On National Teacher Day, meet the 2024-25 Kenan Fellows
ORIGINAL ARTICLEComparing portrayals of beauty in outdoor .docx
1. ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Comparing portrayals of beauty in outdoor advertisements
across
six cultures: Bulgaria, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland, South Korea,
and Turkey
Pamela K. Morris*
School of Communication, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago,
IL, USA
(Received 12 November 2012; accepted 16 January 2014)
This research expands scholarship on cross-cultural
investigations by examining ideas
of beauty through the lens of outdoor advertisements. Using a
content analysis
method, 293 images of women in outdoor advertisements from
six different cultures,
including Bulgaria, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland, South Korea,
and Turkey, were
reviewed through a framework of advertising and consumer
culture, globalization, and
theories of beauty. The findings revealed that differences across
cultures exist and that
beauty ideals are culture dependent.
Keywords: advertising/public relations; cross-cultural
communication; content
analysis; women; gender studies
2. Advertising is an important social institution. Scholars have
shown how advertising
reflects culture and serves as a distorting mirror that emphasizes
certain attitudes and
behaviors, thereby reinforcing selected lifestyles and values
(Pollay & Gallagher, 1990).
Mass media play a central part in defining cultural standards,
particularly the more
ephemeral qualities of attractiveness, femininity, and beauty.
Advertising has long been
criticized for stereotyping women in narrowly defined social
roles (Uray & Burnaz, 2003)
and for perpetuating unrealistic beauty ideals that privilege
being young, being thin, and
being white (Frith, Shaw, & Cheng, 2005, 2009).
The literature on women’s images and beauty styles in
advertising is heavily biased
toward the USA. However, the global economy demands more
cross-cultural explorations
for a thorough understanding of the social impact of advertising
on gender categories
(Cheong, Kim, & Zheng, 2010; Skorek & Schreier, 2009). With
the rise of globalization
and the expected growth of global advertising expenditures
(Bell, 2013), it is essential for
those in both the academy and industry to understand different
markets and to become
more culturally sensitive. The present study contributes to the
literature on globalization,
gender, and the emerging economies of Eastern Europe and
Asia, using a cross-cultural
comparison to draw out various aspects of the consumption of
beauty. This investigation
is unique in its examination of the outdoor media platform and
4. signifier and the signified.
The signifier, such as the word ‘woman’ or even an image of a
woman, is just a
meaningless object without the signified. The signified is the
meaning of the word,
image, or product, without which the signifier would be
inexplicable. In order to be
understood, a sign must comprise both signified and signifier.
A sign is not an independent object. Signs point to referent
systems that are objects
external to the sign unit. For instance, the real woman whose
picture is used in an
advertisement is the referent of the picture, while the complex
webs of social meaning
and significance exclusive to a particular culture that come with
her individuality
constitute the referent system. Advertising draws its meaning
from these referent systems,
which are based on culture and ideology or knowledge that is
constructed in such a way
as to legitimize social inequalities (Rose, 2007). Williamson
(1978) calls the referent
systems called forth by the signs in advertisements
mythological systems.
Advertising translates between systems of meaning and
interchanges values from
different areas of life. By correlating emotions and other
intangibles with physical
objects, advertisements link possibly unattainable feelings and
lifestyles with things that
can be acquired (Williamson, 1978). Advertising messages
promise youth, confidence,
sexual appeal, beauty, and happiness through the purchase and
use of particular brands.
5. Advertising does not invent these emotions and connotations;
rather, it transmits
culturally salient meanings via sign systems already known to a
certain group of people.
Moreover, in order to keep their brand relevant and credible for
the target audience,
advertisers continually refresh product messages and images. In
the context of increasing
global marketing pressures, Western conventions and ideals are
disseminated across
cultures and circulated into social values and everyday life
(MacRury, 2009).
Globalization
Guillén (2001) defines globalization as ‘a process leading to
greater interdependence and
mutual awareness (reflexivity) among economic, political, and
social units in the world,
and among actors in general’ (p. 236). Globalization is an
uneven process that is
complicated by local production, distribution, cultures, and
economies. Rather than
exemplifying either of the opposing concepts global identity
(Arnett, 2002; Zhang &
Khare, 2009) and consumer ethnocentrism (Guo, 2013),
globalization is dynamic
(Garrett, 1992).
Asian Journal of Communication 243
The literature documents how local societies adapt, reinterpret,
and respond to
6. Western consumer culture, striving to make Western concepts
culturally meaningful.
Üstüner and Holt (2010) called this indigenization; other terms
that are used include
crealization, syncretization, domestication, and glocalization.
Indigenization ‘involves
not only constructing local identity in a dialectic engagement
with Western cultural
power, but also constructing status for class factions that lack
the cultural capital to
compete in the global consumption field’ (Üstüner & Holt,
2010, p. 53). Indigenization
exhibits elements of postcolonialism in which colonized
individuals engage in resistance
and reconstruction by subverting and appropriating their
colonizers’ texts to create
alternative, hybrid, or entirely new meanings (Lee, 2003a).
Although advertising shapes
consumer preferences, globally expanding corporate marketers
have found that inclina-
tions molded by cultural and social norms are often resistant to
change (Jones, 2011).
Although the outdoor advertisements in the present study are
culture specific, the
messages are influenced by the complex networks of
globalization. To understand the
visuals in these communications, particularly the images of
beauty, it is necessary to
consider both global and local contexts.
Beauty
Beauty is culturally constructed based on norms, experiences,
and socialization to create
standards among ages, races, and nationalities (Bjerke &
7. Polegato, 2001; Shepherd &
Deregowski, 1981). Beauty is fluid and changes over time
(Solomon, Ashmore, &
Longo, 1992), which makes it an especially elusive concept to
study. The affective body,
as outlined in the work of Michael Featherstone, provides a
theoretical framework for
analyzing beauty.
The affective body
Featherstone (2010) recognized that beauty is more than
physical attractiveness and that
the relationship between body image and self-image is not as
simple as looking in the
mirror. The sense of self, of one’s identity, is incorporated into
self-image and beauty in
complex ways that reject the ‘mirrored self’ as the sole
conveyor of meaning. The
concept of the affective body ‘points to unseen and unnoticed
aspects of interpersonal
interactions, which are more difficult to conceptualize and
articulate’ (Featherstone, 2010,
p. 196). The affective body is not just about the clothes you
wear; it is about how you
carry yourself and your inner self, attitudes, values, and
outlook. This is most apparent in
the work of stylists whose creation of a ‘look’ does not simply
consist in altering or
enhancing the client’s face and body. Through the reformation
of body movement,
carriage, and language, groomers and stylists can help their
clientele project positive
affective charges. This power to affect others through body
rhetoric has been noted as a
characteristic of charisma (Featherstone, 2010). One goal of the
8. present study is to
identify the features of a holistic ‘look’ that lead to the meaning
of beauty.
Activities/roles
The affective body interacts closely with behaviors, jobs,
responsibilities, and organiza-
tional policies to create concepts of cultural identity and
subjectivity (van Zoonen, 2000).
P.K. Morris244
For women, a large part of this process focuses on being
attractive, beautiful, and
‘feminine,’ where ‘feminine’ means the socially constructed
characteristics associated
with the category ‘woman’ (McDowell & Sharp, 1999).
Previous studies of women’s roles in advertising have identified
interesting variations
among cultural representations of women. Wiles, Wiles, and
Tjernlund (1995) found in a
multiple-country investigation that Swedish advertisements
most often portrayed both
men and women in family and recreational roles, while
American advertisements showed
a more marked distinction between gender roles, with a greater
prevalence of women in
more decorative portrayals, where they have no obvious role or
contribution to the
message beyond merely appearing in the image. In a comparison
of women’s fashion
magazines, Morris and Nichols (2013) observed that
9. advertisements in American
publications presented more nonworking women and women in
decorative roles than
advertisements in similar French magazines. On the other hand,
Furnham and Imadzu
(2002) found that the more stereotypical portrayals of women in
television advertisements
were trending down in Great Britain and other Western cultures.
The same study found
that Japanese messages continued to cast men more often than
women in authoritative
roles, where they provided scientific or factual arguments for
products. The women in
these advertisements tended to be young users of the product in
question and offered
opinions rather than facts. All of these studies reveal that the
affective side of beauty, as
displayed through behavior patterns, body language, and
clothing, is culturally diverse. In
simple terms, beauty is in some ways culture specific.
Beauty types
To examine body language and representation in advertising,
Solomon et al. (1992)
identified beauty types and used a multidimensional scale to
sort and analyze photographs
of professional fashion models. Their study revealed six distinct
types of good-looking
women: classic/feminine, cute, sex kitten, sensual/exotic, girl-
next-door, and trendy.
Englis, Solomon, and Ashmore (1994) subsequently reviewed
beauty types in magazine
advertisements and found that the trendy, classic/feminine, and
sensual/exotic types were
portrayed most frequently.
10. Several studies have used these categorizations of beauty to
explore differences across
cultures. Maynard and Taylor (1999) studied the beauty types of
young girls shown in
Japanese and American versions of Seventeen magazine. They
reported that Japanese
girls were portrayed almost exclusively as smiling, giggling,
cute, and girl-next-door
types, while girls in the American magazine were posed with
serious expressions for a
more defiant and independent look. Frith et al. (2005, 2009)
also found differences in
magazine advertisements in Singapore, Taiwan, and the USA.
While classic portrayals
were most common in all three cultures, the sensual/sex kitten
style appeared in the USA
more than in the other two locations, cute/girl-next-door images
occurred most frequently
in Taiwan, and trendy styles were the most frequent in
Singapore.
These investigations show that the types of beauty used in
advertising vary and
indicate preferences across cultures. The studies examined
beauty categories and found
differences between the USA and the Asian markets of Japan,
Singapore, and Taiwan,
and also between the Asian cultures themselves, specifically,
Singapore and Taiwan.
Additional research can build on these investigations by
examining other Asian cultures
as well as newly emerging European markets.
Asian Journal of Communication 245
11. Face versus body
Cutting across these different types of beauty, there is the
dichotomy between the face
and the body. For women, the binary system of facial beauty
and body sexuality is
culturally significant and can signal to the researcher how the
media use women.
