A "COCA-COLA" SHAPE: CULTURAL CHANGE, BODY IMAGE, AND EATING DISORDERS IN SAN ANDR ES, BELIZE

EILEEN P. ANDERSON-FYE

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

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 fre-
quency 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

562                               E.P. ANDERSON-FYE

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 satis-
fied 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                563
   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. Signif-
icantly, 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 psycho-
logical turmoil. Therefore, phenomenology of and risk factors for eating disorders
must be reconsidered in this cultural context.

                               SAN ANDRÉS, BELIZE

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.; Be-
lize 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 unin-
habited 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 underpin-
ning its social structure. Throughout the past 15 years, rapid job-related migration
from other regions of the country and from neighboring Central American coun-
tries has made San Andrés the most diverse community in Belize. Spanish, Creole,
Garifuna, Mayan, Chinese, German Mennonite, Arab, U.S. and British expatri-
ate, 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 increas-
ingly 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 sym-
bolic 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 si-
multaneously with television have become increasingly dependent on “American
television programmes” for instruction on how to solve “emotional challenges”

564                                 E.P. ANDERSON-FYE

(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.

                       THE CASE OF SAN ANDRÉS IN CONTEXT

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

CULTURAL CHANGE, BODY IMAGE AND EATING DISORDERS IN SAN ANDRES                565
is worthwhile); and emphasis on beauty and youthfulness. In addition, Anderson-
Fye 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 car-
rier, 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 im-
migrants 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 im-
age, 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 under-
stand 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, includ-
ing 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,

566                              E.P. ANDERSON-FYE

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 question-
naires, 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 catego-
rization 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 sev-
eral 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 post-
colonial 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

CULTURAL CHANGE, BODY IMAGE AND EATING DISORDERS IN SAN ANDRES                   567
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 one-
self 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:    How do you feel about your body?
 JS:   I feed good (smiles). I have a good shape, a Coca-Cola shape.
EA:    What’s a Coca-Cola shape?
 JS:   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) . . . .

568                                E.P. ANDERSON-FYE

    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 half-
way 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 sat-
isfaction 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 dis-
satisfaction 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 attractive-
ness. There were no differences in body satisfaction found by ethnicity on quanti-
tative, 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

CULTURAL CHANGE, BODY IMAGE AND EATING DISORDERS IN SAN ANDRES                    569
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),

570                               E.P. ANDERSON-FYE

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 re-
ported 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 remem-
ber 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.

CULTURAL CHANGE, BODY IMAGE AND EATING DISORDERS IN SAN ANDRES                 571
Beauty pageants and body image in San Andrés
Beauty pageants for females are ubiquitous in Belize (Wilk 1997) and play im-
portant roles locally and nationally in negotiating shifting gender roles, group
belongingness and identity, and developmental issues. From small village compe-
titions 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,

572                               E.P. ANDERSON-FYE

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 6-
year-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 watch-
ing 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 symboli-
cally 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

CULTURAL CHANGE, BODY IMAGE AND EATING DISORDERS IN SAN ANDRES                 573
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 opportu-
nities (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

574                                   E.P. ANDERSON-FYE

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 stan-
dards, I still found the absence of reported body size concerns remarkable among

CULTURAL CHANGE, BODY IMAGE AND EATING DISORDERS IN SAN ANDRES                  575
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 ex-
posed to Western media, though no causal pathways are established (Garner and
Garfinkel 1980; Rubinstein and Caballero 2000). If this link between pageant win-
ners 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

576                                   E.P. ANDERSON-FYE

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 self-
protection 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 follow-
ing 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

CULTURAL CHANGE, BODY IMAGE AND EATING DISORDERS IN SAN ANDRES                   577
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

578                                E.P. ANDERSON-FYE

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 psy-
chologically 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 situ-
ation. The combination of the girls’ daily choices14 around food and bodies with
their particular filtering of transnational media helped to bolster physical and psy-
chological 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

CULTURAL CHANGE, BODY IMAGE AND EATING DISORDERS IN SAN ANDRES                   579
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 eat-
ing 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 pathol-
ogy, 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 inde-
pendent 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, espe-
cially 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