A “COCA-COLA” SHAPE

EILEEN P. ANDERSON-FYE

A “COCA-COLA” SHAPE: CULTURAL CHANGE, BODY IMAGE, ´ BELIZE AND EATING DISORDERS IN SAN ANDRES,

ABSTRACT. Eating disorders have been associated with developing nations undergoing rapid social transition, including participation in a global market economy and heavy media exposure. San Andrés, Belize, a community with many risk factors associated with the cross-cultural development of eating disorders, has shown remarkable resistance to previously documented patterns, despite a local focus on female beauty. Drawing on longitudinal person-centered ethnography with adolescent girls, this article examines why this community appears exceptional in light of the literature. First, community beauty and body image ideals and practices are explicated. Then, a protective ethnopsychology is proposed as a key mediating factor of the rapid socio-cultural change among young women. Finally, possible nascent cases of eating disordered behavior are discussed in light of their unique phenomenology: that is, having to do more with economic opportunity in the tourism industry and less with personal distress or desire for thinness. Close, meaning-centered examination of eating and body image practices may aid understanding and prevention of eating disorders among adolescents undergoing rapid social change in situations of globalization and immigration. KEY WORDS: body image, eating disorders, Belize, adolescents, globalization

In San Andrés,1 Belize, focus on female bodies and beauty is a part of the fabric of life, as it is in many corners of the world. Rarely does a young woman walk down the street without some sort of male attention toward her appearance. In addition to this everyday focus, San Andrés boasts a 50-year history of beauty pageants—a key ritual arena for the negotiation of gender roles, sexuality and community belongingness that all girls in the relatively small community have to contend with in some way. Many young women in San Andrés enjoy experimenting with their appearance through carefully dressing, styling their hair, applying makeup, and “modeling”—adorning oneself and practicing the latest dance or catwalk moves learned from local pageants or U.S. and Mexican media. Recently, San Andrés has been undergoing tremendous expansion, development, and increasing dependence on Northern economies and symbolic media due to a rapidly growing eco-tourism industry. Given this intensity of focus on female bodies, combined with rapid cultural change over the last two decades, it is initially surprising that San Andrés is a rare exception to the world literature in terms of frequency and phenomenology (i.e., observed and reported patterns, meanings, and constellations of symptoms) of eating disorders (Anderson-Fye and Becker 2003). A recent review of the cross-cultural data on eating disorders (Anderson-Fye and Becker 2003) suggests that in most of the places studied that are undergoing similar Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 28: 561–595, 2004. C 2004 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. DOI: 10.1007/s11013-004-1068-4

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aspects of rapid social transition as San Andrés, eating disordered behaviors are often surprisingly insidious and prevalent, at least in some subpopulations (e.g., Becker 2004). The case of San Andrés, which shares most of the structural factors implicated in the cross-cultural spread of eating disorders such as cultural change (with heavy components of Americanization), social transition, modernization, shifting social roles for women, and dramatically increased exposure to U.S.originated print and visual media (Anderson-Fye 2002), in addition to the long-held communal focus on women’s bodies and beauty, challenges current understandings of the worldwide increase of eating disordered symptoms. Over the course of this research, conducted from 1995 to 2002, there did not appear to be clinically relevant eating disorders in the community (Anderson-Fye 2000, 2003). Similarly, community health care providers, healers, and the only practicing psychiatrist in the country reported being unaware of eating disorders (either indigenous or meeting DSM criteria) before this time. This paper then asks, why is this community not following patterns found elsewhere in terms of globalization and eating disorders? Further, what discrepant data are there showing some signs of eating disordered behaviors, and could these cases be harbingers of future problems? This article explores three key themes addressing these phenomena. First, the role of beauty, body shape, and body size for females in this rapidly growing tourism-based community in Belize is explored. This study found beauty to be an important female characteristic, though it can take many forms. Beauty pageants for girls and women are ubiquitous, and have only recently been superceded by schooling in providing instrumental access to upward mobility for young women. Girls from a variety of socioeconomic, ethnic, and regional backgrounds participate in and win pageants, indicating a pluralistic notion of beauty in the community. Body shape, in contrast to body size, is reported and observed to be the most salient factor in a young woman’s body image and in communal appraisals of beauty. Secondly, the process of how young women negotiate globalizing cultural change in terms of their bodily ideals and practices is examined. A protective ethnopsychology, here referred to by the phrase “Never Leave Yourself,” is found to be mediating transnational messages about female bodies, thus creating a case unique in the literature, in which young women continue to be relatively satisfied with their bodies despite factors of socio-cultural change that are associated with body image and eating distress elsewhere (Anderson-Fye and Becker 2003). Contrary to common assumptions about the simple “contagion” of body image dissatisfaction and eating disorders arising with Westernization and globalization, the present data argue for an interactive process by which adolescent girls actively interpret and select which transnational messages about beauty and bodies are consistent with a strong local ethnopsychology.

CULTURAL CHANGE, BODY IMAGE AND EATING DISORDERS IN SAN ANDRES

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Finally, in light of the world data on eating disorders, the few nascent cases of Western-style eating disordered behavior in San Andrés are investigated. Significantly, young women displaying eating disordered behaviors in this community are all active in the tourism industry, which caters to Westerners. Having a thin body was found to have instrumental meaning for job success among these young women, and eating disordered symptomatology appears to be related to economic gain and family obligation rather than aesthetic preference or individual psychological turmoil. Therefore, phenomenology of and risk factors for eating disorders must be reconsidered in this cultural context. ´ BELIZE SAN ANDRES,

San Andrés Town is on the largest offshore caye in Belize. It is a destination for 85% of Belize’s 200,000 annual tourists (170,000 of whom are from the U.S.; Belize Immigration Department 2001). San Andrés has grown from a small fishing village in the early 1980s to an international eco-tourism destination today, sought out for its world-class diving, laid-back atmosphere, and friendly residents. There is evidence of early Mayan settlement on San Andrés, though the island was uninhabited or only occasionally inhabited for several hundred years. Resettled in the 1840s by those who fled the Mexican Caste wars of the Yucatan peninsula, modern San Andrés has a layer of Mestizo (called “Spanish” in Belize) influence underpinning its social structure. Throughout the past 15 years, rapid job-related migration from other regions of the country and from neighboring Central American countries has made San Andrés the most diverse community in Belize. Spanish, Creole, Garifuna, Mayan, Chinese, German Mennonite, Arab, U.S. and British expatriate, and other people all reside in San Andrés, most working in tourism-related industries such as tour guiding, service, and construction. Over the same 15-year period, Belize as a whole has become more dependent on U.S. economic resources (Boland 2001). Aid from the U.S. has increased since independence, and transnational corporations such as Coca-Cola play an increasingly important role in the economy, structuring business and land allocation (Kyle 1988). Additionally, tourist dollars—the majority from the U.S.—are overtaking agriculture as the nation’s top source of income. In San Andrés, it is estimated that as much as 80% of the economy is tourism-based (San Andrés Town Board, personal communication, January 2003). Concurrent with this economic dependence on the U.S. is an increase in symbolic dependence on the U.S. After the nation got its first pirated U.S.-based satellite television programming in 1981, television spread rapidly, until almost every small home had a centrally located television. Adolescents who grew up simultaneously with television have become increasingly dependent on “American television programmes” for instruction on how to solve “emotional challenges”

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(Cameron 1997: 48), make meaning out of their experiences, and shape values and decisions (Anderson-Fye 2003). Among adolescent girls, magazines such as Glamour and Seventeen have served similar purposes, albeit not without filtering and critique (Anderson-Fye 2003). Residents of San Andrés sustain relatively high rates of contact with U.S. citizens in a variety of ways. In San Andrés, where there is little separation between everyday life and tourist life (in contrast to many Caribbean destinations), many adolescents have almost everyday contact with U.S., Canadian, and British tourists. Such interactions often serve to confirm media stereotypes, as tourists often spend their time in San Andrés drinking heavily and spending money easily. Finally, there has been an increase in transnational families in Belize over the same time period (Palacio 1993). Tens of thousands of Belizeans have moved to the United States in search of better jobs. Many families have at least one member who travels between the U.S. and Belize regularly, sharing stories and goods (cf. Appadurai 1996 for more on the impact of transnational families). Given the heavy transnational movement of money, goods, people, images, ideas, and ideals between the U.S. and Belize and the imbalance of power between the two nations, it becomes remarkable that female body ideals have not changed more dramatically toward the tall, slender ideal commonly portrayed in the United States, as discussed below. Belize is a highly regionalized nation. While hosting migrants from all regions of Belize, San Andrés, like any other rural town, is not necessarily representative of the entire country. Local history is crucial to understanding the dynamics of any one region. For example, Belize City, the only city in the country, has different dynamics and social organization, due to urbanization and a past remarkably different from the cayes. Future research will examine eating and body image attitudes and behaviors in the city specifically to look for effects of urbanization that have been written about in other nations. San Andrés was chosen as the research site for the present study due to its heavy reliance on the tourism industry, the rapid socio-cultural change and complex migration patterns related to that industry, and the resultant disproportional transnational influence on this region compared with the rest of the country. ´ IN CONTEXT THE CASE OF SAN ANDRES