Historically, the face played a large role in theories of
physiognomy, which linked moral
purity to physical beauty (Wegenstein & Ruck, 2011), and the
cultivation of beauty has
its foundations in that context. Cunningham, Roberts, Barbee,
Druen, and Wu (1995)
studied beauty among Asians, Hispanics, and white Americans,
and identified attractive
females as having large eyes, expressive, higher eyebrows,
small noses, narrow faces,
smaller chins, larger lower lips, wider smiles, and full hair
across all three cultures.
Moreover, big eyes, full lips, flawless skin, and high
cheekbones are characteristics used
to describe beautiful women depicted in advertisements and
media throughout the world
(Cunningham et al., 1995; Goodman, Morris, & Sutherland,
2008). In general, these
‘universal’ markers of beauty stem from a love of facial
symmetry (Yin & Pryor, 2012).
However, beauty need not be exclusive to the face. Advertising
has long been
criticized for using attractive females with sexy bodies to grab
attention and promote
interest in products (Jhally, 1995; Kilbourne, 1999). The
12. question of whether beauty is
about a woman’s face or her body is especially pronounced
when images from Western
and Asian cultures are compared. The relative importance of
bodies and faces has been
explored by examining which product types are promoted most
prevalently. For example,
a study by Frith et al. (2005, 2009) reported that magazine
advertisements for clothing
and fashion dominate American magazines, while
advertisements in Singapore and
Taiwan have a larger proportion of cosmetics and skin care
products. Similarly, a study
by Xie and Zhang (2012) found more skin beauty product
advertisements in magazines in
China than in the USA. They concluded that the differences
reflect conceptions of ideal
beauty: Americans focus on bodily beauty, whereas Asian
markets emphasize facial
beauty.
While these studies reveal that the face and body reflect key
aspects of beauty,
advertisements also highlight other human qualities that
produce signifiers symbolizing
culture-specific appealing images.
Race/origin
Skin color and ethnicity can also be considered as attributes of
beauty. Whiteness is a
desired feature for beauty in Asian cultures, where white skin is
associated with social
status, marital opportunities, and income potential (Li, Min,
Belk, Kimura, & Bahl,
2008). The desire for whiteness makes Caucasian models
13. popular in some Asian cultures.
Li et al. (2008) found a prevalence of Caucasian models in
Hong Kong, Japan, and
Korea, and Frith et al. (2005, 2009) observed more Caucasian
than Chinese models in
women’s magazine advertisements from Singapore and Taiwan.
Another study found that
Caucasian models and those with Westernized looks were most
favored and scored
highest in attractiveness among South Koreans (Bissell &
Chung, 2009).
Preferences for a model’s race may be based on the type of
product the advertising
message promotes. In a comparison of women’s magazines from
China and the USA, Xie
and Zhang (2012) discovered that skin beauty advertisements
contained more local than
foreign models, with Asian women shown in China and
Caucasians in the USA. In
P.K. Morris246
contrast, Frith and Mueller (2003) found Caucasian women
rather than local models
featured in magazine advertisements for lingerie in Malaysia
and Indonesia.
These distinguishing features of a woman’s physical appearance
(face/body, race,
origin) are used in advertisements as a signified to suggest the
concept of beauty.
According to semantic theory, each image stands for something
other than itself by
14. connecting the signifier with the broader network of meaning
understood by the
consuming audience. This not only creates meaning, but it also
perpetuates social norms
(Rose, 2007), including those specific to women.
Local factors
The locations to be explored in the present study were selected
to provide variations in
Western and Asian cultures, with differences in historic,
economic, and political
attributes, and also to include societies that are rarely
investigated. The selected locations
needed to offer plenty of outdoor advertising and had to be
accessible to the researchers.
To satisfy these objectives, this study includes the Eastern
European cultures of Bulgaria,
Poland, and Turkey and the Asian cultures of Hong Kong,
Japan, and South Korea.
Relevant cultural characteristics for these regions and the
particular sites are provided in
the following sections.
Eastern Europe
The Soviet Union used various strategies of power throughout
its satellite countries under
Communist rule, and the outcome of the collapse of the Soviet
Union was therefore
diverse and locally specific (Johnson & Robinson, 2007). While
the Soviet Government
promoted social equality for women through higher education,
work, and childcare,
women’s true social position was cloaked by government
manipulation. Women became
15. overburdened with domestic and occupational responsibilities
and began to resent the
very notion of women’s rights, as they saw the concept as
exploitative and ideologically
based (Grigar, 2007).
Women’s voices are often drowned out in the post-Communist
East due to the
suppression of civil rights, gender discrimination, and
resistance to Western values
(Kotzeva, 2010). Post-Communist cultures are also
characterized by extreme individu-
alism, political apathy, and nationalistic ideas that have
weakened women’s causes, stifled
a common feminine language, and repressed a universal
meaning for femininity and
masculinity. With social and political differences marked by
large gaps, ‘post-communist
gender constructions should be analyzed only at the intersection
with social group,
ethnicity, education and other social status construals’
(Kotzeva, 2010, p. 89). While the
Communist states treated gender differently, the effects were
similar, including
ideological messages about socialism and equality that
neutralized gender differences in
the public sphere (Grigar, 2007).
Bulgaria
In January 2007, Bulgaria became the newest member of the
European Union (EU).
Bulgarians believed that joining the EU would open up political
and economic
Asian Journal of Communication 247
16. opportunities and help stabilize the new democratic system that
was born after the fall of
the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1989 (Katsikas & Siani-
Davies, 2010).
The Communist-era rhetoric promoted images of economically
and politically active
women who sacrificed themselves for the system and a brighter
future (Kotzeva, 2010).
Despite images of gender equality, there were hidden
inequalities, including lower pay
and more responsibilities for women. Women functioned for the
state and were not
allowed to develop their individualities (Kotzeva, 2010).
Poland
Under Communism, the ideal Polish woman was built from the
mixed iconography of
Catholicism and Communism. This image differed from the
images in other Soviet-run
states, such as Romanian women who were seen as ‘mothers of
the Romanian nation’ and
Soviet women who were workers, heroic mothers, and Russian
peasants (Johnson &
Robinson, 2007). The Catholic Church’s involvement was
contradictory, as it supported
the struggle for political freedom while at the same time
espousing conservative and
traditional roles for women (Grigar, 2007).
Matka Polka, or Mother Pole, is the idealized nationalist
propaganda icon of model
17. womanhood and has frequently been used by both the Polish
Government, during and
after the Communism era, and the Catholic Church, which plays
a large public role in
Poland. Matka Polka bears new Polish citizens, manages the
home, and is the guardian of
national values. Through this icon, Polish institutions
strengthened the model of a
traditionally passive woman who can realize herself only in the
domestic space with her
family (Grigar, 2007).
Turkey
Turkey has an economic, political, and cultural relationship
with the West that began in
1923 with the new Turkish Republic. During the cold war, the
USA played a dominant
political and economic role, although it had little cultural
influence because of import
restrictions. That changed when markets opened up in the 1980s
and American television
programs and advertising agencies began promoting American
consumer brands. Turkish
people aspired to American-style consumption, especially by the
late 1990s (Üstüner &
Holt, 2010). The display of Western tastes and lifestyles
interpreted from a Turkish
perspective was an attempt by Turkish people to secure higher
social standings (Üstüner
& Holt, 2010).
Asia
The three Asian cultures featured in this paper are similar both
in their location and as
18. emerging or re-emerging economies, yet they are varied in
culture and ideas about
women’s beauty and place in the public space.
Hong Kong
Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, which created
international interest
about the postcolonial identity of the province: What is
Chinese? What is Hong Kongese?
P.K. Morris248
(Lu, 2007). The colonial domination by the British forced
people in Hong Kong to rely
on the family for economic stability (Lee, 2003a). In
industrializing Hong Kong,
working-class Chinese labored for low wages and had little or
no social welfare. To
survive and advance, families combined resources. Women were
expected to contribute.
Modern economics did not free women from subservience in the
patriarchal society, and
today they remain subject to patriarchal authority, which
controls women’s labor, life
chances, and appearance in the public sphere (Lee, 2003a).
Given its economic status, Hong Kong can no longer be
classified as a Third World
state nor Hong Kong women as Third World women; instead,
they show how
‘globalization, postcolonialism, and Chinese patriarchy have
variously shaped women’s
status and subjectivity in the context of colonial modernity’
19. (Lee, 2003b, p. 200). The
current fashion is for women to write about female sexuality
and exposing the body (Lu,
2007). In part, this could be considered body politics, an
expression of the ‘liberation and
excess in the Chinese experience of modernity’ that women
never had (Lu, 2007, p. 54).
It is also cultural commercialization of the body, specifically
for media effects (Lu, 2007)
and self-promotion. It shows that modern women are not passive
but active in ‘posing as
sexual, young, beautiful, rebellious, and anti-intellectual’ (Lu,
2007, p. 54), with dreams
of becoming celebrities in the consumer economy.
Japan
Japanese of all classes have long enjoyed a consumer culture
within an imperial system
(Silverberg, 2007). Even during the 1990s recession, the
Japanese middle class had a
growing affluence. Women used this as a basis for asserting
their mobility and
independence, and they became active in their own complex
systems of prestige and
economics while remaining financially and politically tethered
to their husbands
(Rosenberger, 2001).
Japanese women have received contradictory messages, as
media encourage young
women to focus on appearance, sexuality, status, and mobility –
calling this freedom,
individuality, and independence – while at the same time
offering images of romantic
weddings, motherhood, and prosperous husbands. Individuality
20. is seen as global and
modern, while compassion, respect, and community are unique
and valued qualities of
Japanese life (Rosenberger, 2001).
Hasegawa (2002) argued that Japanese gender is constructed on
two axes. First is
infanticization, meaning the postponement of maturity and
potential for transformation.
Immaturity suggests an incomplete identity, hollowness, and
unisexuality or a not yet
distinguished sexuality. Second is the difference relative to the
West and the femininity of
Japanese males that is suppressed. In addition, there is the
concept of kawaii. Most
prevalent among males and females in their teens to their
thirties, kawaii includes cute,
pretty, and lovely, or something precious and innocent. Kawaii
characters dominate in
animation, toys, and almost every aspect of Japanese consumer
culture, including the sex
industry’s advertising (Hasegawa, 2002).
South Korea
Since the end of the country’s military rule in 1987, women in
South Korea have
progressed, with more legal rights, political representation, and
government agendas that
Asian Journal of Communication 249
support gender equality – despite the conservative Confucian
culture (Jones, 2006). There
21. is much optimism that the democratic process will enable a
balance of power between
conservative and progressive groups to produce a civil society
that will continue to
support and strengthen political, human, and socioeconomic
rights (Jones, 2006).
However, South Korean women’s sex-and-entertainment trade,
which started in the
late 1970s, has thrived and diversified along with the country’s
economic boom and the
growth of a middle class with disposable income. By the 1990s,
men could easily find
sexual services and female companions. In this century, ‘female
entertainment and
prostitution are ubiquitous, stratified, and accessible to all
classes’ (Pilzer, 2006, p. 303).
The development of these two types of feminine beauty, which
we have termed the
‘Madonna/Whore complex’ in the West, creates divisions among
women as they develop
their own subjectivity and are asked to purge their own
sexuality or to give up autonomy
and become a sexual commodity.
Research questions
As previously outlined, there is theoretical evidence suggesting
that cultural values are
deeply ingrained in advertising through a complex sign system
involving both affective
and physical ideals of beauty, as well as unique local
interpretations of globalization
forces. Historic, economic, and political/cultural factors,
especially those that are relevant
to women, will be reflected in women’s images in outdoor
22. advertisements and therefore
provide a way to analyze these images. Accordingly, the
following research questions
were developed to systematically study the complex concept of
beauty as seen in visual
messages.
RQ1: How do women’s activities/roles shown in advertisements
differ across the six
cultures?
RQ2: How do women’s beauty types depicted in advertisements
differ across the six
cultures?
RQ3: How do women’s physical appearances portrayed in
advertisements differ across the
six cultures?
Method
According to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America
(2013), there are over one
hundred different platforms for out-of-home advertising,
including billboards, bulletins,
digital billboards, posters, walls/spectaculars, bus shelters, and
street furniture. For this
study, outdoor advertisements were operationalized to include
commercial messages in
any of these formats that could be seen from street view and the
audience’s perspective.
For the purpose of uncovering and better understanding the
cultural construction of
beauty, women’s portrayals in outdoor advertisements were
content analyzed. This
23. method is commonly used in investigations exploring
communication, as it is a way to
take snapshots of a society at specific times and places that can
then be reviewed (Ji &
McNeal, 2001; Lombard, Snyder-Duch, & Bracken, 2002). In
advertising studies, content
analysis provides the opportunity to compare media images with
the real world (Wimmer
& Dominick, 2000).
P.K. Morris250
Images were reviewed first for statistically significant
differences between cultures
and then through critical discourse analysis, a way to interpret
communications and
illuminate how they work to create and maintain societal power
relations (Johnson,
2008). Critical discourse analysis considers how discourse is
interconnected with
political, economic, and social conditions. It theorizes that
communicative events are
particular discourse moments enacted through texts, discourses,
and everyday activities
that combine to create social meaning and impact (Johnson,
2008). Here critical discourse
analysis is used to examine portrayals of women to uncover
beauty ideals across six
diverse cultures: those of Bulgaria, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland,
South Korea, and Turkey.
Sampling and data organization
Outdoor advertising images of 293 female models were
24. collected between May and July
of 2012 from neighborhood districts, heavy-traffic streets, and
dense urban areas of nine
major cities: Sophia and Vargas in Bulgaria, Warsaw and
Kraków in Poland, Istanbul in
Turkey, Hong Kong in China, Tokyo and Osaka in Japan, and
Seoul in South Korea. All
sites were identified with guidance from local contacts and
international advertising
specialists. As in other studies of this type (e.g., Morris, 2005,
2011), the researchers
walked the chosen areas and took digital photographs of all
outdoor advertisements that
could be seen from street view. Billboards, bulletins, posters,
banners, bus shelters,
kiosks, wall paintings, transit cards, and any other signage with
the purpose of promoting
a commercial message were included. The location of each
outdoor visual was noted in
project journals. Upon returning home, the researchers
downloaded photographs to a
computer, created jpgs, and filed images by culture.
The primary researchers identified and labeled the outdoor
advertisements that were
suitable for investigation. The sample for this study included
only messages that
contained women, the study’s unit of analysis. The images also
had to be clear enough to
read and analyze. Condensed jpgs were incorporated into
PowerPoint slides for labeling,
viewing, sharing, and coding.
Coding
The author developed the initial coding scheme based on a
25. review of the literature and
past investigations, as previously outlined. Experts from each
culture (both male and
female, and all but one, graduate students) were consulted for
the translations and helped
to organize the coding.
Once the translations and coding instructions were finalized, the
author coded
advertisements from all locales. The culture experts coded their
respective samples after
they were trained for the coding process using outdoor visuals
that were not part of the
sample. Upon completion, the author and culture-expert coders
met to compare all of the
results, discuss disagreements, and reach final decisions by
consensus.
For an intercoder reliability check, the author and a research
assistant who was trained
for this project coded 20% of the samples from each locale,
selected at random. Lambda
was used to test the strength of agreement. Results for the
primary variables in this study
are: model’s role (λ = .86), product affiliation (λ = .87), beauty
type (λ = .90), face/body
(λ = .90), race (λ = .78), origin (λ = .78), and product type (λ =
1). The coding took
approximately three months.
Asian Journal of Communication 251
Several variables were used to measure dimensions of women’s
beauty, including
26. women’s activities/roles (RQ1). Specifically, models were
coded into five role categories:
(1) occupation (dressed in a uniform or business clothes, or seen
in an occupational
setting), (2) family (pictured inside or outside the home with
children or a partner), (3)
recreational (portrayed in sports or other leisure), (4)
model/celebrity (wearing or
showing the product), and (5) decorative/ambiguous (displayed
in an unrealistic setting,
in an awkward position, or not part of the scene).
Activities/roles were also reviewed with
respect to three product affiliation groups: (1) user (model is
using the product), (2)
endorser (model is recommending or demonstrating the
product), and (3) symbolic
(model is detached from the product or using it in ways not
intended). For distinctions
between beauty types (RQ2), the scoring used four styles:
classic, sensual/sex kitten, cute/
girl-next-door, or trendy. Overt physical appearances (RQ3)
were operationalized by
coding how much of the woman’s body was visible (face-only,
more than face/less than
full-body, or full-body), her race (Caucasian, Asian, African, or
other), and whether the
woman’s origin was local or foreign. Basic product and brand
information was also
captured and grouped into eleven categories (alcohol/tobacco,
beauty/personal care,
outerwear clothing, lingerie/swimwear,
entertainment/media/communication, food/non-
alcoholic beverages, home products, fashion accessories,
transportation/travel, services,
or other).
27. Results
To analyze beauty ideals across cultures, 293 female images
from 221 outdoor advertise-
ments from Bulgaria, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland, South Korea,
and Turkey were content
analyzed. Of the total sample, Hong Kong represented the
largest proportion of women’s
images (28%) and Turkey the smallest (10%), while Japan,
Bulgaria, Poland, and South
Korea yielded 18%, 17%, 15%, and 12%, respectively.
The frequency of the advertisements with women is significant,
because as signs, they
play an important role in the development of the public’s
ideology. For example, in some
locations, women are excluded from appearing in promotional
material or are deleted
from it, as recently happened with the Swedish Ikea catalog in
Saudi Arabia (Woman
deleted, 2012). Although the presence of women in
advertisements may be detrimental
when women are treated as objects, their mere presence on large
public billboards
inculcates the consumer citizen to the public presence of
women.
To determine whether particular portrayals of women showed
statistically significant
differences across the locales, a chi-square analysis was
conducted for each variable
considered as part of the complex notion of beauty. Cramér’s V
was used to test the
strength of the association. Statistical results are reported in
this section, while an in-depth
analysis is provided in the discussion section.
28. Activities/roles
The first research question, exploring women’s activities/roles
in the images, found
statistical differences on two counts, including for the five role
portrayals. Females were
most frequently represented in model or celebrity
characterizations in all locales. The next
most frequent portrayals of women in Japan (31%) and South
Korea (29%) were
decorative or ambiguous, while all other locales depicted the
smallest proportion of
P.K. Morris252
women in decorative or ambiguous renderings. We collapsed
occupation, recreational,
and family role categories into one variable to represent active
women who are ‘embed-
ded’ in culture, in contrast with models in more decorative
positions who are only there
as passive objects. Embedded women are subjects and
symbolically represent a more
affective type of beauty (Featherstone, 2010). The second
greatest number of portrayals of
women in outdoor advertisements in Turkey, Bulgaria, Hong
Kong, and Poland were of
women in embedded cultural positions.
In addition, the data showed that the portrayals of the women’s
product affiliations
were statistically different across cultures. Women were
depicted most often in product-
29. user roles in Hong Kong (72%), Poland (67%), Turkey (60%),
and Bulgaria (48%), while
women in South Korea and Japan were most often shown in
symbolic presentations (54%
and 44%, respectively). The endorser affiliation was least
common, although in Turkey,
South Korea, and Poland, the second largest numbers of women
were seen in such
portrayals (27%, 26%, and 20%, respectively).
Beauty type
The second research question found that beauty type yielded
statistically significant
variations across the six cultures. Japan was the only location
where women were most
often portrayed with classic images (39%), although cute/girl-
next-door images were a
close second (35%). Cute/girl-next-door visuals accounted for
the highest percentages in
Turkish and South Korean advertisements (47% and 37%,
respectively), while sensual/
sex kitten renderings topped the list in Bulgaria and Poland
(31% and 29%, respectively).
Women in trendy styles led in Hong Kong (39%), where the
least represented type was
classic (17%). However, trendy beauty was the least frequent
type of beauty portrayed in
all other locations (Bulgaria, Japan, South Korea, and Turkey)
except for Poland, where
cute/girl-next-door was the least frequent type.
Physical appearance
Female beauty is often judged by physical features, and the
third research question
30. considered how overt appearances varied across cultures.
