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Study examines how culture, family and identity shape body image challenges for Hispanic women
LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas scholar is the lead author of a paper published in the December issue of the journal Body Image that examines “factors that contribute to Latine women’s positive and negative body image,” a group that faces high rates of body dissatisfaction and increasing risks for eating disorders. “There’s a lot of stereotypes in the eating disorder world around who has eating disorders and what they look like,” author Sarah Johnson-Munguia said. “It’s a population that’s been historically underrepresented in the field, and because of that, understudied.”
Anthropologists call for tracking and preservation of human artifacts on Mars
LAWRENCE — Are human spacecraft, landers, rovers and other space-exploration debris little more than trash littering the surface of Mars — or treasured artifacts? New scholarship by University of Kansas anthropologist Justin Holcomb argues physical artifacts of human Martian exploration deserve cataloging, preservation and care to chronicle humanity’s first attempts at interplanetary exploration. His paper, “Emerging Archaeological Record of Mars,” appears today in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Astronomy.
Study finds parents more open to racially diverse media for children than previously thought
LAWRENCE — New research from the University of Kansas has found that most parents recall watching media with diverse racial and ethnic portrayals of characters with their children and that their own racial-ethnic identity predicted their attitudes toward such content, but not necessarily their beliefs. “This research shows that parents want to show their children diverse content that reflects their own racial/ethnic identities and that they’re open to diverse content as well,” said lead author Judy Watts, assistant professor of journalism & mass communications.
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Contact: Jen Humphrey, Life Span Institute, 785-864-6621, [email protected], @kulifespan
Study examines how culture, family and identity shape body image challenges for Hispanic women
LAWRENCE — While culture is intertwined with values surrounding food and body image, cultural differences have historically been overlooked by researchers and clinicians seeking to identify and treat eating disorders.
The lack of culturally relevant approaches has been huge barrier for Hispanic, or Latine, women in accessing care, said Sarah Johnson-Munguia, a sixth-year University of Kansas graduate student working in Center for the Advancement of Research on Eating Behaviors (CARE) Lab at the KU Life Span Institute.
Johnson-Munguia is the lead author of a paper published in the December issue of the journal Body Image that examines “factors that contribute to Latine women’s positive and negative body image,” a group that faces high rates of body dissatisfaction and increasing risks for eating disorders.
“There’s a lot of stereotypes in the eating disorder world around who has eating disorders and what they look like,” Johnson-Munguia said. “It’s a population that’s been historically underrepresented in the field, and because of that, understudied.”
The paper is a deep look at the unique challenges Hispanic women face with body image and their relationship with family, culture, food and identity.
Eating disorders are associated with disturbing behavior and persistent thoughts related to food and body image. Affecting as much as 9% of the U.S. population at some point in their lives, according to a report published in 2020, eating disorders are among the most dangerous mental health conditions.
Better understanding of the disorder is necessary to both identification and development of effective treatment.
“I really wanted to address that barrier, and this was a first step in understanding a little bit more about how Hispanic women relate to their body image and what kind of culture adaptations might need to be made for this population,” Johnson-Munguia said.
The project began as part of Johnson-Munguia’s master’s thesis and evaluated responses from 19 Hispanic women who were asked to reflect on influences on their positive and negative body image experiences.
The qualitative nature of the study allowed for detailed descriptions of the mixed messages Hispanic women face related to their body, facing tension at an intersection of identities, with simultaneous experiences of being sexually, ethnically and racially objectified.
These combined to contribute to an increased risk for engaging in self-objectification. At social gatherings they may be encouraged to eat more while being cautioned not to overeat.
The study noted as an example that one respondent reported: “You’ll go see your grandma and your grandma is telling you to eat more, eat more, you’re so skinny. But then when you’re not being prompted by somebody else to eat a lot and you go get a second plate or get a second bowl of something, and they’re (saying), ‘Oh wow, you’re eating a lot.’”
Johnson-Munguia’s research also looked at positive impacts on body image and found reframing body ideals and relationships with food were important factors. Participants in the study also identified finding community support, seeking out representation and focusing on the functionality of their body and not just how it looks.
As one respondent reported: “I’m super proud of my heritage and coming from Nicaragua. Like I feel that I’m super connected to my culture … I love to dance, and I feel like dancing and the music is just part of me and I love it. And I think that to dance with the slow, with passion, you need to be comfortable with yourself, and I feel like that really connects me to my culture.”
Johnson-Munguia was surprised by how frequently associations with positive body image connected back to participants identity as Hispanic women.
“It connected frequently in some way to their cultural context. I think that was something that I found interesting and important,” she said.