A recent review of cross-cultural data on eating disorders found several consistent socio-cultural characteristics to be associated with increased risk of the disorders among young women (Anderson-Fye and Becker 2003). These include exposure to and high levels of interaction with transnational media images; specific cultural values of self control and individuation (such as a belief that it is possible to control the shape and size of individual bodies and that this “work” on malleable bodies


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is worthwhile); and emphasis on beauty and youthfulness. In addition, AndersonFye and Becker (2003) identified major “channels” by which images and ideals are transported, the most common of which are socio-cultural transitions such as industrialization and modernization. While much remains unknown, several important dynamics of social transition have been articulated in cases around the world in which eating disorders have been introduced or increased in prevalence, such as shifting social roles for women and economic change on both the state (i.e., global market capitalism) and individual levels (i.e., increased affluence, upward mobility). Westernization has also been theorized as a sort of eating disorders carrier, though non-Western industrialized nations such as those in Eastern Europe (Steinhausen 1984) and Korea (Lippincott and Hwang, 1999) report equivalent rates of eating pathology as Western nations. This finding suggests that it is not solely Westernization that contributes to risk for eating disorders,2 though Western media content, with its ideal images and capitalistic success narratives, can also impact eating disorders risk (Becker et al. 2002). Though a discussion of another key socio-cultural transition—immigration—is beyond the scope of this paper, studies comparing samples in sending countries with those in receiving countries (which almost always find higher rates of eating disorders among immigrants compared to nonimmigrant samples in the country of origin) support the aforementioned factors in increasing eating disorders risk among young women, in addition to mentioning compounding acculturative stressors (Fichter et al. 1983; Nasser 1986). A major research challenge is understanding how such factors and processes work to produce increased risk of eating disorders in the context of socio-cultural change. METHODS

Methods from several disciplines were employed to understand beauty, body image, and eating disorders over time in San Andrés. Ethnographic methods were used first for the period from September 1996 to September 1997 and then over the course of several months per year for the next 5 years in order to understand what was important to girls’ experiences both as they reported them and as observed. In addition to living in the town among the girls and their families while participating in community life, I took part in high school life at the only regional high school in the area on a daily basis. Several types of interviews were employed in the school setting among many of the 80 enrolled girls, including open-ended ethnographic (n = 60), semi-structured cross-sectional (n = 32), and in-depth clinical longitudinal (n = 16) interviews. All 80 girls participated in some aspect of the research, including focus groups, small group discussions, or art groups. Additionally, ethnographic interviews were conducted with boys,

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girls’ families, educators, town officials, medical personnel, and various other community members to add to a more complete picture of young women’s lives, and eating and body image issues in particular. Most interviews in the school setting were begun in English, the national language, though many expanded to include Spanish and Creole as they progressed. I also administered questionnaires, including the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26), Body Shapes Preferences, and one on demographic information, to all 80 young women in the high school. While data were analyzed by traditional means (Furnham and Alibhai 1983; Garner and Garfinkel 1980), the EAT-26 was also reanalyzed using a categorization of attitudinal versus behavioral questions for more accurate response information from this sample undergoing socio-cultural change (Anderson-Fye 2000). During my various stays, I was also invited to participate in events such as quinceaños (a coming-of-age ceremony for 15-year-olds), wedding preparations, pageants, and all-night sleepover birthday parties where a sleepy anthropologist was privy to middle-of-the-night gossip. As I was classified as a sort of older sister by many of the girls, parents and educators, I was fortunate to get a unique research perspective among the high school girls and adult key informants. This triangulation of methods (Maxwell 1996) was effective in allowing me to explore both meaning-making and observable behavior in the young women’s worlds. I was able to find contradictions (e.g., when a girl said she was not eating sweets in an interview, and I watched her eat a large piece of coconut pie later that night) and consistencies. Obviously, I could not be all places at all times, and I got to know some girls better than others, which would necessarily make my observations partial. However, through a variety of methodological cross-checks and the privilege of spending almost all of my days with the young women and integrated into the school and community, I have attempted to preserve validity as well as possible. BEAUTY IDEALS AND PRACTICES IN BELIZE

Shape: Coca-cola versus Fanta Women in San Andrés, even upwardly mobile ones, have long appeared to eat relatively freely, with minimal concern about controlling their bodies. While several San Andrana women in their 60s and 70s remembered worrying about their bodies as young women, they reported that this concern was fleeting and regarded shape more than size. While there has been and remains concern about body shape that shape can come in almost any size and still be pleasing. As in other postcolonial nations, most women, as one older woman put it, have “better things to worry about” than fatness, though in recent years health concerns about obesity appear to have intensified as diet and lifestyle changed.3 Dressing the body has


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been more important than body size in San Andrés. Having a “Coca-Cola” or “Fanta” shape—the commodifying shorthand terminology for the preferred body shapes for as long as anyone can remember (discussed below)—and adorning oneself properly can make virtually any female “beautiful,” a valued and important Belizean characteristic. Shape of the female body was more important than its size in San Andrés, according to the girls, male key informants, and observations. Young women could subjectively feel and appear attractive by local cultural standards and be a wide range of body sizes, from petite to large, though it was possible to be “too thin” or “too fat.” In a widely used body shapes survey administered to all high school girls in 1997, I found that girls’ ideal body sizes did not differ significantly from their actual sizes (Anderson-Fye 2000). In contrast, U.S., Canadian, and Western European studies often report ideal body sizes smaller than actual sizes. Moreover, the ideal and actual size chosen was almost a full body size larger than age-equivalent samples in Western industrialized nations such as the U.S., though it was well within “normal” on international height and weight tables. These data, in which more girls reported wanting to increase their body size than decrease it and the majority had identical actual and ideal ratings, are a rare finding in the world data and may indicate a local cultural context that is protective against eating disorders as in Sudan and Uganda (cf. El-Sarrag 1968; Furnham and Baguma 1994). No girl reported a pathologically small ideal body size. Consistent with the quantitative results, most girls reported their ideal body size to be “not too fat or too thin, just normal,” as one pair of 16-year-old friends put it. Girls and women of various sizes won important beauty pageants, though the variation in size appears to have reduced over time, according to local newspaper photo examinations. Pageant winners have become slightly thinner over time, though body shape is consistent.4 The ideal body shape was shorthanded as a “Coca-Cola” or “Fanta” shape among the girls. The first time I heard these terms was in an interview with Juanita, a 14-year-old Spanish and Creole girl. EA: JS: EA: JS:

How do you feel about your body? I feed good (smiles). I have a good shape, a Coca-Cola shape. What’s a Coca-Cola shape? Serious?! (EA nods, JS laughs and draws hourglass-type figure in air with hands) See? Some girls they like a Fanta shape. (EA: What’s that?) That’s less at the top and bigger at the bottom (draws shape in air). That’s good too, like Lupita (points to friend standing across school yard), but I like Coca-Cola (laughs). I feel good ‘cuz I got a Coca-Cola shape . . . . You can’t really tell so much in the [school] uniform, but when I got out at night, I look good in my clothes (smiles) . . . .

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Older women reported using these terms while growing up too, and in fact, no one reported remembering a time when they were not in use, though Coca-Cola was first imported into Belize in the 1950s. The Coca-Cola shape refers to the glass bottles that all Coke came in until the late 1990s. The shape of the bottles, and hence of the ideal female figure, was “curvaceous at the top, goes in at the waist, and bigger on the bottom,” as one girl described it. The Coca-Cola shape might be thought of as an “hourglass” shape, though the upper curve is smaller than the lower curve, and neither is as pronounced. Fanta glass bottles are more slender on top, gradually increasing in diameter into a pronounced larger shape about halfway down. Several times, girls would joke through recess periods (when many were sipping out of such bottles) about whether a Coca-Cola or a Fanta shape was better. Throughout the course of this study, the decision remained split as to which was more desirable. The unanimous joke, though, was that no one wanted a “Diet Coke” shape. Diet Coke came only in cans until plastic bottles were introduced in the last two years. The girls referred to the can shape as “straight shape” or “no shape,” both “bad shapes” and highly undesirable. Other body image markers did not appear to be significant to assessments of public or subjective beauty. Height did not change subjective reports of body satisfaction or seem to matter communally either, and beauty queens stood anywhere between five and six feet tall. Most high school girls reported heights between 5 1 and 5 6 , and none reported more than brief discontent with her stature in quantitative or qualitative measures. Within a diverse multicultural population, there was room for women to be all colors and ethnicities. Few girls reported dissatisfaction with skin color, hair color or texture, or facial or physical features. In this study, girls who were Spanish, Creole, Garifuna, Mayan, Chinese, Lebanese, Arabic, Anglo, and many combinations of these all reported feeling beautiful in San Andrés. Though there were some communal status limits by ethnicity, as described elsewhere (Anderson-Fye 2002), girls from the darkest-skinned to the lightest-skinned reported experiencing personal body satisfaction and attractiveness. There were no differences in body satisfaction found by ethnicity on quantitative, ethnographic or interview measures during this study. Males were quick to second this assessment of a wide array of beautiful females, though occasionally they expressed that there were limitations on dating due to differing backgrounds. Concerns over body size, height, skin color, hair, nose, eyes, and other features did not tend to cause girls distress. Shape was the feature that was most connected emotionally with pride and dismay and helped to determine the important factor of whether or not one “could wear clothes well.” Consistent with other findings among African American and Latina women in the United States (Parker et al. 1995, Rubin et al. 2003), care and adornment of the body were more highly valued characteristics than body size among the Belizean women of various ethnicities and ages. For example, when asked to describe herself, one 4 10 14-year-old


