Blame it on Barbie: body figure preferences and disordered eating amongst adolescent South African females, a cross cultural study

[摘要] In recent years there has been great interest in studying the energy-restrictiveeating disorders within sociocultural contexts. Patterns of change in theincidence and prevalence of these disorders appear to reflect social processesinvolving gender issues and shared cultural values around the female body,South African society is experiencing rapid sociocultural changes, and thisraises questions about disordered eating and valuesour own society.This study investigated body figure preferences and attitudes and behavioursrelated to eating and body weight. The sample consisted of 125 White pupilsand 61 Black pupils in three high schools in urban and periurban areas ofGauteng, South Africa. The schools represent different socioeconomicEnvironments. One is a private school and one is state school with partialprovincial subsidy in an affluent suburb, and one is a community schoolwhich is subsidised mainly by donor funding and serves aperiurbanCommunity.Black and White pupils reported similar body ideals and levels of discrepancybetween their reported actual body figures and their ideal figures, but Blackpupils showed significantly greater tolerance of different body figures. boththin and fat. Despite this increased tolerance. However, their scores on theEating Disorders Inventory were similar to those of the White pupils andexceeded White pupils on perfectionism and maturity fears measures,Amongst Black pupils in the three schools. EDI scores were similar but Stateschool pupils showed more body dissatisfaction and Community schoolpupils showed more perfectionism; and maturity fear, This suggests thatpupils in more disadvantaged school environments are weight-concerned andcould still be at risk of disordered eating, the finding is contrary toexpectations that private school pupils would show the most disorderedeating and weight concern.EDI scores were closely related to body figure preferences, and especially toreal-ideal discrepancy which was shown to be a simple but effective measure,A high-scoring subgroup was isolated and this was found to include 14 Blackpupils and 22 White pupils, The findings have implications for preventiveefforts and for further research,

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand