Body image and sociocultural influences in Latin America

Abstract

Sociocultural influences, including pressure from family, peers, and the media and internalisation of appearance ideals, can negatively affect body image and lead to eating disorder symptoms. While these relationships are well established in Western countries, less research has been done in Latin America.
This thesis presents a systematic literature review examining the associations between media, body image and sociocultural appearance ideals in Latin America. Results from qualitative and quantitative studies found that media use/internalisation was associated with higher body image concerns, and thinner appearance ideals. However, this review highlighted the need for more research that employs a greater variety of measures and recruits more diverse samples - including varied socioeconomic backgrounds and rural populations. In order to measure holistic body image, Chapter 3 presents a validation of a Latin-American Spanish version of the Body Esteem Scale for Adolescents and Adults in Colombian and Nicaraguan adults, finding good reliability, validity and measurement invariance across gender and countries. This scale was then used to assess associations amongst sociocultural pressure, media internalisation, body image and eating disorder symptoms in adolescents. In Colombia (Chapter 4), media internalisation mediated sociocultural impacts on body image concerns and eating disorder symptoms. In Nicaragua (Chapter 5), sociocultural pressure directly predicted body image/eating disorder symptoms. These results show that even seemingly similar cultural contexts can show different relationships between sociocultural influences and body image. Finally, Chapter 6 assessed experimental impacts of media images on body ideals and body satisfaction. Body size preferences (in girls) and muscularity preferences (in boys) were both affected by viewing images of idealised media images, but there were no effects on body satisfaction.
Taken together, this thesis shows that sociocultural influences can negatively affect body image in Latin American contexts. However, generalisations should be made cautiously, and cultural context should always be taken into account when interpreting study outcomes.