Appearances were analyzed
based on three primary variables: face/body, race, and model’s
origin.
Face versus body
The findings revealed statistically significant differences across
cultures for the parts of
women’s bodies that were shown. Japanese and South Korean
advertisements had the
highest proportion of models coded as face-only (35% and 23%,
respectively), while
Polish and Bulgarian advertisements were coded with high
percentages of full bodies
(49% and 44%, respectively) and had relatively few visuals with
face-only renderings
(13% and 10%). Hong Kong also yielded a low percentage (6%)
of face-only images,
while none were observed in Turkey.
Race
Women’s race was also considered as part of their appearance.
As in other studies
(e.g., Frith et al., 2005, 2009), significant statistical differences
with respect to race were
Asian Journal of Communication 253
found, with advertisements reflecting the local races of each
location. In Bulgaria, Poland,
and Turkey, the women were almost exclusively Caucasian,
while Asian women were the
31. majority in Japan and South Korea. The race of women in Hong
Kong was evenly split
between Caucasian and Asian.
Origin
The women’s origins differed significantly across locations.
Bulgarian and Polish
advertisements featured local models exclusively, and these
were by far the majority in
Turkey, Japan, and South Korea (93%, 89%, and 77%
respectively). Hong Kong female
models were equally split between local and nonlocal. Table 1
provides cultural crosstab
tables for the chi-square analyses.
Further analysis
The women’s appearances were further reviewed to explore
differences suggested in the
literature. Asian and European advertisements were compared
for face-only/full-body
poses. The results were statistically significant (χ2 = 8.89, df =
2, p < .05, Cramér’s
V = .17), with 46% of the European advertisements picturing
full bodies while 16% of the
Asian messages featured faces exclusively. The face-only/full-
body comparison was also
analyzed according to the woman’s race, with Caucasian women
found to be depicted
more often in full-body poses (44%) while a high share (21%)
of the Asian women
revealed faces only (χ2 = 21.15, df = 2, p < .001, Cramér’s V =
.27).
Further review revealed that the women’s race and origin varied
32. based on the product
being advertised. Lingerie and swimwear advertisements
featured Caucasians exclusively,
whereas advertisements of all other product types were more
balanced between races
(57% Caucasian and 43% Asians). In addition, beauty product
messages almost always
featured local (96%) rather than nonlocal models.
Discussion
This exploratory study aims to expand the literature of cross-
cultural research on beauty
ideals by examining images of women in six diverse cultures
within a theoretical
framework of advertising and consumer culture, globalization,
and beauty. The images
were first inspected for statistically significant differences
between cultures. They were
reviewed with a critical discourse analysis that considered
variations among the
portrayals in the context of economic, social, and political
practices to enhance our
understanding of the culturally constructed concept of beauty.
Decorative/symbolic versus active
Women were not frequently presented in decorative or symbolic
ways in any of the
sample locations, although such portrayals were more common
in Japan and South Korea
and less prevalent in Eastern Europe. The latter may be related
to Eastern Europe’s use of
propaganda billboards under Soviet leadership. Soviet women
were mothers and workers
first, to support the Soviet state, and were never portrayed in
33. decorative roles because
they were asked to work twice as hard as men (Grigar, 2007).
The historical Soviet
P.K. Morris254
discourse might still have some impact on the women in those
cultures today. In Japan
and South Korea, in contrast, the ‘Westernization’ of women
has a much more
‘American’ flair, reflecting advertisements in the USA where
women are often pictured
in stereotypical images (Frith et al., 2005, 2009).
In Hong Kong, the high proportion of ‘active’ women may
speak to a culture where
women are asserting themselves and celebrating their newfound
freedoms and bodily
sexuality (Lu, 2007). However, their excessive behavior in the
new consumer economy,
including a large sex tourism trade (Lu, 2007), makes it more
likely that women will
appear in the context of selling something, although it may be
exploitive.
Table 1. Dimensions of beauty.
Bulgaria
Hong
Kong Japan Poland
South
Korea Turkey
35. 22 (46%) 44 (54%) 30 (56%) 17 (38%) 13 (37%) 24 (80%)
Full-body 21 (44%) 32 (40%) 5 (9%) 22 (49%) 14 (40%) 6
(20%)
χ2 = 51.29, df = 10, p < .001; Cramér’s V = .30
Race
Caucasian 48 (100%) 41 (50%) 5 (9%) 44 (98%) 8 (23%) 28
(93%)
Asian or other 0 40 (50%) 49 (91%) 1 (2%) 27 (77%) 2 (7%)
χ2 = 152.86, df = 5, p < .001; Cramér’s V = .72
Origin
Local/domestic 48 (100%) 40 (50%) 48 (89%) 45 (100%) 27
(77%) 28 (93%)
Foreign 0 41 (50%) 6 (11%) 0 8 (23%) 2 (7%)
χ2 = 78.45, df = 5, p < .001; Cramér’s V = .52
Asian Journal of Communication 255
As signs, advertisements socialize and perpetuate norms,
including behaviors and roles,
for a particular culture. Images signify what is appropriate and
beautiful in women, and the
visuals in advertisements reveal that being active and engaged
with subjectivity is valued in
some cultures, while women play a bigger role as props,
decorations, or symbols in others.
Beauty type
While outdoor advertisements in Bulgaria and Poland both
employed the sensual/sex
kitten look more often than the other beauty types, the
36. differences between these numbers
and those for the next most common beauty types are small.
This may reflect a difference
in how women in advertisements are proposed to be the most
commonly used. Unlike
what we may think of the sensual type – ‘sex sells’ – we are
actually seeing that sex is
employed less often across-the-board (e.g., Piron & Young,
1996) and that other more
affective types of beauty (classic, cute/girl-next-door, and
trendy) are being used instead
and just as frequently in Eastern Europe and Asia.
In Japan, women were largely rendered in decorative or
ambiguous roles, with symbolic
product affiliations and face-only depictions, and approximately
one-third were coded as
cute/girl-next-door types. Many of the visuals featured women
who wore bangs and looked
like young girls. These observations seem to suggest
infanticization and kawaii, as theorized
by Hasegawa (2002). The implication is that women are passive
and available for men to
complete their identities. The findings also support the
literature describing how women in
Asian cultures have been oppressed throughout history (e.g., Li
et al., 2008).
Faces versus bodies
In Japan, 35% of the advertisements with females show only
their faces. This could be
because Japan has the world’s second largest cosmetic industry,
after the USA (Miller,
2006). It could also represent the notion that women are
consumers in their own right. Even
37. though women may be linked to their husbands’ political and
economic spheres, they have
their own space where they compete for status and prestige
(Rosenberger, 2001). Williamson
(1978) suggested that advertisements highlighting the face use
the ‘object’ value that our
own faces have for us. The face serves as an object primarily
because we never see our own
faces without the alienating intervention of a mirror or
photograph, so that the face is not
completely incorporated into our individual senses of identity.
Our face can be sold back to
us as consumers via makeup or skin care products, and it is thus
appropriated by
manufacturers and made into a commodity for purchase
(Williamson, 1978).
In contrast, Hong Kong has extremely few face-only
advertisements (6%), a finding
that is unexpected given past research on face versus body
portrayals in Asia compared to
the West. For example, Frith et al. (2005, 2009) argued that in
traditional Western art, the
female body is the object of sexual stimulation, which implies
that a full body is sexier
and will be used to sell in the West. In a study of
advertisements from magazines in
Singapore, Taiwan, and the USA, Frith, Cheng, and Shaw
(2004) reported that Asian
women appeared in facial beauty messages more often (55%)
than in clothing advertising,
which contained more Western models (47%), from which they
concluded that Western
women are constructed in terms of the body. The colonial
history of Hong Kong – it was
built on a model that provided a sort of ‘West’ in the ‘East’ –
38. could be why Hong Kong
trends toward the Western model of using mostly bodies.
P.K. Morris256
Turkey has absolutely no face-only advertisements. This is
interesting, given the
complex history of advertisements for women who wear
headscarves. In early
advertisements promoting veiled women, faces were absent, i.e.,
blocked out. The
model’s identity was suppressed, which ‘erases subjectivity
altogether and ascribes
anonymity to women’ (Sandikci & Ger, 2007, p. 198). This is
reinforced by the data, as
80% of Turkey’s commercial messages feature more than the
woman’s face, but only part
of her body. The careful nature of these proportions may be due
to the same impulse not
to overly sexualize or invite subjectivity for female consumers.
The data also demonstrated that portrayal of the body versus the
face is location
specific rather than region particular, or in other words, global.
Bulgaria’s statistics are in
some ways closer to Hong Kong’s than to Poland’s. This is an
important point for
concepts of globalization: we cannot use ‘Asia’ or ‘Eastern
Europe’ as though they are
homogeneous entities.
Race
Bulgaria, Poland, and Turkey featured primarily white women
39. in their advertisements,
with 100% white Caucasians in Bulgaria. The latter may reflect
Bulgaria’s wave of
nationalism and political project of ‘Europeanization’ (Katsikas
& Siani-Davies, 2010;
Ranova, 2010). Perhaps in an effort to signify that the country
is truly part of the
European Union, Bulgarian advertisements may prefer women
of nonethnic European
demographics. Polish advertisements contained only one
nonwhite model, which could
be explained by Poland’s nationalism (Johnson & Robinson,
2007). Turkey’s use of
mainly white models is interesting and may be because Islam
has become overly
politicized (Sandikci & Ger, 2007), so that darker-skinned
women are avoided by
advertisers.
South Korea and Japan feature mostly Asian women in their
advertisements,
reflecting the desire to appeal directly to the women of those
cultures, with the overall
trend of women in these advertisements selling items to women
rather than to men. The
white woman is an anomaly in this context and is thus used to
make an advertisement
more striking. It has been conjectured that white women are
used more often in ‘sexy’
commercial messages in Asia (Frith et al., 2005, 2009), but
while this may be so, our
additional analysis found that only 20% of the Caucasian
women in Japanese
advertisements and 37% of the women in South Korea were
coded as ‘sensual/sex kitten.’
40. Hong Kong shows an even mix of white and Asian women in
advertisements, which
probably reflects the postcolonial nature of the city and its
economy, which is unique for
China. In addition, the women are portrayed in similar ways,
with the distribution of the
crosstabs of race/beauty type following a similar pattern for
white and Asian women.