Previous studies have found that functionality-focused body image (FFBI) programs, which center on what the body can do rather than what it looks like, have been effective at improving body image.
“The example I always love is, instead of thinking about how your arms are fat, thinking about how your arms allow you to hug like the people around you that you love,” Johnson-Munguia said.
Understanding these key factors influencing body image for Latine women is valuable for clinicians working to develop better tools for treating eating disorders. And while FFBI has not been developed or tested for populations with ethnic and racial diversity, these themes can be a valuable source of information for those adapting the programs for Latine individuals.
“If someone doesn’t see themselves represented in the program, they’re not going to want to do it or get as much out of it,” Johnson-Munguia said. “There’s also some research to suggest that culturally adapted programs can sometimes be more effective for the populations they’re serving.”
Johnson-Munguia’s research offers a detailed insight into how culture and body image intersect in a way that wouldn’t be possible without allowing respondents freedom to construct their own answers to open-ended questions.
While a challenge, she said it was important in developing the depth of results that allowed for a better understanding of the experiences of each participant in a way numbers alone couldn’t.
“You got a sense of what each individual person was like. You understand more of the nuances that can sometimes get lost in quantitative data,” she said.
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Contact: Brendan Lynch, KU News Service, 785-864-8855, [email protected], @BrendanMLynch
Anthropologists call for tracking and preservation of human artifacts on Mars
LAWRENCE — Are human spacecraft, landers, rovers and other space-exploration debris little more than trash littering the surface of Mars, or the modern equivalent of Clovis points — treasured artifacts marking Homo sapiens’ lust for new frontiers?
New scholarship by University of Kansas anthropologist Justin Holcomb argues physical artifacts of human Martian exploration deserve cataloging, preservation and care in order to chronicle humanity’s first attempts at interplanetary exploration.
The paper, “The Emerging Archaeological Record of Mars,” appears today in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Astronomy.
“Our main argument is that Homo sapiens are currently undergoing a dispersal, which first started out of Africa, reached other continents and has now begun in off-world environments,” Holcomb, its lead author, said. “We’ve started peopling the solar system. And just like we use artifacts and features to track our movement, evolution and history on Earth, we can do that in outer space by following probes, satellites, landers and various materials left behind. There’s a material footprint to this dispersal.”
Much as archaeologists use “middens” (or, ancient garbage dumps) to reveal secrets of past societies here on Earth, Holcomb argues that much of the material deemed “space trash” actually has great archaeological and environmental value.
“These are the first material records of our presence, and that’s important to us,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of scientists referring to this material as space trash, galactic litter. Our argument is that it’s not trash; it’s actually really important. It’s critical to shift that narrative towards heritage because the solution to trash is removal, but the solution to heritage is preservation. There’s a big difference.”
The KU researcher argues future missions to Mars and other planets must consider potential archaeological damage at landing locations and other sites where human exploration is planned.
“Missions to other planets must consider this in their planning,” Holcomb said. “They won’t land in areas that could disturb these sites. They’ll think about them differently than just trash lying around. That’s probably the main thing. From an academic perspective — which is what these papers aim to address — what are the implications? We need to track our species’ movements through space and time, and we do that through stratigraphy.”
Holcomb’s co-authors were Beth O’Leary of New Mexico State University; Alberto Fairén of Centro de Astrobiología in Madrid, Spain, and Cornell University; KU’s Rolfe Mandel; and Karl Wegmann of North Carolina State University.
Holcomb’s argument for safekeeping traces of human exploration on other planets builds on earlier work, where he argued for declaration of a “lunar anthropocene” — or age of human dominion over the moon’s landscape.
“On the moon, we argued we could create an anthropocene — a human age,” he said. “On Mars, we don’t think there’s an anthropocene, but there is an archaeological record that needs to be a stratigraphic horizon, allowing us to place this material into a framework. And of course, we could do this across the solar system.”
The KU researcher traces the origin of human alteration of the Martian landscape to the crash landing of the Soviet Union’s Mars 2 rover in 1971.
“The Mars 2 crash represents one of the first times our species touched another planet — not a celestial body, because that was the moon,” Holcomb said. “But the Mars 2 crash is the first time our species left a preserved imprint on the surface of another planet.”
While anthropologists have some grasp of how climate and geology contribute to the degradation of artifacts on Earth, the otherworldly environments of planets like Mars are sure to affect how quickly and severely artifacts experience damage by cosmic energies, winds, water and soil. These Martian processes are little understood presently.
