A UNLV study of Las Vegas Hispanic teenagers finds that Latina girls have a stronger desire than Latino boys to look like media icons, putting them at a greater risk to develop an eating disorder.
UNLV Psychology Professor Cortney Warren surveyed 235 Hispanic teens at Valley High School in Las Vegas. She found that Latino teens feel media is saturated with images of thin or athletically built men and women, yet minorities and people with varying sizes are often underrepresented. Because they are unable to identify with what they see in the media, Latino adolescents tend to be dissatisfied with their weight and looks.
"Adolescence is a time of identity formation. Teens look to their peers, the media and the cultural environment to explore what is valued and aspire to meet those ideals," Warren said. "This is a developmental time in which teens want to be well-liked, have friends, be popular and feel good about their looks."
Warren said it is important to understand how teens - who are vulnerable to unhealthy eating habits such as anorexia, binge eating or bulimia - interpret media messages about beauty. Knowing how sensitive teens are to media messaging is one way of predicting whether they are likely to develop low self-esteem, depression or an eating disorder.
Generational status is also a factor in predicting the likelihood of a Latina girl developing eating disorder symptoms. With each new generation, girls are more likely to abandon the traditional Hispanic cultural ideals of beauty and adapt to Western norms that a slim shape determines beauty.
"In Las Vegas, where images of sexuality are on every corner, what message are teens getting about what it means to be beautiful? Everything is sexualized to the extreme," Warren said. "Living in a context that promotes highly rigid, unattainable, unrealistic sexual images of thin, young, ideal-looking men and women can have an affect on how adolescents view their body and adversely affect how they achieve a body image."
Participants in the study were part of Warren's eating disorder prevention and media literacy program at Valley High School. They averaged a body mass index of 24 (an average weight range). More than 57 percent were second generation-participants who were born in the U.S, but one or both of their parents were born in another country. The media literacy program was conducted over two years with three one-hour media literacy lessons for ninth-graders.
Warren's examination of the eating behaviors among Latinos is one of the few studies of this kind. The study was published in the September issue of "Sex Roles: A Journal of Research." Warren's co-authors are UNLV psychology graduate students Andrea Schoen and Kerri Schafer.