Limitations of the study and future research
Every research effort has limitations, and this study is no
exception. As each of the
sample locales is one place at one time, the data represent a
cross section of outdoor
advertising, a quickly changing mass-media platform that can be
seen by all. Because of
the nonrandom sample, the results need to be used with caution,
and further investigations
can help validate the findings. As this line of research
progresses, future explorations
can employ cultural attributes, like economic development and
government types, as
Asian Journal of Communication 257
independent variables to explore correlations with the concepts
of beauty operationa-
lized here.
This paper centers on women, but future analyses could also
include men’s images to
reveal the proportions of men to women, allow a comparison of
the activities of the two
41. genders, and generally help formulate a better understanding of
women’s positions in
society. Interviews with citizens in the different locales’ urban
environments about their
awareness of street advertising and their perceptions of beauty
ideals projecting from the
images could be of interest for both academics and
practitioners. It would also be
worthwhile to identify the advertising agencies, and whether
they are local or global, as
well as to interview the producers who make the decisions to
use women in their
messages.
Conclusion
This research builds on previous theories of advertising,
globalization, and beauty to
further the scholarship on ideas of beauty across cultures. The
investigation’s unique
contribution to the literature is that it offers quantitative and
critical analyses for
identifying and understanding the differences in portrayals of
women in cultures that are
rarely explored. The research findings show that the images
portraying women are culture
based and that, as signifiers, they symbolize to the public ideals
of beauty as well as
social norms. The cultural variations are revealed in this study
by comparing portrayals
and using a holistic perspective to include both physical and
affective notions of
attractiveness.
With the march of globalization, culture is increasingly fluid,
which makes it more
42. difficult to identify but ever more important for both
practitioners and academics,
particularly international and intercultural scholars, to study.
By increasing their awareness
of the world’s peoples and societies, current and future
practitioners can gain a sharper
eye for culture-specific habits, preferences, and styles, which
will better prepare them to
develop and plan advertising communications that will achieve
their goals. In the
academy, scholars can critically review images for narrow
stereotypical portrayals of
women. As advertising’s visuals of women circulate into the
discourse of beauty and
standards of gender, it is increasingly important to understand
these images.
Notes on contributor
Pamela K. Morris (Ph.D. Syracuse University, 2004) is an
Assistant Professor in the
School of Communication, Loyola University Chicago. Her
primary research interests are
cross-cultural advertising, branding, visual communications,
and advertising pedagogy.
References
Albers-Miller, N. D., & Gelb, B. D. (1996). Business
advertising appeals as a mirror of cultural
dimensions: A study of eleven countries. Journal of
Advertising, 25(4), 57–70. doi:10.1080/
00913367.1996.10673512
Arnett, J. J. (2002). The psychology of globalization. American
Psychologist, 57, 774–783.
43. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.57.10.774
Bell, A. (2013, April 29). Global spending predicted to hit
$518B this year. Advertising Age, p. 10.
Bissell, K. L., & Chung, J. Y. (2009). Americanized beauty?
Predictors of perceived attractiveness
from US and South Korean participants based on media
exposure, ethnicity, and socio-cultural
P.K. Morris258
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00913367.1996.10673512
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00913367.1996.10673512
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.57.10.774
attitudes toward ideal beauty. Asian Journal of Communication,
19, 227–247. doi:10.1080/
01292980902827003
Bjerke, R., & Polegato, R. (2001). Cross-cultural meanings of
healthy and beautiful in words,
beauty types, and products Implications for international
advertising. Journal of Promotion
Management, 7(1/2), 117–139. doi:10.1300/J057v07n01_08
Cheong, Y., Kim, K., & Zheng, L. (2010). Advertising appeals
as a reflection of culture: A cross-
cultural analysis of food advertising appeals in China and the
U.S. Asian Journal of
Communication, 20(1), 1–16. doi:10.1080/01292980903440848
Cunningham, M. R., Roberts, A. R., Barbee, A. P., Druen, P. B.,
& Wu, C. H. (1995). ‘Their ideas
of beauty are, on the whole, the same as ours’: Consistency and
44. variability in the cross-cultural
perception of female physical attractiveness. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 68,
261–279. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.68.2.261
Englis, B. G., Solomon, M. R., & Ashmore, R. D. (1994).
Beauty before the eyes of beholders: The
cultural encoding of beauty types in magazine advertising and
music television. Journal of
Advertising, 23(2), 49–64.
doi:10.1080/00913367.1994.10673441
Featherstone, M. (2010). Body, image and affect in consumer
culture. Body & Society, 16(1),
193–221. doi:10.1177/1357034X09354357
Frith, K. T., Cheng, H., & Shaw, P. (2004). Race and beauty: A
comparison of Asian and Western
models in women’s magazine advertisements. Sex Roles,
50(12), 53–61. doi:10.1023/B:
SERS.0000011072.84489.e2
Frith, K. T., & Mueller, B. (2003). Advertising and societies:
Global issues. New York, NY:
Peter Lang.
Frith, K., Shaw, P., & Cheng, H. (2005). The construction of
beauty: A cross-cultural analysis of
women’s magazine advertising. Journal of Communication,
55(1), 56–70. doi:10.1111/j.1460-
2466.2005.tb02658.x
Frith, K., Shaw, P., & Cheng, H. (2009). The construction of
beauty. In J. Turow & M. P. McAllister
(Eds.), The advertising and consumer culture reader (pp. 193–
206). New York, NY: Routledge.
45. Furnham, A., & Imadzu, E. (2002). Gender portrayal in British
and Japanese TV advertisements.
Communications: European Journal of Communication
Research, 27, 319–348.
Garrett, W. R. (1992). Thinking religion in the global
circumstance: A critique of Roland
Robertson’s globalization theory. Journal for the Scientific
Study of Religion, 31, 296–332.
doi:10.2307/1387118
Goodman, J. R., Morris, J. D., & Sutherland, J. C. (2008). Is
beauty a joy forever? Young women’s
emotional responses to varying types of beautiful advertising
models. Journalism & Mass
Communication Quarterly, 85, 147–168.
doi:10.1177/107769900808500110
Grigar, E. (2007). The gendered body as raw material for
women artists of Central Eastern Europe
after Communism. In J. E. Johnson & J. C. Robinson (Eds.),
Living gender after Communism
(pp. 80–101). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Guillén, M. F. (2001). Is globalization civilizing, destructive or
feeble? A critique of five key
debates in the social science literature. Annual Review of
Sociology, 27(1), 235–260. doi:10.1146/
annurev.soc.27.1.235
Guo, X. (2013). Living in a global world: Influence of consumer
global orientation on attitudes
toward global brands from developed versus emerging
countries. Journal of International
Marketing, 21(1), 1–22. doi:10.1509/jim.12.0065
46. Hasegawa, Y. (2002). Post-identity kawaii: Commerce, gender
and contemporary Japanese art. In
F. Lloyd (Ed.), Consuming bodies: Sex and contemporary
Japanese art (pp. 127–141). London,
England: Reaktion Books.
Jhally, S. (1995). Image-based culture: Advertising and popular
culture. In G. Dines & J. M. Humez
(Eds.), Gender, race, and class in media (pp. 77–87). Newberry
Park, CA: Sage.
Ji, M. F., & McNeal, J. U. (2001). How Chinese children’s
commercials differ from those of the
United States: A content analysis. Journal of Advertising, 30(3),
79–92. doi:10.1080/
00913367.2001.10673647
Johnson, F. L. (2008). Imagining and advertising: Verbal and
visual codes of commerce. New York,
NY: Routledge.
Johnson, J. E., & Robinson, J. C. (2007). Living gender. In J. E.
Johnson & J. C. Robinson (Eds.),
Living gender after Communism (pp. 1–21). Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press.
Asian Journal of Communication 259
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01292980902827003
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01292980902827003
http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J057v07n01_08
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01292980903440848
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.68.2.261
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00913367.1994.10673441
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1357034X09354357
48. Lee, E. W. Y. (Ed.). (2003a). Gender and change in Hong Kong:
Globalization, postcolonialism
and Chinese patriarchy. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.
Lee, E. (2003b). Prospects for a critical feminist development
discourse. In E. Lee (Ed.),
Gender and change in Hong Kong: Globalization,
postcolonialism and Chinese patriarchy
(pp. 200–207). Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.
Li, E. P. H., Min, H. J., Belk, R. W., Kimura, J., & Bahl, S.
(2008). Skin lightening and beauty in
four Asian cultures. Advances in Consumer Research, 35, 444–
449.
Lombard, M., Snyder-Duch, J., & Bracken, C. C. (2002).
Content analysis in mass communication:
Assessment and reporting of intercoder reliability. Human
Communication Research, 28,
587–604. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.2002.tb00826.x
Lu, S. H. (2007). Chinese modernity and global biopolitics:
Studies in literature and visual culture.
Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.
MacRury, I. (2009). Advertising. New York, NY: Routledge.
Maynard, M. L., & Taylor, C. R. (1999). Girlish images across
cultures: Analyzing Japanese
versus U.S. Seventeen magazine ads. Journal of Advertising,
28(1), 39–48. doi:10.1080/
00913367.1999.10673575
McDowell, L., & Sharp, J. P. (Eds.). (1999). A feminist
glossary of human geography. New York,
49. NY: Arnold.
Miller, L. (2006). Beauty up: Exploring contemporary Japanese
body aesthetics. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Morris, P. K. (2005). Overexposed: Issues of public gender
imaging. Advertising & Society Review,
6(3). Retrieved from
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/advertising_and_society_review/v0
06/6.3morris.
html
Morris, P. K. (2011, November). Glocalization in Macedonia:
English in outdoor advertising
messages. Presented at the National Communication Association
Annual Conference,
New Orleans, LA.
Morris, P. K., & Nichols, K. (2013). Conceptualizing beauty: A
content analysis of U.S. and French
women’s fashion magazine advertisements. Online Journal of
Communication and Media
Technologies, 3(1), 49–74.
Outdoor Advertising Association of America. (2013, April 1).
Home page. Author. Retrieved from
http://www.oaaa.org/OutofHomeAdvertising/OOHMediaFormats
/OOHMediaFormats.aspx.