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Mayan and Spanish girl, Juana, reported the following. “I’m friendly . . . I have long, dark hair . . . I’m nice . . . (giggles) I don’t know . . . (giggles) I have a good shape (smiles) . . . I dress myself well.” When I asked her later how she felt about her body, she said, “I feel no way. I have a good shape, so I’m lucky, but I feel no way. What’s important is what’s in here (points to heart).” For Juana, friendliness, being a nice person, and having a good shape consistently come up as valued characteristics, as they did in many of the girls’ narratives (cf. Anderson-Fye 2002: Appendix A). When I asked her what would happen if she did not “naturally” (her word in a prior conversation) have a Coca-Cola shape, Juana said, “Eh! I don’t know . . . I guess I’d have to cinch myself [wear a girdle] (grabs waist with both hands, laughs). . . . No, I’m just joking. You get what God gave you and be a good person and be proud.” This young woman, with her emphasis on personality characteristics over appearance, was known among her peers to be exceptionally kind. She also often brought up topics of Coca-Cola and Fanta shape at recess with her friends and discussed shape when looking at fashion magazines. A common refrain among her group of friends was, “she has a good shape (points to model).” I also observed this young woman spending an hour or more styling her hair and choosing an outfit before attending family or community parties, indicating that these adornment practices, usually shared with female friends and family members, were also important to her. Shape and care of the body prevailed over size and stature for most high school girls. The emphasis on personality characteristics and bodily care resonates with Parker et al. 1995 findings among African American young women. Drawing on focus group interviews in the United States Southwest, Parker et al. write, “The ideal African American girl was smart, friendly, not conceited, easy to talk to, fun to be with, and had a good sense of humor . . . [the] ideal girl did not have to be ‘pretty’ just ‘well kept’ (i.e., well groomed)” (1995: 108). While the San Andrana sample also valued “prettiness,” the “total package” was important to the San Andranas in a way that Parker and colleagues describe in African American girls’ responses but absent among the white girls’ responses, which showed a much more narrow focus on body size and perfection. Rubin et al. (2003) describe the focus on self-care and self-presentation found among African American and Latina college students in the United States Southwest as body ethics, in contrast with the limited focus on a specific ideal body size and type commonly found among Anglo American women in the United States, which these authors referred to as body aesthetics. Such data indicate the possibilities for a multiplicity of beautiful bodies and attractive women among African American and Latina women in at least some regions of the U.S. However, it is also important to note that eating disorders among African American and Latina women in the United States are well established. African American women have been shown to have rates of binge eating disorder at least as high as non-Latino white women (Smith et al. 1998; Striegel-Moore et al. 2000),

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and several studies show rates of bulimic symptomatology equivalent to those for whites (Field et al. 1997; Thompson 1992). Laxative and diuretic abuse is reported as higher among African American females compared to their non-Latino white counterparts (Emmons 1992; Pumariega et al. 1994). Similarly, rates of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa among Latinas in the United States have been reported to be equivalent to or greater than those for Anglos (Pemberton et al. 1996; Rhea 1999; Rosen and Gross 1987), and rates of binge eating disorder are thought to be highest among Latinas when compared with whites and African Americans (Bruce and Agras 1992; Fitzgibbon et al. 1998). Therefore, while there appear to be some important similarities between the African American and Latina girls and women in these U.S. studies and the San Andrés sample, it is important to remember that the portraits are incomplete, with some key differences (possibly relating to negotiations between dominant and minority cultures) remaining that appear to place females in the United States at greater risk for eating disorders at present. Perhaps one of these key differences is belief about whether or not a body could be changed or controlled (cf. Becker 1994 for discussion of cultural notions of bodily control). When asked if they had or could change the size of their bodies in 1996–1997, the San Andrés schoolgirls consistently provided responses such as the following: God gave me this body as it is; I can’t change it (laughter). You can’t change the body God gave you. You can’t change a body and even if you did, it would go right back. What do you mean, “change my body’s size?” I was born with this body (points to self). I’ll die with this body. Body size was thought to be a “natural” condition determined by one’s family heritage and over which there was little control. While the women of color in the Parker et al. (1995) and Rubin et al. (2003) studies also discussed their bodies as a gift from God that should be cared for (i.e., they expressed a body ethic), many of the San Andrés girls in this study further indicated that the body could not be controlled. That is, beyond the ethical imperative toward self-care, controlling and changing the body simply was not possible in significant and lasting ways (though there is some evidence this belief may be changing as discussed below). For the San Andranas, control was exerted through adornment, dressing to emphasize the Coca-Cola shape, hairstyling, and makeup application. While the emphasis on beauty for women remained strong, the means to achieve it involved working with what one had to highlight qualities considered beautiful rather than disciplining the body into a uniform ideal. Beauty, then, consisted of multiple ideals sharing certain uncontrollable and malleable characteristics, on both an everyday level and the pageant stage.


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Beauty pageants and body image in San Andrés Beauty pageants for females are ubiquitous in Belize (Wilk 1997) and play important roles locally and nationally in negotiating shifting gender roles, group belongingness and identity, and developmental issues. From small village competitions to the pinnacle of Miss Belize, every corner of the country has its own set of pageants that sometimes feed into larger-scale competition. San Andrés is no exception, and in fact it hosts one of the heaviest concentrations of pageants in the country, with elaborate displays of girls and women judged on stage. From 1996 to 2001, the front pages of nearly half of the issues of the two local newspapers displayed photos of beauty pageant participants or similarly glamorous images of girls or women, ensuring that the dialogue about pageantry is nearly constant. Girls and women have pageant opportunities throughout the life cycle, beginning as toddlers and continuing through adulthood, and most heavily concentrated in adolescence. Pageantry began on the island in 1955 when the first Miss San Andrés pageant was held (Nuñez 2000). From Miss ABC for preschoolers to Miss San Andrés and beyond, there are pageants held by the town government, organizations such as the Lions’ Club, radio stations, schools, ethnic heritage groups, nightclubs, festivals, and businesses. Most pageants are widely attended community affairs with an audience of diverse ages, ethnicities, class backgrounds, and both genders. Pageants include competitions in eveningwear, bathing suits, interview, ethnic or national heritage costume, and dancing or singing. Awards in “amity/congeniality” and “photogenic/beautiful,” qualities important to both San Andrana and Belizean identity (see Anderson-Fye 2002: Appendix A) are often awarded in addition to the crown. Today, girls of all ethnic, class and immigration backgrounds participate in the San Andrés pageants. Of the 80 girls enrolled in the high school during the 1996– 1997 school year, fully half of them reported having been in a pageant sometime during their lives or planning to be in one in the future. Only one girl vociferously protested the whole notion of pageants, describing them as “parading women like cattle.” Whether or not the girls participated in pageants, each girl had had to contend with the decision of whether or not she would enter a pageant, and if so, which one or ones. Moreover, the pageants are often held in the center of town, which is the center of nightlife and social activity for community members of all ages. To not attend pageants would take some planning. Trends seen in these pageants appear to have an effect on all girls, whether they participate in pageants or not (Anderson-Fye 2002). Pageants play several important roles in San Andrés relevant to beauty and body image. They are dramatic extensions of everyday gender relations, where female physical appearance is watched and judged on the street. Evaluative comments,