“That field is called geoarchaeology — specifically, the field that studies geological effects on archaeological materials,” Holcomb said. “Planetary geoarchaeology is a future field for sure, and we need to consider the materials not only on Mars in general but also in various places on Mars, which have different processes. For example, Mars has a cryosphere in the northern and southern latitudes, so ice action there will increase the alteration of materials much more rapidly. With Mars’ iron-rich sands — what happens when materials get buried? The most obvious issue is burial by large dune sands. Mars has global dust storms, which are unique. A single storm can literally travel across the entire globe. On top of that, there are local dust storms. The Spirit Rover, for example, is right next to an encroaching dune field that will eventually bury it. Once it’s buried, it becomes very difficult to relocate.”
Holcomb advocates establishing methodology for tracking and cataloging human material on Mars and subsequent planets humans might visit, perhaps via an already existing database like the U.N. Register of Objects Launched into Outer Space.
“If this material is heritage, we can create databases that track where it’s preserved, all the way down to a broken wheel on a rover or a helicopter blade, which represents the first helicopter on another planet,” Holcomb said. “These artifacts are very much like hand axes in East Africa or Clovis points in America. They represent the first presence, and from an archaeological perspective, they are key points in our historical timeline of migration.”
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Contact: Mike Krings, KU News Service, 785-864-8860, [email protected], @MikeKrings
Study finds parents more open to racially diverse media for children than previously thought
LAWRENCE — New research from the University of Kansas has found that most parents recall watching media with diverse racial and ethnic portrayals of characters with their children and that their own racial-ethnic identity predicted their attitudes toward such content, but not necessarily their beliefs.
Judy Watts, assistant professor of journalism & mass communications at KU, led a study in which 367 Black, Latinx and white parents of children ages 4-7 were surveyed about media they’ve consumed with their kids. Two-thirds of respondents recalled consuming media such as television, movies, video games or books with portrayals of diverse characters and those of races different than their own.
“I was interested in seeing what led some parents in selecting what racially and ethnically diverse media to watch with their children,” Watts said. “My previous research was more conceptually focused on things kids learn in school or media effects over the lifespan. Childhood is an important time to learn about ourselves and others who may be different from ourselves.”
For the study, parents were asked to identify their race, ethnicity and that of their children. The Black, white and Latinx parents were also asked about their attitudes about media representations of race, such as if portrayals they recalled were helpful or not to determine attitudes about such media. They were also asked about ethnic/racial identity with questions such about how strongly they feel they belong with people who share their race and/or ethnicity.
Findings showed that Black and Latinx parents differed significantly on racial/ethnic identity than white parents, but not from each other, with both reporting higher levels of racial identity. That held consistent with previous research on ethnic/racial identity. The parents were also asked about the type of content featuring racial/ethnic depictions they recalled consuming with their children, how diverse the characters were and what sort of situations they were depicted in.
“Seeing what types of content families watched was very intriguing. Black families tended to watch content featuring members of their race. That is possibly because that type of diverse content wasn’t always as readily available as it is now,” Watts said. “Latinx families watched a lot of content featuring characters of their own race/ethnicity, but also with mixed characters. That could speak to things like assimilation into culture.”
The research was tested on themes of social identity gratification and multicultural theories. The former holds that people prefer to consume depictions of people similar to themselves, while the latter holds that people who have a strong racial/ethnic identity are favorable to depictions of other races and ethnicities as well. Each theory was partially supported by findings that ultimately, parents are open to diverse content for their children and their attitudes toward racially and ethnically diverse media portrayals are more open than previous research has indicated.
“This research shows that parents want to show their children diverse content that reflects their own racial/ethnic identities and that they’re open to diverse content as well,” Watts said. “It shows parents are supportive of diversity in content of media their children consume. Parents have various socialization goals for their children. They want to help them learn about their own identities and expose them to others. I think it shows it’s not a dichotomous decision or that it has to be one or the other.”
The study was supported by a research cultivation grant from the National Research Communication Association and was published in the journal Communication Research Reports.
Watts, who conducts research into media effects and influences, said the study’s results show parents have varying goals for using media to help their children learn about themselves as well as their identities. She is conducting follow-up research examining explicit and implicit portrayals of racial interactions in children’s media. Specifically, she is comparing portrayals including anthropomorphized animals and human characters and their use of racial characteristics to analyze if children understand such racial cues, which characters they liked and to which they assign morality.
The current study showed that nearly two-thirds of parents recalled seeing racially and ethnically diverse portrayals of characters with their children, often in positive contexts, such as characters with differing backgrounds being friends.
“I think this suggests that parents are open to and seeking racially and ethnically diverse content and having more diverse content available in children’s media in recent decades has been helpful,” Watts said. “It also helps us understand parents’ motivations in media they choose for their kids.”
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