Pilzer, J. (2006). The twentieth century ‘disappearance’ of the
gisaeng during the rise of Korea’s
modern sex-and-entertainment industry. In M. Feldman & B.
Gordon (Eds.), Courtesan’s arts:
Cross-cultural perspectives (pp. 295–311). Oxford, England:
Oxford University Press.
50. Piron, F., & Young, M. (1996). Consumer advertising in
Germany and the United States: A study
of sexual explicitness and cross-gender contact. Journal of
International Consumer Marketing,
8, 211–228. doi:10.1300/J046v08n03_11
Pollay, R. W. (1983). Measuring the cultural value manifest in
advertising. Current Issues and
Research in Advertising, 6(1), 71–92.
Pollay, R. W., & Gallagher, K. (1990). Advertising and cultural
values: Reflections in the distorted
mirror. International Journal of Advertising, 9, 359–375.
Ranova, E. (2010). Mirroring gazes: Europe, nationalism and
change in the field of Bulgarian art
and culture. In S. Katsikas (Ed.), Bulgaria and Europe: Shifting
identities (pp. 155–172).
London, England: Anthem Press.
P.K. Morris260
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2002.tb00826.x
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00913367.1999.10673575
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00913367.1999.10673575
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/advertising_and_society_review/v0
06/6.3morris.html
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/advertising_and_society_review/v0
06/6.3morris.html
http://www.oaaa.org/OutofHomeAdvertising/OOHMediaFormats
/OOHMediaFormats.aspx
http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J046v08n03_11
Rose, G. (2007). Visual methodologies: An introduction to the
51. interpretation of visual materials
(2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Rosenberger, N. R. (2001). Gambling with virtue: Japanese
women and the search for self in a
changing nation. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.
Sandikci, Ö., & Ger, G. (2007). Constructing and representing
the Islamic consumer in Turkey.
Fashion Theory, 11, 189–210. doi:10.2752/136270407X202754
Shepherd, J. W., & Deregowski, J. B. (1981). Races and faces:
A comparison of the responses of
African and Europeans to faces of the same and different races.
British Journal of Social
Psychology, 20(2), 125–133. doi:10.1111/j.2044-
8309.1981.tb00485.x
Silverberg, M. (2007). Erotic grotesque nonsense: The mass
culture of Japanese modern Times.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Skorek, M., & Schreier, M. (2009, May). A comparison of
gender role portrayals in magazine
advertisements from Germany, Poland and the United States.
Presented at the International
Communication Association Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.
Solomon, M. R., Ashmore, R. D., & Longo, L. C. (1992). The
beauty match-up hypothesis:
Congruence between types of beauty and product images in
advertising. Journal of Advertising,
21(4), 23–34. doi:10.1080/00913367.1992.10673383
Uray, N., & Burnaz, S. (2003). An analysis of the portrayal of
gender roles in Turkish television
52. advertisements. Sex Roles, 48(1/2), 77–87.
doi:10.1023/A:1022348813469
Üstüner, T, & Holt, D. B. (2010). Toward a theory of status
consumption in less industrialized
countries. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(1), 37–56.
doi:10.1086/649759
van Zoonen, L. (2000). Feminist media studies. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.
Wegenstein, B., & Ruck, N. (2011). Physiognomy, reality
television and the cosmetic gaze. Body &
Society, 17(4), 27–55. doi:10.1177/1357034X11410455
Wiles, J. A., Wiles, C. R., & Tjernlund, A. (1995). A
comparison of gender role portrayals in
magazine advertising: The Netherlands, Sweden, and the USA.
European Journal of Marketing,
29(11), 35–49. doi:10.1108/03090569510100696
Williamson, J. (1978). Decoding advertisements: Ideology and
meaning in advertising. London,
England: Marrion Boyers.
Wimmer, R. D., & Dominick, J. (2000). Mass media research:
An introduction. Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth.
Women deleted from photos; Ikea to review. (2012, October 3).
Chicago Tribune, p. 3.
Xie, Q., & Zhang, M. (2012, May). White or tan? A cross-
cultural analysis of skin beauty
advertisements between China and the U.S. Presented at the
International Communication
53. Association Annual Conference, Phoenix, AZ.
Yin, B., & Pryor, S. (2012). Beauty in the age of marketing.
Global Conference on Business and
Finance Proceedings, 7(1), 383–388.
Zhang, Y., & Khare, A. (2009). The impact of accessible
identities on the evaluation of global
versus local products. Journal of Consumer Research, 36(3),
524–537. doi:10.1086/598794
Asian Journal of Communication 261
http://dx.doi.org/10.2752/136270407X202754
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8309.1981.tb00485.x
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00913367.1992.10673383
http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1022348813469
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/649759
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1357034X11410455
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/03090569510100696
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/598794
Copyright of Asian Journal of Communication is the property of
Routledge and its content
may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a
listserv without the copyright
holder's express written permission. However, users may print,
download, or email articles for
individual use.
AbstractTheoretical frameworkAdvertising and consumer
cultureGlobalizationBeautyThe affective
bodyActivities/rolesBeauty typesFace versus
bodyRace/originLocal factorsEastern
EuropeBulgariaPolandTurkeyAsiaHong KongJapanSouth
KoreaResearch questionsMethodSampling and data
54. organizationCodingResultsActivities/rolesBeauty typePhysical
appearanceFace versus bodyRaceOriginFurther
analysisDiscussionDecorative/symbolic versus activeBeauty
typeFaces versus bodiesRaceLimitations of the study and future
researchConclusionNotes on contributorReferences
Research Paper Research two companies in the Fortune 500 that
offer partner benefits. Compare and contrast the companies as
you answer the following questions:
How do the requirements for coverage for domestic partners,
such as length of the relationship compare with requirements for
benefits of married couples?
Do companies usually require a waiting period after dissolution
of a marriage (divorce) before a new spouse can become eligible
for benefits?
What factors, such as legislation, may influence the inclusion
of these stipulations?
Can any of the terms you defined above be applied to either
company based on other information you learned about them?
Why, or why not? Use the following terms in your discussion
and include appropriate examples for each one:
Glass walls Sticky floor Glass escalator
Write a minimum three-page paper using APA formatting, and
include in-text citations and reference page
I
r
b
E
C
a
56. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Body Image
j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c
a t e / b o d y i m a g e
nternalization of U.S. female beauty standards as a mediator of
the
elationship between Mexican American women’s acculturation
and
ody dissatisfaction
lizabeth Poloskov ∗ , Terence J.G. Tracey
ounseling and Counseling Psychology, Arizona State
University, 446 Payne Hall, mc-0811, Tempe, AZ 85287-0811,
United States
r t i c l e i n f o
rticle history:
eceived 1 January 2012
eceived in revised form 17 May 2013
ccepted 21 May 2013
a b s t r a c t
The relationships among acculturation, internalization of U.S.
sociocultural standards of female beauty,
and body dissatisfaction were examined in a sample of 211
Mexican American college women. Structural
equation modeling was used to identify the paths among these
three factors. Results demonstrated that
there are two distinct types of body dissatisfaction: global
evaluations and composite site-specific eval-
59. one lives (Markus & Wurf, 1987; McCann, 1992), body dissatis-
faction must also be guided by culture and in the present study
the juxtaposition of two cultures, or acculturation. Originally
defined by Redfield, Linton, and Herskovits (1936, p. 149) and
adopted by subsequent researchers (Berry, 1980; Cuellar,
Arnold, &
Maldonado, 1995), “acculturation comprehends those
phenomena
which result when groups of individuals having different
cultures
come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent
changes
in the original cultural patterns of either or both groups.” In the
acculturation process, individuals may experience a change in
their customs, attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, lifestyle, language
usage, habits, and values as a result of contact and interaction
with another culture (Graves, 1967). According to current
theory,
acculturation does not occur strictly along a unilinear
continuum;
instead, movement toward the host society and retention of
one’s
original culture are two independent dimensions (Berry, 1980).
Today, it is generally held that in the acculturation process, an
individual can adopt or reject aspects of the dominant/host
culture
and maintain or abandon cultural beliefs and practices of his or
her original culture (Cuellar et al., 1995). This
conceptualization
allows for an individual to simultaneously adopt aspects of both
the dominant/host and original cultures (Berry, 1980).
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2013.05.005
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/17401445
62. L
t
2
02 E. Poloskov, T.J.G. Tracey /
Because of this conceptualization, both the relationship
etween U.S. culture and body dissatisfaction and the relation-
hip between Mexican culture and body dissatisfaction should be
xamined. There is very little research that specifically assesses
the
elationship between endorsing Mexican culture and body
dissatis-
action among Mexican Americans. Of the research that exists,
there
ppears to be a negative relationship (Bettendorf & Fischer,
2009).
ne possible explanation for this relationship is that Mexican
cul-
ural values, which emphasize collectivism and
interconnectedness
Santiago-Rivera, Arredondo, & Gallardo-Cooper, 2002), place
less
alue on a woman’s body as the primary determinant of her
worth
Castillo & Cano, 2007). In collectivistic cultures, what is
valued is
ot the individual self (including one’s body) but rather the rela-
ionships of the person to others (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).
More
esearch is needed that examines the relationship between body
issatisfaction and endorsement of Mexican culture among Mexi-
an Americans.
Research exploring acculturation to dominant U.S. culture and
ody dissatisfaction among Mexican American samples has
63. yielded
ixed results. Some scholars have suggested that acculturation to
.S. culture and body dissatisfaction were unrelated (Blow,
Taylor,
ooper, & Redfearn, 2010; Gowen, Hayward, Killen, Robinson,
&
aylor, 1999; Joiner & Kashubeck, 1996; Lester & Petrie, 1995;
erez, Voelz, Pettit, & Joiner, 2002; Warren, Castillo, &
Gleaves,
010), while others have found a negative relationship (Nieri et
al.,
005). Still other scholars have found that acculturation to U.S.
ulture increased the likelihood of body dissatisfaction among
Mex-
can Americans (Bettendorf & Fischer, 2009).