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stares and whistles from males toward females are the norm on any given day. All of the high school girls interviewed reported this type of attention daily. Comments might range from “Hi, beautiful” instead of “hello” to explicit sexual invitations. While most girls reported a relatively neutral acceptance of this attention (“I don’t feel no way”), some loved it (“I love it [attention on the street]! I feel good when I hear it”), and some hated it (“I hate this place because of that [comments]. I hate the comments and looks . . . I feel like I want to disappear”). No one disagreed that there was constant evaluative attention on females, beauty, and bodies, though some thought there “shouldn’t be.” Moreover, this focus on girls’ and women’s bodies is often sexualized (Anderson-Fye 2002; Sutherland 1998). In light of this, the pageants serve as a stage for negotiations of appropriate and inappropriate expressions of sexuality in the community. For example, during the 1997 annual pageant for 5- and 6year-old girls, where the girls were dressed and made up and dancing in the latest MTV styles, two adult men publicly discussed their sexual arousal while watching the girls. An adult woman turned to scold them, indicating that there is some disagreement over appropriate responses and public behavior (see Anderson-Fye 2002). Additionally, sexual banter regarding school-aged girls has decreased in MCs’ announcements during pageants from 1996 to 2002, paralleling an increase in national and local dialogue about sexual harassment and abuse. Beauty pageants also serve to facilitate identity formation of a young nation and its changing communities and to hash out community and individual identities and gender roles as ideal representative women are negotiated on stage (Cohen et al. 1995; Wilk 1995). Community belongingness and otherness are ritually arbitrated during the pageants through patterns of decision-making along lines of ethnicity, class, immigration status, and family background. For example, in this highly diverse and regional country, a Creole or Garifuna young woman had never won the crown of Miss San Andrés until the 2002–2003 pageant, even though these young women make up an increasing proportion of the population. In contrast, in Belize City, the largest population center and only city in the country, Creole women almost always win the most prestigious national crown of Miss Belize.5 In San Andrés, as elsewhere, the proliferation of pageants is related to the increased diversity of people, material possibilities, and ideas. Due to the Belizean emphasis on beauty and the overlap of lifecycle concerns with pageant concerns, pageants seem to have become the ritual of choice for personal, communal and national identity dynamics as opposed to other possibilities, such as sporting events (cf. Appadurai 1996). On the level of personal identity negotiation, girls used pageants both symbolically and instrumentally. Symbolically, pageants were a place to test out identities and find one’s place in the ever-shifting local social order. Instrumentally, the pageants were interpreted as a tremendous opportunity to learn skills and gain


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material prizes otherwise out of reach for many girls. Some girls also achieved a gain in social status through new friendships or dating relationships resulting from pageants. For example, one 16-year-old Spanish girl in the longitudinal study, who was a recent migrant from a poor family in a town on the mainland, surprised the media and her classmates by winning the Miss San Andrés crown in her first calendar year as a San Andrés resident. She beat out a favorite local girl from one of the oldest San Andrano families. After this pageant, the girl began to be invited to more parties and met a young man from one of the wealthiest families in San Andrés whom she began to date. She reported feeling that pageant helped both her own confidence and her acceptance in the town. She recently married the young man and credits her pageant win with helping her find increased mobility and happiness in her life. She commented, “Without the pageant and winning Miss San Andrés, I wouldn’t have gotten to know him [her fiancé]. . . . I wouldn’t be so happy as I am now here in San Andrés.” As in this case, the pageants often serve a paradoxically democratic purpose, giving virtually all girls in the community the possibility of accessing a certain restricted type of skill-building and material and social gain. In fact, beauty pageants in San Andrés have a long history of offering opportunities (albeit limited ones) to women. Over the past 50 years, beauty pageantry has become one of the first routes (in addition to church participation) in which women could gain public status. Historically, women’s public roles in San Andrés were constricted. Generally, men wielded public power (as “providers”) and women held private power in domestic life6 (as “home protectors”; Guerrero n.d.). Some of the first pageant winners in San Andrés retrospectively reported instrumental benefits: improving their marriage prospects and social contacts, finding work roles outside of the home, and winning prizes, like their own money, that provided them increased social and public power. For example, one Spanish woman in her mid-50s who now owns her own business reported, “My pageant really helped me, you know? I won, I met people, I won money, you know. . . . The town saw me differently—like a success. I was a success in the town.” Though these initial beauty queens reported improvements in self-image due to their pageantry after I asked, most listed material benefits as the greatest gain. At the time of this study, most of the women with public power in politics and business had been beauty queens as teenagers. Each woman reported her win as a stepping stone of some sort in her public success. Several listed beauty pageantry as the only route to public success available to them at the time of their participation. The young women of today also reported entering pageants for material reasons more frequently than for symbolic ones. For some girls, especially those from less well off families,7 pageantry felt like their only or best option for public success. For example, Brenda, a 17-year-old Creole and Garifuna girl from a poor family, decided to enter a local pageant

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sponsored by a Belizean company in order to win accounting classes. Feeling she could never accrue the money necessary to take the classes on her own, she practiced regularly for 2 months before the pageant. Her consistently reported motivations to participate were to win the classes and to “have fun.” After winning the pageant, she was jubilant and felt her “hard work” had paid off. She enrolled in the 6-week class on the mainland and upon completion secured what she considered “a really good job” at a local bank. She is now helping to support her large single-parent family of origin through a fulfilling career, which she says “couldn’t have happened without my win as Miss [pageant name] giving me those classes . . . no way!” Brenda felt her pageant experience improved the rest of her life by helping her move from a job as a gift-shop cashier to one as “an accounting specialist,” with an accompanying tripling of salary and improved working conditions. Like most girls, Brenda felt the major success was not located in the pageant itself but rather in the opportunity it provided. The pageant was a means to a more important end: a good job and skills for a lifetime. The majority of participants echoed this instrumental sentiment. Beauty, then, could be a means to a goal that was not otherwise attainable. Beauty pageants are a loaded and complex arena in San Andrés, and a part of fun and festivity as well.8 Girls’ and women’s bodies are the focal point of all this attention, though bodies of many sizes, colors, and backgrounds can be judged winners.9 While the community looks to such pageants as entertainment, the participants themselves often see them as a relatively democratic path to material benefits such as clothing, travel, schooling, and even job opportunities. Given the relatively high stakes of beauty pageants for young women, it is interesting to note where girls’ anxieties about preparations lie and where they do not. The majority of preparatory stress is directed at learning dance moves, becoming comfortable on stage, and finding the right clothes to wear. Surprisingly few diets went into effect among the girls in the longitudinal study, except for two girls participating in pageants who were “trying to cut down on sweets.” Body size was not at issue, though enhancing body shape through clothing was a concern. Most participants felt that having “a good shape” was a very important component of the pageants, along with poise, friendliness, and dancing well. None of the two dozen high school pageant participants I interviewed listed weight changes in their top five goals for pageant preparation at the local level. A 16-year-old Spanish girl from a relatively middle-class background explains this viewpoint: To prepare for the pageant? I don’t know, I guess I have to practice my dancing, that’s my hard part you know. What else? Hmmm . . . well, I’m a friendly person, so that helps. I (laughs) have a good shape, so I need to show that. I guess that’s it . . . practice my dancing and find some good clothes.

While none of these young women were overweight by U.S. or Belizean standards, I still found the absence of reported body size concerns remarkable among


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young women preparing to parade in bikinis, evening gowns, and various other costumes. My observations of pageants for various age groups over an 8-year period confirmed the girls’ reports of eating habits. Having timed my initial arrival to San Andrés around the biggest pageant of the year, Miss San Andrés, my first week of fieldwork brought a surprising image, one that was to be repeated many times over in subsequent years: in between the acts of beauty pageants and the parades and events often following them, depending on events’ time and duration, participants would eat meal-sized helpings of the staple local dish of rice and beans, stewed chicken and fried plantain, along with a bottle of Coca-Cola. When asked later, the participants from this first pageant responded similarly to one young woman that they were eating to “keep up strength . . . These pageants are a lot of work, you know.” Since they were instrumentally focused, most participants I asked reported eating due to hunger and the need for energy rather than linking eating—or not eating—directly with body size. Increasing thinness in beauty pageant winners has been associated with an “overvaluation of thinness” in dominant U.S. culture (Wiseman et al. 1992) and increases in disordered eating and distorted body image among adolescents exposed to Western media, though no causal pathways are established (Garner and Garfinkel 1980; Rubinstein and Caballero 2000). If this link between pageant winners and everyday body ideals holds in the Belizean case—which is likely, given the smaller-scale society and high rates of direct exposure to pageants—then the wide variety of body sizes and types that win pageants might be related to the relatively healthy body images of girls in Belize compared with their counterparts around the world (Anderson-Fye 2000). Local pageants can be seen as a reflection of a community’s preferences (Cohen et al. 1995). In San Andrés, the myriad types of pageants and pageant winners almost function as a clinical intervention (albeit within a male-dominated system) in shaping diverse beauty preferences and relatively healthy lived experiences for girls. That is, if a group of young women that accurately represents the diversity of local girls is held up as ideal in pageantry, then multiple attainable ideals are available to young women, as opposed to the unitary and unattainable female beauty ideal of Western media that has been linked to eating pathology (cf. Bordo 1993). The Belizean cultural strength of multiple forms of beauty and low levels of eating pathology should be underscored and perhaps even employed as a model for fostering healthy body image in other cultures in which pageants are prevalent. ETHNOPSYCHOLOGY

Understanding the ethnopsychology among the San Andrés young women is crucial to understanding their thoughts, feelings and actions regarding eating and

