduate women. Results illustrated the presence of statistically significant differences in levels of endorsement on both cultural and weight-focused body dissatisfaction concerns between ethnic groups, specifically for cultural size and shape concerns, skin tone and facial features, the hourglass ideal, eye concerns, and thin ideal internalization. Both cultural and weight-focused body dissatisfaction concerns emerged as significant predictors for eating disorder symptomology, however, weight-focused concerns played no significant role in relation to body dysmorphia or cosmetic surgery attitudes among ethnic minority participants. The cultural concerns shown to be statistically significant predictors among participants of color for body dysmorphia and attitudes towards cosmetic surgery were cultural size and shape concerns and the hourglass ideal. The absence of cultural components from body image investigations and screening measures hinders the ability to reliably and holistically comprehend how body dissatisfaction presents and influences the actions, attitudes, and development of body and eating comorbidities affecting ethnically diverse women. Recognition of cultural body dissatisfaction concerns could help reduce ethnic health disparities in identification and treatment of body image disturbance and eating pathology impacting the American healthcare system.