The mixed findings in the literature regarding acculturation to
.S. culture and body dissatisfaction may be a result of the
inconsis-
ent measurement of acculturation (Lara, Gamboa, Kahramanian,
orales, & Bautista, 2005; Warren et al., 2010). Specifically for
Mex-
can American populations, acculturation to dominant U.S.
culture
as been measured by generational status, length of residence in
he U.S., language familiarity and usage, acculturative stress,
par-
nt ethnicity, and/or affiliation with U.S. societal values (e.g.,
Gowen
t al., 1999; Nieri et al., 2005; Perez et al., 2002). Many
accultura-
ion scales were either too broad of a measure of exposure to
U.S.
ulture (Lester & Petrie, 1995) or too specific in their reliance on
64. ingle components of culture to be useful.
Additionally, results have varied depending on whether
easures conceptualize acculturation as a unidimensional or
ultidimensional process. Of the studies that utilize a multidi-
ensional conceptualization with Mexican American populations,
here appears to be either no correlation (Warren et al., 2010) or
a
ositive correlation (Bettendorf & Fischer, 2009) between
adopting
.S. culture and body dissatisfaction. A possible explanation for
this
iscrepant finding is the difference between the actual
dimensions
f acculturation the two studies measured. Whereas Bettendorf
nd Fischer (2009) assessed orientation toward U.S. culture
(inde-
endent of orientation toward Mexican culture) to predict body
issatisfaction, Warren et al. (2010) assessed the combination of
rientations (U.S. and Mexican) to predict body dissatisfaction,
hich confounds the two cultural affiliations.
While the broad concept of acculturation, especially adoption
f dominant U.S. culture, has been linked with body image, per-
aps it is adopting a more specific component of each culture
(i.e.,
ultural beliefs about female beauty) that more accurately pre-
icts body image. According to the sociocultural perspective, it
s culture that defines beauty (Jackson, 2002). One of the most
alient means by which people arrive at their definition of beauty
is
hrough the messages they receive from society. Studies on
Latino
65. ulture, of which Mexicans are one subgroup, have found that
atino culture puts forth a larger, curvier female ideal compared
o the U.S. female beauty ideal (Gil-Kashiwabara, 2002;
Schooler,
008). Providing support for the notion that Mexican culture
mage 10 (2013) 501–508
indeed differs from the U.S. on its view of the ideal female
body,
Crandall and Martinez (1996) found that Mexican female col-
lege students reported less concern about their weight and more
acceptance of overweight people than U.S. female college stu-
dents.
Conversely, studies on U.S. culture have shown that the cen-
tral characteristic of female beauty is thinness (Mussell,
Binford, &
Fulkerson, 2000) and “thinness at a level that is impossible for
most
women to achieve by healthy means” (Tiggemann, 2002, p. 91).
U.S.
media convey the message that slender women are attractive and
overweight women are unattractive (Perez et al., 2002;
Tiggemann,
2002). Beyond attractiveness, a slender female is perceived as
more
popular, confident, happy, respected and successful in the U.S.
(Choate, 2005).
Internalization is the extent to which a person internalizes
or adopts a standard (Heinberg, Thompson, & Stormer, 1995).
Research has linked internalization of U.S. sociocultural
standards
of beauty to acculturation to dominant U.S. culture.
Specifically,
66. studies have shown that greater acculturation to U.S. culture has
been linked with preference for thin body types among Mexican
Americans (Cachelin, Monreal, & Juarez, 2006; Olvera,
Suminski,
& Power, 2005). However, similar to the mixed results within
the
acculturation and body image literature, there are studies that
report no relationship between acculturation and internalization
of U.S. sociocultural standards of beauty (Blow et al., 2010;
Lester &
Petrie, 1995). Again, the issue of appropriate measurement may
explain the discrepancies. Studies that used a multidimensional
approach to acculturation and specifically assessed the relation-
ship between internalization of sociocultural ideals and
orientation
toward dominant U.S. culture reported a positive relationship
(Cachelin et al., 2006).
Internalization of U.S. sociocultural standards of beauty has
also
strongly predicted negative body image and increased body dis-
satisfaction across heterogeneous samples (Cashel,
Cunningham,
Landeros, Cokley, & Muhammad, 2003; Forbes & Jung, 2008;
Thompson & Stice, 2001) and within Mexican American popula-
tions (Warren et al., 2010). However, little research has
examined
the relationships among acculturation, internalization of U.S.
socio-
cultural female beauty ideals, and body dissatisfaction, much
less
the relationships of all three constructs within a Mexican
American
sample. The primary purpose of the present study was to
examine
these relationships among undergraduate and graduate Mexican
67. American female college students. The primary research ques-
tion was whether internalization of U.S. sociocultural standards
of female beauty mediated the relationship between
acculturation
and body dissatisfaction.
A secondary purpose of the present study was to assess the
distinction between two methods of measuring overall body
dissatisfaction: composite site-specific assessment and global
assessment. The broad definition of body dissatisfaction as the
neg-
atively evaluated discrepancy between people’s perceived
physical
appearance and their ideal physical appearance (Gardner, 2002)
does not address whether it is attitudes toward specific physi-
cal attributes or toward overall general appearance; the
definition
simply contends that people are dissatisfied with some aspect of
their appearance. Body dissatisfaction measures have been cre-
ated that assess overall body dissatisfaction in different ways.
There are dissatisfaction measures based on the sum/composite
of dissatisfaction with specific sites on the body such as the
Eat-
ing Disorder Inventory – Body Dissatisfaction Subscale (EDI-
BD;
Garner, Olmsted, & Polivy, 1983), and there are measures that
assess dissatisfaction with overall physical appearance such as
the
Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire-
Appearance
Evaluation subscale (MBSRQ-AE; Cash, 2000). Both forms of
assessing body dissatisfaction have been used in the field to
mea-
sure overall body dissatisfaction.
70. Thompson (2004) contended that “one of the problems that
ows from using only one of these two scales (global or specific)
is
n interpretive one. Any analysis of results that does not confine
the
iscussion to the specific type of measure may produce
conclusions
hat are erroneous” (p. 9). Use of a composite site-specific
measure
ay not capture the full experience. People may not like specific
arts of their body (e.g., thighs or stomach) but may be satisfied
ith their overall physical appearance. Conversely, a negative
eval-
ation of one specific part of the body may heavily influence
their
verall appearance evaluation. For example, Forbes and
Frederick
2008) found greater breast dissatisfaction was linked to greater
verall body dissatisfaction among White college females; it was
he high valence of dissatisfaction with a specific site that influ-
nced their overall evaluation. However, the parallel relationship
etween breast dissatisfaction and global body dissatisfaction did
ot hold true for the Latina portion of the sample.
Thus, the secondary research question was whether composite
ite-specific body dissatisfaction measures based on the sum of
dis-
atisfaction with numerous body sites captures the same domain
of
ody dissatisfaction as global body dissatisfaction measures.
Some
tudies suggest substantial overlap between the measures (Perez
t al., 2002; Thompson, Altabe, Johnson, & Stormer, 1994) while
thers suggest that correlations among the measures were not sig-
ificant enough to signify redundancy (Forbes & Jung, 2008). In
71. ccordance with Thompson’s (2004) suggestion and in order to
hed light on the distinction (if any) between a global evaluation
nd evaluation based on the composite of specific body sites, this
tudy utilized both types of body dissatisfaction measures.
In summary, a mediation model was proposed where accultura-
ion to dominant U.S. culture was related to body dissatisfaction
and
hat this relationship was mediated by the internalization of U.S.
ociocultural standard of female beauty. Internalization has been
roposed and found to account for the relationship between
various
ultural influences and body dissatisfaction, justifying internal-
zation’s role as a mediator of this link within the present study
Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe, & Tantleff-Dunn, 1999).
Additionally,
he predictive power of acculturation and internalization on com-
osite site-specific versus global measures of body
dissatisfaction
as examined.
Our hypothesized model is presented in Fig. 1. We hypothe-
ized that orientation toward dominant U.S. culture would relate
o both global and composite site-specific body dissatisfaction
nd that internalization of U.S. beauty standards would mediate
hese acculturation–body dissatisfaction relationships. Based on
ettendorf and Fischer’s (2009) research in which a multidimen-
ional measure of orientation toward U.S. culture was positively
elated to body dissatisfaction, we hypothesized that accultura-
ion to dominant U.S. culture would predict composite site-
specific
ody dissatisfaction (path A). Because composite site-specific
and
lobal body dissatisfaction measures both purport to assess body
issatisfaction and because studies have shown these types of
easures to be correlated (Forbes & Jung, 2008; Perez et al.,
72. 2002;
hompson et al., 1994), we hypothesized a positive path between
cculturation to U.S. culture and global body dissatisfaction
(path
). Additionally, as greater acculturation into dominant U.S.
culture
as been linked with preference for thinner body types among
Mex-
can American women (Cachelin et al., 2006; Olvera et al.,
2005),
e hypothesized that acculturation to U.S. culture would predict
nternalization of U.S. female beauty standards (path C).
We did not expect that Mexican orientation would be related to
ody dissatisfaction and internalization of U.S. standards of
beauty
ecause of the different body image ideals associated with Mexi-
an culture. Mexican culture puts forth a larger, curvier female
ideal
ompared to the U.S. ideal (Schooler, 2008) and places a high
value
n interdependence in defining worth (Castillo & Cano, 2007).
As
uch we did not expect orientation toward Mexican culture to be
mage 10 (2013) 501–508 503
significantly linked to internalization (path D) or body
dissatisfac-
tion (paths E & F). However, because theoretically, culture
drives
one’s self-concept, value systems, and beliefs (Markus & Wurf,
73. 1987; McCann, 1992), we allowed the potential of a relationship
in our original model.
Regarding the paths from internalization of U.S. standards of
beauty to composite site-specific body dissatisfaction (path G)
and internalization and global body dissatisfaction (path H), we
predicted significant positive paths such that greater
internaliza-
tion would be positively related to both composite site-specific
and global body dissatisfaction. Numerous studies have shown
that an increase in internalization of the U.S. ideal is associated
with increased body dissatisfaction (Cafri, Yamamiya,
Brannick, &
Thompson, 2005; Choate, 2005; Forbes & Jung, 2008; Warren et
al.,
2010).