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body image. Elsewhere (Anderson-Fye 2003), I have mapped out the remarkably consistent ethnopsychology among high school girls in San Andrés from a variety of backgrounds. This ethnopsychology—the local understanding and processing by which people make meaning and behavioral decisions—is centered on selfprotection and self-care. Likely as a result of a social context where women endured substantial gender-based maltreatment but did not have legal recourse or access to economic independence, it appears that Belizean women from many backgrounds marshaled remarkable psychological resources to deal with their situations (McClaurin 1996; McCluskey 2001). All of the young women in this study were familiar with a powerful concept that in English translates to “Never Leave Yourself.” In Creole, it is “Neva’ Lef Yo’Sef,” and in Spanish, “No Te Dejes.”10 This concept of “not leaving” the “self” guided decision-making situations ranging from major turning points such as sexual activity to small daily choices such as whether to nap or do homework at a given time. This idiomatic phrase was not always consciously employed,11 though in retrospect, girls could almost always indicate whether or not they had “left themselves” in a particular situation and reported using the principle both during decision-making and in assessment of their life choices.12 The following are typical examples of girls speaking about leaving and not leaving the self. On not leaving the self: I am a person who doesn’t leave myself. I won’t let no one hurt me . . . if you do, I’ll get you back . . . An example is when my step-father tried to hit me, and I told him ‘NO!’ and I ran out. -Tanisha, 15, Garifuna I never do lef’ myself. You tell me something, I give you something back . . . One time a couple weeks ago Juanito tried to say I did so and so, and I did not. I made him tell everyone again I did not. -Lucia, 16, Creole Today, I didn’t lef’ myself even though my mom said I had to get up and go to school. I was tired from doing my homeworks last night, and I needed to sleep. Then I had breakfast. That’s why I was late. -Karen, 15, Spanish

On leaving the self: I lef’ myself Saturday. I don’t know why I did it [had intercourse]. Now I might be pregnant. Probably because I drank, you know? I usually don’t leave myself like that. -Jenna, 17, Spanish I guess I just lef’ myself with my mom. She was wrong, but I felt so bad for her. So I just left myself and took what she gave out. -Wanda, 16, Creole and Spanish I left myself and didn’t eat. (Why?) I don’t know why. Maybe I was sad. It just went away. -Laura, 14, Spanish


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I had no choice. He made me lef’ myself when he tried to touch me [sexually]. What could I do? He’s my boss! My boss did that! -Tina, 18, Garifuna

Leaving and not leaving the self was binary in which either one or the other option was chosen. The young women reported learning this principle early in life from their mothers, grandmothers, aunts, older cousins, and other important women in their lives. Originally probably meaning protection against unwanted sexual attention or action (Anderson-Fye 2002), “Never Leave Yourself” appeared to have dispersed into all domains of girls’ lives; however, it was still articulated most explicitly in that domain.13 As Lester (1997) points out, construction of “self” is crucial to understanding embodiment and eating disorders. The self in the San Andrés construction was autonomous in terms of bodily boundaries, but usually also psychologically and practically interdependent with close others, especially immediate family. In terms of eating and body image, the “Never Leave Yourself” ethnopsychology appears to be protective. Not leaving—and further caring for—the self required eating when hungry, stopping when full, sleeping when tired, and not over-exerting oneself in exercise. It also meant regulating body temperature, attending to physical discomfort, and minimizing stress. These criteria for protecting and caring for the self were notably monitored by internal experience, not external measurements. For example, a girl reported “maintaining” herself if she got enough sleep that she was not tired during the day rather than needing a preset number of hours. Several girls, such as Karen, quoted above, who were late to school repeatedly, reported that they were taking care of themselves by sleeping in until they were not tired anymore, even if it meant missing a school period or later serving detentions for tardiness. In this case, physical rest was more important than meeting school requirements. Hungriness and fullness tended to be measured by internal state rather than time of the day, mealtimes, external expectations, and so on, though mealtimes were usually social and family events which also cued eating irrespective of satiety. In the survey, 78 of 80 girls reported eating what they wanted when they wanted it most of the time. Thus, beauty pageant contestants would eat in the middle of a pageant or parade. If a girl got hungry in the middle of a class and attempted to sneak a snack even though it was against school rules, she would be thought to be maintaining herself. She would also be maintaining herself if she did not eat if full, even if her mother went through great work to prepare her a meal and would be upset with her. However, it was possible to choose to leave the self in terms of diet and exercise if there was a greater reason. In the prior example, a girl might consider leaving herself to please her mother, much as Wanda did in the case cited above. In another example, several girls on an award-winning soccer team reported running and practicing to the point of “leaving” themselves physically

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for the greater good of improved skills and a strong team. As discussed below, it is conceivable that other superceding goals, such as good jobs that require a particular appearance and that protect girls in other ways, may unfortunately one day, in this flexible ethnopsychology, make it possible for girls to leave themselves through eating disordered behavior. I have argued that this ethnopsychology underpins how Belizean girls have psychologically negotiated transnational media (Anderson-Fye 2003). That is, there is a vast amount of information that the young women had access to on an everyday basis from transnational television, magazines, tourists, return migrants, and the Internet. I found the most consistent predictor of engagement with the content presented through these transnational channels was whether it fit with this “Never Leave Yourself” ethnopsychology. For example, notions of gender equity were quickly noticed and incorporated into girls’ cognitive-behavioral repertoire, while notions of restricting food or overexercising the body for the sake of a thin beauty ideal were almost always rejected (see Anderson-Fye 2003 for full discussion). Consistent with this rejection, in a quantitative study using the EAT-26 with all high school girls (n = 80), I found that while girls’ attitudes varied to some extent, their behaviors did not, showing a pronounced floor effect, which in this case indicates no disorder (Anderson-Fye 2000). An important reason that the young women of San Andrés showed more resistance than other young women around the world to both a thin, Western body ideal and associated methods of dieting and exercise seemed to be their ethnopsychological interpretation that such behavior and such a standard would require “leaving themselves” on a daily basis, an untenable situation. The combination of the girls’ daily choices14 around food and bodies with their particular filtering of transnational media helped to bolster physical and psychological health while also protecting them from Western-style eating disorders in contrast to many of their global peers (cf. Anderson-Fye and Becker 2003).15 ATYPICAL CASES OF EATING DISORDERED BEHAVIOR

In a situation where most young women were not experiencing eating disordered symptoms, it is interesting to take a closer look at the few who were, even if the symptoms were transitory and never reached levels requiring clinical intervention. Several common threads can be observed in the girls who were developing eating disordered behavior at all and in which sorts of behaviors were and were not exhibited. Among the younger women (20-years-old and younger) who were displaying initial signs of restrictive eating or purging, all were economically dependent on the tourism industry to some extent and experienced family pressure to control their bodies. Among the women older than age 20 identified as having eating concerns, most used some sort of diet pills, bulimic behavior, or a combination of both (often called “easy” methods of weight control). These


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women were also more likely to come from transnational families who had at least one member living in, working in, or regularly traveling to the U.S. They were also more likely than others to spontaneously discuss spousal relationship stress. The younger women were specifically included in the longitudinal study, while the older women came to my attention individually over an 8-year period through key informants and school and medical personnel. Initially intriguing to me was the pattern of those who scored the highest on quantitative survey measures of eating disordered behaviors also reporting a variety of attitudes considered nondisordered. Conversely, many who reported the most distress attitudinally reported and exhibited no behavioral signs of eating disorders (Anderson-Fye 2000). A common finding in other parts of the world—attitudes and behaviors that are highly correlated—did not appear in the data. Through ethnographic participant-observation and interviews, these initially counter-intuitive patterns began to make sense. Kara: tourism-related economic motivation for thinness Kara, the girl who scored the highest on the EAT-26 measure of behavioral pathology, reported relatively low attitudinal pathology scores. She also indicated a high level of concern with what others thought of her appearance, especially family members, though she herself did not report experiencing distress over her own appearance. Kara’s family was Spanish and had been in San Andrés for many generations. They saw the economic opportunities the tourism industry was going to bring and opened a tour guiding business in the late 1980s. Kara, who was 16 at the time she took the survey, had grown up around this business and naturally took a place working behind the office counter to greet tourists and book tours. She worked most weekends and some evenings after high school classes were over. Wanting Kara to both help their business and become a successful and independent young woman in San Andrés, her parents encouraged her to be friendly and get along with tourists. As Kara put it, “my parents want me to be success [sic]. They tell me to be friendly, to be nice, this and that, . . . and to be pretty to Americans . . . to be thin.” Perceiving that U.S. tourists would be more likely to choose their shop over others if Kara were thin, pretty and friendly—traits her mother again listed to me as important to American tourists—Kara’s parents, especially her mother, overtly instructed her on her weight. Kara tried to walk to school instead of hitching a ride with someone on their golf cart (a common middle-class mode of island transportation) for increased exercise, she sporadically tried to control her food intake by limiting desserts and sweets, and she had taken what she called “diet pills” that “made me less hungry” in the past. In the context of her peers, these efforts stood out in that they were repeated and required extra effort. With a BMI-for-age of about 23, Kara was not overweight, nor did she think she was. She reported that the reason she attempted to be “skinny” was to help her

