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Industry: Email Alert RSS FeedDenying diversity: perceptions of beauty and social comparison processes among Latina, Black, and White women
Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, July, 2002 by Maya A. Poran
Women of Color have typically been left out of research, yet research findings based on White participants have often been generalized to "all women" (Zinn, 1990). In the area of body image research, the variations among women's experiences with the body and body representations, as they are affected by racial identity, have not been adequately investigated. Few researchers have even explored Women of Color and their experiences with the dominant beauty standard. It has been observed that White women seem to have a uniform notion of what "beauty" should be (Parker et al., 1995), and their conception of beauty tends to match the culturally popular images of women in mainstream media (Wolf, 1991). Black women, however, have been found less likely to hold uniform notions of beauty, and far more likely to describe beauty in terms of personality traits rather than physical ones (Landrine, Klonoff, & Brown-Collins, 1992; Parker et al., 1995).
Physical appearance is one of, if not, the major component in interpersonal interactions, and so it has been investigated extensively, beginning with the groundbreaking work of Dion, Berscheid, and Walster's description of the "beautiful-is-good" phenomenon (Dion, Berscheid, & Waister, 1972). In the United States, people who are perceived as attractive are also perceived as having positive personality traits such as intelligence, sociability, kindness, virtue, nurturance, and warmth, and they are perceived as more successful in areas of work and personal life (Dion et al., 1972; Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, & Longo, 1991; Feingold, 1992). In addition, physical attractiveness stereotypes have been found to be the dominant component of gender stereotypes, and they strongly and consistently implicate other components of gender stereotypes (Bar-Tal & Saxe, 1974, 1976; Deaux & Lewis, 1983, 1984). Attractiveness has been recognized as a highly gendered variable, and has been studied as such.
Gendered Beauty and Media Images
The majority of research on beauty has focused on gender differences in the experience of physical attractiveness. The beauty standard holds much more importance for women than for men. It has been consistently found that women tend to focus on appearance more than men do (Berscheid, Walster, & Bohrnstedt, 1973; Cash & Henry, 1995; Cash, Winstead, & Janda, 1985), and women tend to view their bodies as objects, perceiving themselves on a part-by-part basis (Cash & Brown, 1989; Franzoi, Kessenich, & Sugrue, 1989). Experiences of the body are also highly influenced by the gender-orientation of the individual; the higher women are in feminine gender-role orientation, the lower their body esteem (Davis, Dionne, & Lazarus, 1996; Franzoi, 1995; Jackson, Sullivan, & Rostker, 1988). High feminine gender-role orientation has also been found to be strongly related to the presence of eating disorders (Fredrick & Grow, 1996; Johnson & Petrie, 1995; Martz, Handley, & Eisler, 1995; Pike, 1995).
The environment in which women learn about the politics of the body is saturated with media presentations of what a woman's body should be. Women in the media are portrayed in terms of their bodies far more than are men. Women are judged by more exacting physical and sexual standards even though these standards are often based on images that are airbrushed, changed by computer, or trimmed with scissors (Wolf, 1991). Advertisments are highly gendered (Barthel, 1988; Davis, 1990; Goffman, 1976), and these presentations influence perceptions of gender (Archer, Iritani, Kimes, & Barrios, 1983; Nigro, Hill, Gelbein, & Clark, 1988; Zuckerman & Kieffer, 1994). Images of women in American media have been found to affect women's perceptions of themselves. Studies indicate that just viewing gendered advertisements that focus on women's bodies can negatively affect women's moods and perceptions of their bodies (Myers & Biocca, 1992).
Such studies attest to the gendered meanings of beauty and provide strong evidence for the effects of the media on experiences of the body (see Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). The results of research on beauty and the body are consistent, and have offered much toward the understanding of the social and personal experience of the body; however, often unacknowledged is the fact that the majority of the research has been conducted with White participants. Recognition of the power of gender expectations to influence body cognitions has been a great contribution to the literature on physical attractiveness; unfortunately, this focus has often obscured the power of race, and racist representations of beauty, on individuals' experiences of the body.
Including Race in Body Image Research
In the studies described above, the ethnicity of the participants was often unspecified. The relative absence of analyses of ethnicity in body image research has often been matched with the assumption that what is true for White women is also true for Women of Color. Whiteness is often considered to mean neutral, "normal," and standard (Frankenberg, 1993; Mullings, 1994; Ortiz, 1994). In many areas of research and theory, African American women and other Women of Color have had their lives defined through a White lens. Although they may live in a macrocultural context of White domination, the community and family experiences of Women of Color vary greatly (Collins, 1990; Ortiz, 1994). These variations, often overlooked, influence experiences of the world and the self (Amott & Matthai, 1991; Collier & Yanagasiko, 1987; DiLeonardo, 1993; Zinn, 1990; Zinn & Dill, 1994).
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