Also, we investigated the relation (overlap or independence)
between composite site-specific and global evaluative attitude
measures. As they both purport to measure body dissatisfaction,
we
hypothesized a significant correlation between the two measures
(path I). However, as there is confusion in the literature
concerning
these measures, we did not propose specific hypotheses
regarding
what we expected to find in regards to which measure is more
strongly related to acculturation and internalization.
Method
Participants
Participants were 211 Mexican and Mexican American female
undergraduate and graduate students at a large southwestern
uni-
74. versity. Data were analyzed from students who self-identified as
Mexican or Mexican American. Participants ranged in age
between
18 and 60 years old with an average age of 25.8 years (SD =
8.68).
They ranged in body mass index (BMI = kg/m2) between 17.20
and
54.87 with an average BMI of 25.67 (SD = 6.10). In terms of
year in
school, 27 (13%) were in their first year, 34 (16%) were in their
sec-
ond year, 33 (16%) were in their third year, 56 (27%) were in
their
fourth year, 11 (5%) were in their fifth year, 19 (10%) were
master’s
level, and 15 (7%) were doctoral level; 16 (8%) gave no
response.
Measures
Composite site-specific body evaluation. The Eating Disor-
der Inventory-Body Dissatisfaction subscale (EDI-BD; Garner
et al.,
1983) is 9-item scale designed to assess dissatisfaction with
specific
body sites that generally become larger with puberty for women.
On items such as “I think that my stomach is too big”
participant
responses can range from 1 (never) to 6 (always). Rather than
only
considering the three item response options in the clinical
range,
all six response options for this subscale were scored
(Thompson,
van den Berg, Roehig, Guarda, & Heinberg, 2004). Using the
aver-
75. age score of continuous ratings is recommended in non-clinical
samples (Siever, 1994). Higher scores were indicative of greater
body dissatisfaction. The EDI-BD has shown significant
correlations
with a separate measures that assessed overall body dissatisfac-
tion (r = .55) and dissatisfaction with female maturation regions
including breasts, buttocks, hips and abdomen (r = .69),
supporting
its convergent validity (Garner et al., 1983). Providing evidence
for discriminant validity, Garner et al. (1983) reported that the
EDI-BD was not strongly correlated with measures that assessed
factors beyond evaluative attitudes toward the body (i.e.,
measures
of self-esteem, locus of control, feelings of inadequacy,
physical
anhedonia, depression, somatization, obsessionality, and
anxiety).
A three-week test–retest reliability estimate (r) was reported as
.97 in a sample of 70 university students (Wear & Pratz, 1987).
504 E. Poloskov, T.J.G. Tracey / Body Image 10 (2013) 501–
508
A wit
C
p
I
p
b
a
r
77. w
t
Fig. 1. Full structural model
ronbach’s alpha of .88 has been reported for the EDI-BD in a
sam-
le of 209 Mexican American females (Bettendorf & Fischer,
2009).
t should be noted that this measure was slightly modified for the
urposes of this study. As we sought to assess the relationship
etween site-specific and general evaluations of body, the global
ssessment item “I feel satisfied with the shape of my body” was
emoved. Cronbach’s alpha for the 8-item measure for this
sample
as .84.
Global body evaluation. The Multidimensional Body-Self Rela-
ions Questionnaire-Appearance Evaluation subscale (MBSRQ-
AE;
ash, 2000) is a 7-item scale designed to measure satisfaction or
issatisfaction with a person’s overall appearance. On items such
s “I like my looks just the way they are,” participant responses
ange from 1 (definitely disagree) to 5 (definitely agree).
Responses
ere averaged with lower scores indicative of greater body
dissat-
sfaction. However, in order to remain consistent with the other
easure of body dissatisfaction, scoring was revised such that
igher scores on the measure were indicative of greater body
issatisfaction. Providing evidence of convergent validity among
ndergraduates, scores on the MBSRQ-AE were significantly
neg-
tively correlated with scores from the Body Shape
78. Questionnaire
BSQ; Cooper, Taylor, Cooper, & Fairburn, 1987), such that
more
istress with weight and shape was related to lower appear-
nce evaluation (Rosen, Jones, Ramirez, & Waxman, 1998).
When
xamining the overlap between multiple measures of body image
isturbance, Thompson et al. (1994) found that the MBSRQ-AE,
hich measures an affective dimension of body dissatisfaction,
learly loaded onto a separate factor than the Appearance Orien-
ation subscale of the MBSRQ which assesses cognitive-
behavioral
nvestment in appearance, thus providing support for
discriminant
alidity. Frederick, Forbes, Grigorian, and Jarcho (2007)
reported
ronbach an alpha of .88 for the MBSRQ-AE in a multiethnic
sam-
le and alphas over .70 for different ethnic subsamples (specific
alues for each group unspecified). Cronbach’s alpha in the
present
ample was .89.
Acculturation. Scale 1 (acculturation scale) of the Accultur-
tion Rating Scale for Mexican Americans-II (ARSMA-II;
Cuellar
t al., 1995) was used. Scale 1 consists of two subscales: the
Anglo
rientation Scale (AOS, 13 items) and Mexican Orientation Scale
MOS, 17 items). Language use and preference, ethnic identity
and
lassification, cultural heritage and ethnic behaviors, and ethnic
nteraction are assessed for each orientation. Item responses
79. range
rom 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely often/almost always).
Responses
ere averaged with higher scores indicative of greater accultura-
ion to U.S. and Mexican culture, respectively. Providing
evidence
h all paths freely estimated.
for convergent validity, among 317 heterogeneous middle
school
students, scores on the AOS were significantly correlated with
scores on the U.S. Orientation subscale of the Acculturation,
Habits,
and Interests Multicultural Scale for Adolescents (r = .47;
AHIMSA;
Unger et al., 2002). A significant relationship was also shown
between the MOS and the Other Culture Orientation subscale of
the
AHIMSA (r = .33; Unger et al., 2002). Cronbach’s alphas of .75
(AOS)
and .92 (MOS) were reported in a sample of 94 Mexican Ameri-
can female university students (Warren et al., 2010). In a
sample of
209 Mexican American female university students, Bettendorf
and
Fischer (2009) reported Cronbach’s alphas of .69 for AOS and
.85
for MOS. Cronbach’s alphas in the present sample were .69 for
AOS
and .91 for MOS.
Internalization of U.S. standards of beauty. The Sociocul-
tural Attitudes Toward Appearance Questionnaire-
Internalization
80. subscale (SATAQ-I; Heinberg et al., 1995) is a 8-item self-
report
questionnaire which measures participants’ endorsement of U.S.
culturally sanctioned societal standards of female beauty mainly
defined as thinness. On items such as “I wish I looked like a
swim suit model,” participant responses can range from 1 (com-
pletely disagree) to 5 (completely agree). Responses were
averaged
with higher scores indicative of greater internalization.
Providing
evidence of construct validity, Heinberg et al. (1995) reported
sig-
nificant relationships between the SATAQ-I and numerous
widely
used measures of body image and eating disturbance. Further,
they reported that the SATAQ-I predicted significant variance
in
body dissatisfaction beyond that accounted for by body mass
and
self-esteem measures, yielding evidence of incremental validity.
Cronbach’s alpha of .86 was reported for the SATAQ-I in a
sample
of 94 Mexican American university students (Warren et al.,
2010).
Cronbach’s alpha in the present sample was .84.
Procedures
After approval by the university’s Institutional Review Board,
an email that explained the purpose of the study, solicited
online
or in person participation, and provided a link to the study was
sent campus wide to university instructors, department chairs,
program coordinators, and cultural student organization lead-
ers. People who were sent an email were asked to either allow
class/meeting time for the paper-and-pencil administration of
81. the survey or to forward the link to the survey to all students in
their classes, department, program, or student organization. This
resulted in a wide range of classes and organizations including
education, psychology, business, biology, and Spanish
represented
in this study. All students were invited to participate; data were
Body Image 10 (2013) 501–508 505
l
a
w
t
t
w
t
p
p
D
p
f
h
t
o
T
o
i
m
i
t
83. i
Table 1
Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations among study
variables.
Variable 1 2 3 4 5
1. U.S.
2. Mexican −.39**
3. Internalization .21* −.03
4. Specific .19*−.05 .39**
5. Global −.04 .04 .45** .75**
M 3.89 3.70 2.57 3.36 3.31
SD 0.40 0.76 0.95 1.04 0.86
Note. N = 211. U.S.: Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican
Americas II – Anglo
Orientation Scale; Mexican: Acculturation Rating Scale for
Mexican Americas II –
Mexican Orientation Scale; Internalization: Sociocultural
Attitude Toward Appear-
ance Questionnaire Internalization subscale; Specific: Eating
Disorder Inventory
Body Dissatisfaction subscale; Global: The Multidimensional
Body-Self Relations
Questionnaire Appearance Evaluation scale.
E. Poloskov, T.J.G. Tracey /
ater screened for Mexican American women. Of the classroom
dministration, approximately 95% of the students participated;
e had no way to assess the online participation rate. Before
he participants were administered the self-report questionnaire,
hey were provided with a general rationale for the study. They
ere informed that the study concerned body image and factors
84. hat influence their self-perception. They were assured that their
articipation was voluntary and anonymous, and their lack of
articipation would not impact their grade.
ata Analysis
Responses were collected from 677 male and female partici-
ants. Respondents who did not meet the target criteria (e.g.,
adult,
emale, and Mexican or Mexican American) were excluded. Two
undred and fourteen participants met these criteria; however,
hree cases were removed because participants had left at least
ne measure blank. The final sample consisted of 211
participants.
hirty-four participants in the final sample had missing data;
88%
f missing data were from online participants and 11% were from
n person administration. Of the 34 cases with missing data, 76%
issed only a single item in the entire survey, 15% missed only
two
tems, 6% missed three items, and one person missed five items
on
he entire questionnaire. Missing data were estimated using full
nformation maximum likelihood (FIML). We also examined the
ata set for outliers using Mahalanobis distance values at a p <
.001
evel (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001) and found no outliers.
Structural equation modeling (SEM) with EQS Structural Equa-
ion Program (Bentler, 1995) was used to test the proposed
easurement and structural models. In order to determine if the
ata supported the model, fit indices were calculated. Several fit