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parents with their tour guide shop business. If the tourists liked her, they would be more likely to patronize her parents’ shop, bringing in more money for the family. Indeed, in the main strip of town, where many of the tourist restaurants and hotels are located, thinner women (those with an approximate BMI of 24 or lower) are up to five times more likely to have higher status and higher paid jobs than heavier women.16 For example, thinner women are more likely to hold higher status jobs, such as waitresses and receptionists, than lower status jobs, such as line cooks and cleaning staff, in establishments catering to tourists. The same differentials are not necessarily found in local businesses. Other factors such as family connections, educational achievement, friendliness, and fluency in English play roles in these situations as well, but the differences are striking even if they cannot completely be controlled for in the ethnographic situation. Again, the results are similar across ethnic groups. Given these findings, Kara’s family was acting rationally in trying to ensure her future success in an increasingly populated and competitive job market. However, given that it has been shown that low body weight and dieting behaviors can precipitate food preoccupation, binges, and other eating disordered symptoms in both the behavioral and cognitive-emotional realms (Keys et al. 1950; Polivy 1996), monitoring behavior in this way could be a risk factor for developing an eating disorder. In addition, though Kara and her mother were not sure which diet pills she took, several dangerous kinds, such as ephedra, have circulated throughout the community. Kara herself had minor fluctuations in weight throughout the study and was pregnant at the time of this writing. Her San Andrano boyfriend joked that she now looks more beautiful since she has gained some weight. She agreed with him saying, “Yeah, I filled out with my baby, but my face looks better . . . my shape looks better . . . at least from behind (laughs).” However, she intends to lose the weight again once her baby is born because she sees thinness as tied to her career success in the tourism industry. Her concern about thinness does not appear to be controlled by personal preference for thinner body size, personal fear of fatness (cf. Lee et al. 1993), or psychological distress. Assessment of economic opportunity is Kara’s reported and observed motivation for wanting a thin body. While desired body ideals have been reported to affect women’s job chances and economic opportunities in various South American nations (Gordon 2001), such a pattern is at most nascent in Belize. It will be interesting to track whether tourism-industry employment and ambition are related to emergent cases of eating disorders in Belize in the future. Angela: family expectations about appearance Angela, also a Spanish San Andrana from one of the well established families in the town, reported some eating disordered behaviors. Angela’s family owned a


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store that supplied mostly tourist but also local needs, and they reported general concern over appearance and reputation. Acutely aware of the rampant town gossip, Angela’s mother aimed to stay away from reproach and from being a target of rumors or discussion. As was the case in many families, Angela’s parents had strict rules about her clothing, company, curfews, and activities. Since San Andrés is a town where her parents “would know what I’m up to before I even got home” due to the gossip, Angela reported obeying her parents most of the time. After going through a puberty-related growth spurt, 15-year-old Angela had begun to gain weight in her first year of high school. After gaining approximately 20 pounds during the school year, she needed new school uniforms made, along with new clothes. Angela’s mother, concerned that “people will talk” about this weight gain, began to encourage Angela to lose weight. Angela’s mother’s reported concern not about local beauty or health concerns, but rather that people would think the family was “spoiling” Angela with rich and abundant imported foods. Angela worked in her parents’ store on weekends and had access there to imported U.S. food, including her favorite, Doritos. Though Angela herself reported that she felt “no way” or neutral about her change in weight, she did want to meet her parents’ expectations. “I feel fine, I feel no way [about the weight gain] . . . but my mom wants me to lose, so I’ll lose . . . I don’t know why. . . . Maybe so I look better in my clothes when people come to buy [to shop].” Though she did not know exactly why her mom wanted her to lose weight, she thought it could be due to wanting her to look pretty to attract more business to the store. Angela tried walking for exercise, cutting down on “junk” foods while she was working in the store, and drinking only lukewarm water (because she heard that cold water congealed food one had eaten into fat). Several times, Angela tried throwing up after meals because a friend had told her she could get rid of the fat that way, though Angela felt the behavior was “gross” and “tasted bad.” Though all the behaviors were temporary, and her weight did not change much over the following year, Angela measured her success by the satisfaction of her parents. “My mom told me she could see my efforts and bought me a new blouse. She’s happy so I’m happy . . . I don’t know if I lose [sic] anything (laughs).” Angela’s self-assessment was based on her relationship with her mother, and not on her actual weight. She felt her weight was unimportant to most things in her life such as whether she would have a boyfriend or not (“He should like me for myself, not what I look like”). When asked if one’s weight affected anything in life, she said, “hmm . . . no, well, maybe work . . . that way I look good in my clothes . . . good, like thin, like tourists like.” More important to Angela though was shape. If one had a good shape then the exact weight did not matter as much. She also thought that some professions required thinness, and cited television. “Look at lawyers in the States . . . like Beal [Ally McBeal] . . . they’re all thin . . . too skinny (laughs). I

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don’t want to be a lawyer because they’re all too thin, like this (holds up pinky finger, laughs).” Angela was generally satisfied with her body size, but did plan to try more weight-loss techniques if her mother or father wanted it. She wanted her mother to be “proud” of her, even if it meant extra effort toward reducing her body size. Angela’s mother reported appreciating what a “good” daughter she had, even calling Angela her “best friend.” As is often the case in Mestizo families, the mother–daughter relationship was close and appeared to serve both women well. Unlike other reports of control such as controlling a daughter’s weight as a proxy for sexuality (Esp´ın 1997), Angela and her mother’s relationship appeared open and warm on the whole. Angela’s reports of eating disordered behaviors seemed to be linked to pleasing her family and fulfilling her role as a “good daughter,” and potentially to jobs, but not to personal anxiety or weight preoccupation. Angela’s weight continued to fluctuate mildly for the next couple of years without moving toward obesity or a clinical eating disorder. Still, her attempts to control her body size at all were unusual among her peers and may carry similar dangers as Kara’s. Nelda: transnational media and bulimia One of the most striking examples of eating disordered behavior entering a girl’s daily life was from Nelda, a 15-year-old Spanish immigrant who moved to San Andrés from El Salvador in early childhood. Nelda’s doctor mentioned to her that she might want to lose some weight for her health as she was considered “overweight.” Her parents, a construction worker (step-father) and a cook (mother), told her they supported the weight loss for the sake of “a pretty shape,” since she was approaching the “age of marriage.” As discussed elsewhere (Anderson-Fye 2003), Nelda excitedly came to speak with me one day regarding a new weightloss method she had learned about on a U.S. television talk show. She said that it would help her to get a “good shape” while maintaining herself because it was “so easy.” “It is called bulimia,” she began. “The girls said they just put their finger in their mouth and throw up. You lose the calories no matter what you already ate . . . and the girls were pretty . . . and on T.V. . . . and it’s so easy . . . ” Nelda shaped her behavior directly from the television programming without understanding the danger of her actions. I later dubbed the general phenomenon of watching talk shows and selectively interpreting content to best suit one’s own situation the “Oprah Effect,” since Oprah was the talk show host most influential on the girls (Anderson-Fye 2003). When I explained the dangers of bulimia to her health, Nelda appeared surprised and upset. She said she would stop immediately, which she then reported doing, something rare among girls with clinical bulimia (cf. Sesan 1994). She said she thought it was “just . . . a diet” and, “I didn’t mean to hurt myself.” This immediate cessation of the purging indicated that concern about not “hurting” herself and taking care of herself generally superceded her desire


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to lose weight. Still, the fact that she was thinking about low-effort ways to lose weight, and that she latched onto what she interpreted as a possible method from a U.S.-based television talk show without further investigation, left me concerned about her vulnerability to other eating dangers, such as unmonitored diet pills. In her case, I was able to help her set up an appointment with her doctor to discuss safe methods to deal with her weight and health, though I wondered about other young women also turning to U.S. or other media for weight-control guidance. Irma: “I love everything about my appearance . . . I hate everything about my appearance” One of the most surprising cases of eating and weight concerns came from Irma, a 16-year-old high-achieving Creole and Garifuna high school girl in the longitudinal study. I asked Irma, “What are you most proud about yourself? It’s okay to brag.” Moving the conversation immediately to her physical appearance, Irma continued: I: I love my hair, the most thing I am proud of is my physical appearance. E: You know that is a question that I was going to ask you in a little while, how do you feel about your physical appearance? I: I don’t think that I am that ugly. E: What do you like about your physical appearance? I: Everything? E: Your body? I: Everything. After asserting that she was proud of her physical appearance, Irma first responded in the negative that she did not think she was ugly, possibly testing my response to her. She later said people told her she was beautiful and she felt “ashamed” (embarrassed). When I asked her directly what she liked about her appearance, she began with a question (“Everything?”) and quickly became more confident in the declarative (“Everything”) after I tried to separate out “your body?” as she had earlier isolated “my hair.” Because of this striking confidence in her physical appearance stated in her first longitudinal interview, I was surprised when the next year, she brought the conversation back to her appearance in my very first open-ended question, though in a much different way. E: What has changed for you this past year? I: A lot. E: A lot? I: Basically me. E: Really?

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I: Physically. I feel like a big . . . less attractive. E: Why is that? I: My body is changing, growing (puffs up cheeks). E: Is that a bad thing? I: I hate it. E: Why? I: Because you see you can’t wear what you want to wear, you have to wear . . . sometimes, I like wearing, some sharp clothing. My stomach is growing too much. I’ve been exercising a lot more. E: Have you? What have you been doing? I: Since this summer, I would jog. . . . I can’t stop eating . . . you know you’re full but you still want more. You’re hungry, you’re filled. . . . There’s a Creole word for that, madsta . . . a lot of people, not from the school but people around my neighbor. They’ve been telling me, “You’re getting fat.” E: Are you serious? I: Yes, and I hate it. E: What does it feel like when they tell you that? I: I feel like I’m bigger than the world. Everyone that meets me like, they missed me for a long-time, “Gial, you are getting so fat. What have you been doing?” I hate it when they tell me I’m getting fat. But some of them will say but, “You don’t look bad, you just have a feature.” But I still don’t like it when they tell me I’m getting fat. My mom, she just saying I’m looking better because at first I was very skinny. . . . My mom says she likes me. . . . E: But you don’t? I: Well, I really don’t want to lose weight, the only thing is my stomach . . . I’m just praying that I don’t get any bigger than this . . . you know the thing that pisses me off, is that when I was skinny I didn’t notice, I never used to notice my body, like I’m skinny, I’m this. Nothing bothers me but as soon as I’m gaining weight, I started noticing I’m gaining, I would like to reduce. [Before,] nothing bothered me. Since Irma began with a baseline of great body satisfaction and even pleasure in her physical appearance, the immediate report of displeasure was surprising to me. Interpreting people’s comments on her appearance as insults, Irma was bothered almost daily by thinking about her body size. Her mother’s and boyfriend’s comments were meant as compliments. Her mother later told me, “She has a better shape now.” Irma reported only wanting to reduce for herself, as her boyfriend preferred her current shape also. She describes an unusual experience of being “full but you still want more,” common in many Western narratives, but relatively rare among the Belizean young women. Notable in this section of her narrative is one of the few times throughout all of her interviews where she switches out of


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the first person “I” and into a more distanced “you,” but still meaning “I.” Such psychological distancing by referring to oneself in the third person has marked dissociation in U.S. girls’ texts (cf. Anderson 1996; Gilligan et al. 2003). Irma was one of the young women who tried jogging for 2 weeks and then gave it up as too strenuous. “Not worth it,” she commented. She tried sit-ups also, but when she saw no immediate results, she said, “You can’t do anything about it.” By the next year, she reported overall body satisfaction, though she continued to “pray” she “didn’t get bigger.” She went on to complete junior college on the mainland and marry her long-term boyfriend. I wonder about the connection between her achievements and her relative body dissatisfaction. Perhaps stress from the pressure she put on herself to achieve manifested itself in the anxiety about her body. These four girls were the exceptions among their peers. Data regarding other domains of their lives did not appear to differ systematically from the rest of the young women studied. However, Kara and Angela were among the girls who reported the strongest concern over what family members thought of them. This factor, combined with their reliance on the tourism industry, may have put them at greater risk for experimentation with body size control. Nelda was unique in that she was one of the few girls who were advised to lose weight for medical reasons, though she did not exhibit any sustained eating disordered behavior. Irma provided a contrast with the other three girls in that she reported personal distress about body size for a limited time. She may represent a different sort of pattern, where distress related to individual achievement or other personal issues is exhibited through anxiety about body size. All four young women were experiencing upward mobility, in that they achieved more educational success than their parents, though this was the case for the majority of the girls enrolled in the high school who did not report eating disordered behaviors. Future longitudinal work in San Andrés will further examine these issues of family expectations, academic achievement, upward mobility, and dependence on the tourism industry as relates to body image and other mental health concerns. Multigenerational women and eating concerns While specifically examining adult women and eating concerns was out of the scope of this study, it was something I could not help but become aware of over time. Interestingly, unlike Anglo eating disorders, which were first documented among adolescent girls (Brumberg 1988) and have the highest modal rates of onset in both early and late adolescence, there were more stories of eating disordered behavior among adult women in San Andrés than among adolescents. In particular, two striking trends were observed—bulimic behavior and diet pills. In 1999, I began to hear rumors about two local women who were reportedly throwing up after meals. Both women were part of transnational families, and both were experiencing marital distress. Discussion of these women (whom I did not

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personally know) continued for several years. In early 2003, one of the women’s sisters came to talk with me. She was concerned about her sister and had tracked behaviors she thought might be bulimic (after she had heard about the condition when she was in junior college in the United States). She reported that her sister was experiencing marital stress over her husband’s infidelity and that she was also having problems at work. She was afraid her sister was using bingeing and purging to control her stress and had come for intervention suggestions. Also, during this same 2003 research trip, rumors surfaced about two other community women who were reported to have bulimic symptoms. Reports of other types of eating disordered behavior were rare. Retrospective accounts of binge-purge behavior surfaced occasionally among older women, though none of these sounded sustained. Binge eating disorder was not investigated specifically, nor were there any signs of it in the longitudinal work with the adolescent women. Occasional signs of binge eating among adult women were present at various parties and community events, in addition to self-reports. It would be beneficial to tease out if clinically relevant binge eating disorder exists in the community, or if binge eating has a different meaning during such events. When asked, no community physician reported concern over binge eating. No reports of sustained anorexic behavior have come to my attention since 1995. In contrast, I found myself repeatedly having adolescent girls ask me to explain anorexia nervosa. It was incomprehensible to many young women that someone could “starve herself.” The high school girls were remarkably in tune with their own body rhythms generally, and would often immediately draw on their own experiences in considering anorexia nervosa. For example, in an after-school art class I facilitated, we tore out magazine pictures to use for a project. In the process, one young woman mentioned an article on eating disorders she saw in the magazine saying, “I just don’t get that (pointing to article) . . . How could someone starve themselves? I mean, I get in a bad mood if my lunch is late! (Several girls laugh heartily.)” Not eating when hungry and over-exercising when tired were so foreign to most girls that several asked about these actions multiple times when the topic came up in magazines, television, or after they themselves completed an eating-related survey. When I explained in the same art class that some people lose touch with even knowing when they are hungry or tired, there were again laughter and questions. The state of dissociation and disembodiment that can facilitate eating disorders could not be imagined easily, though there might be traces of it, such as Irma’s experiences of being full but wanting more. The ethnopsychology of taking care of and protecting the self is so strong among most young women that “leaving” the self in anorexic ways is almost incomprehensible. However, as discussed below, I believe this dynamic could change. Though very few of the high school girls had ever tried any sort of diet pill, it appeared that many of their mothers had. When I first traveled to San Andrés


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in 1995, a variety of diet pills were available for over the counter purchase at local pharmacies. The options increased yearly, and pharmacists reported brisk and increasing sales from 1995 to 2002. The pharmacists reported most consumers to be adult women from 35 to 50-years-old. In addition, the local gym sold some supplements and “diet aids.” In 2001, I learned of an individual who imported and sold a number of diet drugs, such as Fen-Phen. By 2002, the pharmacies and gym had removed all products that had been banned in the United States for being unsafe, though several key informants reported that it would not be difficult to acquire the other drugs from certain individuals. While examining eating and dieting habits of adult women was out of the scope of this study, brisk sales of diet pills and confirmation from medical practitioners indicate that many women were at least buying, and probably using, a variety of weight-loss drugs. The pharmacists and medical personnel felt that most women who requested diet pills were doing so for health reasons—to shed overweight pounds—rather than for beauty ideals of thinness (though I suspect “shape” was also at issue). This phenomenon, largely unregulated, should also be examined more fully to understand the history of diet pills, who is using the drugs, and their effects. If women in the girls’ mothers’ generation held a similar ethnopsychology around self-protection and self-care, it would be interesting to understand how using the drugs would be consistent with that ethnopsychology. In some ways, the apparent ease of use of drugs, in contrast to controlling diet and exercise, might appear consistent with self-care if the drugs’ ill effects were not well understood. Additionally, while examining mothers’ ethnopsychology was out of the scope of this project, there is indication that the adolescent girls were the first generation to have widespread access to educational and economic power, which allowed the “Never Leave Yourself” psychology to spread across life domains.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS AND IMPLICATIONS

Eating disordered symptoms are rare among high school girls in San Andrés. In general, though the girls reported and discussed varying levels of distress regarding attitudes and beliefs about their bodies, few of them attempted to control or change their bodies in any way. Body shape and adornment to emphasize a desirable “Coca-Cola” shape were more important than size or other features. While some girls may have dabbled in food control, exercised in order to lose weight, or attempted other weight-loss behaviors learned from U.S. media or local sources, very few appeared to sustain these behaviors. Extreme concern or distress over body size was also rare. An ethnopsychology of self-care and self-protection seems to buffer many girls from body anxiety. In their reading of U.S.-based media such as television programming and magazines, many girls appeared to

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filter out messages of thinness, wondering why Americans preferred women so thin and how girls could possibly “starve” themselves. Given the above, what do the nascent cases of eating disordered symptomatology presented here tell us about the risk of eating disorders in Belize? Among the few young women who did report eating disordered behaviors, several similarities exist. First, all of them had families dependent economically on the international tourism industry, catering mostly to U.S. tourists. All of them were upwardly mobile, gaining higher levels of education than their parents. In addition, the well-accepted sequence of internalization of desire for thinness and body image dissatisfaction leading to eating disordered behavior is not relevant among these young women. Neither Kara nor Angela, the young women scoring highest on measures of eating disordered behaviors, appeared to have internalized personal distress over their body size. Both girls were responding to family expectations of relative thinness. In Kara’s case, her tourism-savvy parents thought she would do better in her career if she was “attractive for tourists . . . thin,” making her body a sort of family commodity.17 In Angela’s case, Angela’s mother did not want the town to gossip about her weight gain, fearing people would think she was overly permissive in letting Angela have too much American snack food from their family store. In addition, Angela felt her mother saw career benefits to being thinner and meeting transnational standards. In Nelda’s case, she wanted to lose weight for health reasons and found what she originally thought would be an “easy” way to do so on a U.S. television talk show. The seemingly glamorous young women talking about bulimia on the television appeared to her to have had success via this route. Older women also appear to be beginning weight-control methods considered “easy” or low effort that may also be dangerous when unmonitored. These preliminary cases of eating disordered behavior do not reflect the usual clinical phenomenology of drive for thinness and fear of fatness. In fact, as with girls in East Asia (Lee et al. 1993) and South Asia (Khandelwal et al. 1995), eating disorders that lack “fat phobia” and body image disturbance may be the first to emerge in Belize. Meeting career success goals and family expectations of thinness may spur a type of behaviorally driven eating disorder in which cognitiveemotional symptoms develop only later. Irma is one of the few girls who reported significant amounts of personal distress over her body size. She was happy with her body in the first of her four longitudinal interviews, but she immediately turned the discussion to her body dissatisfaction her second year. In contrast to Kara and Angela, her family, boyfriend, and peers actually told her she looked better with the weight gain, yet Irma still wanted to lose weight, or at least “not get bigger.” After trying exercise for a short time, she decided it was too much effort and that she would be better off “praying” she didn’t get bigger. Her distress subsided for the remainder of the longitudinal study. After examining her interviews carefully, I noted that Irma reported no particular


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relational or school stress in her second interview year, nor was there anything else significantly different from her other interviews. Yet she described a state of dissonance within her hunger and fullness resembling a state of psychological dissociation that would have been unusual among her peers. I wonder if this change in her body assessment was her adjustment to pubertal weight gain, if her drive for high achievement in school played some role in body dissatisfaction (though she reported no stress in her life that year except regarding her body), or if there was some other explanation. Given that several girls found ways to “leave” themselves with regard to eating and exercise, at least temporarily, for the pursuit of other goals, I suspect this pattern is possible more widely in the future. The ethnopsychological Jamesian relationship of an “I” protecting a “me” may indeed be vulnerable to a shift to an “I” controlling a “me.” Whereas protecting the self currently means eating when hungry, stopping when full, and so on, in a tourism-based economic context where thinner young women are generally appearing to enjoy more career success than heavier young women, girls may redefine self-care to mean career and financial success, which could override more basic (and taken-for-granted) embodied notions of activity, rest, hunger, and fullness. The salient relationships that help to determine daily habits may shift from family members toward school, work, and larger circles of peers, as has happened among adolescents in other developing nations (Brown et al. 2002). In the eating disorders literature, social comparison with subjectively important thin others can increase eating disorder risk (Thompson and Heinberg 1993). If San Andrés and Belize continue to integrate into global markets, future generations of young women may weigh the thin Western female ideal body shape more heavily in their own considerations, as has occurred elsewhere (e.g., Fiji; see Becker 2004, this issue). Similarly, women who meet international standards of beauty may increasingly enjoy an advantage in Belize as they already do in international beauty pageants (Wilk 1995). Time will tell if the new Diet Coke bottles, which come in the same curvaceous shape as the glass Coca-Cola bottles but are plastic and more petite, will become the symbol for a globalized Belizean young woman. While my aim is not to fortune-tell, identifying initial signs of vulnerability to eating disorders—prevalent in other nations with similar characteristics—may aid timely detection and prevention of eating disorders in Belize. If indeed eating disorders have a genetic component and are universally possible in the right conditions (Becker et al. in press), identifying other personal, familial, and societal variables becomes increasingly important to prevention. Additionally, Belize may benefit from self-consciously building on its young women’s psychological strengths and its own national strength of multiple beauty ideals. Other communities struggling for models of healthy female development may benefit from understanding why Belize has been relatively resistant to eating disorders when

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other postcolonial nations with similar characteristics of social transition, gender role flux, and upward mobility, such as Curaçao (Hoek 2002) and South Africa (Szabo and Hollands 1997), have not. In addition, the factors involved in the effects of globalizing cultural change on eating disorders risk are not dissimilar to those involved in immigration. The practice among Belizean young women of using local psychological strengths to negotiate transnational information appears to aid not only Belizean immigrants in several domains (Lemmel and Anderson-Fye 2003), but may also be relevant to other immigrant groups. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My sincere gratitude goes to Anne Becker, Rebecca Lester, and anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of this article. NOTES

1. The name of the town and the names of research participants have been changed to pseudonyms. 2. See Bordo (1993) for a discussion of eating disorders as a “crystallization” of Western culture. 3. There appears to be increasing concern about health and obesity. In this study, more females expressed concerns about obesity and health toward the end of the study than at the beginning. In addition, the local newspapers have added weekly columns specifically about health issues in the past several years. The school curriculums have also tried to accommodate more information about healthy lifestyles in the same time period. Concurrently, the availability of “junk” food from the U.S. has increased both in terms of shelf space and actual reported sales by local Belizeans. 4. This reduction in variation and movement toward thinness is consistent with data from other parts of the country (Wilk 1995). 5. Girls of all ethnicities had opportunities to win other pageants in these communities, but the most prestigious pageant in any locality appeared to be more limited to the historical majority in that place (see Anderson-Fye 2002, Chapter 2 for further discussion). 6. Of course in practice this gendered public/private split was much more complicated than this binary. A woman could gain public power through her husband, and a man could have profound domestic power, particularly by wielding sexual or physical violence. 7. Note that unlike pageants in other countries, such as the U.S., most local pageants required little to no financial output by participants. Many pageants required sponsors, who paid for girls’ clothes, and instruction was provided by volunteers or paid for by the pageant itself. Every girl in this study who wanted a sponsor, even the poorest, was able to find one in a timely fashion, further indicating the prominent community role of these events. 8. See Anderson-Fye (2002) for fuller discussion of implications of pageants per se in San Andrés. See Wilk (1995) for discussion of pageants in other regions of Belize. 9. Judges of beauty pageants were invited by pageant organizers and consisted of a variety of local men and women (sometimes including long-residing U.S. expatriates), past winners, and the occasional invited guest from another region of the country. Judging is considered an honor in the town. I was asked to participate as a judge one year, an offer that was extended as a great honor and signaled my acceptance in the town. I promptly and politely declined.


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10. See Anderson-Fye (2003) for a fuller discussion of this ethnopsychology. 11. Girls who had experienced sexual maltreatment sometime in their lives were more likely than other girls to report using this phrase explicitly. 12. For further discussion and examples of “leaving” and “not leaving” the self, see Anderson-Fye (2003). 13. For examples of “Never Leave Yourself” in various life domains, see Anderson-Fye (2003). 14. Note that with increased access to “junk” foods imported from the U.S. and Mexico, obesity and binge eating disorder could become a problem even within the current version of the “Never Leave Yourself” schema. 15. Mental health in general was found to be robust among the majority of young women in this study per my own interview and ethnographic data and mental and physical health care professionals’ and teachers’ reports. A current study is investigating broader mental health issues among both female and male high school students in the community. 16. This figure is based on ethnographic sample on a typical workday of thirty women in the most populated area of the strip. 17. I am grateful to Rebecca Lester for this term. REFERENCES

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EILEEN P. ANDERSON-FYE, EdD Center for Culture and Health Neuropsychiatric Institute University of California, Los Angeles 760 Westwood Plaza, Box 62 Los Angeles, CA 90024-1759 E-mail: [email protected]