Becoming Overweight without Gaining a Pound: Weight Evaluations and the Social Integration of Mexicans in the United States

Abstract

Mexican women gain weight with increasing duration in the United States. In the United States, body dissatisfaction tends to be associated with depression, disordered eating, and incongruent weight evaluations, particularly among white women and women of higher socioeconomic status. However, it remains unclear how overweight and obesity is interpreted by Mexican women. Using comparable data of women ages 20–64 from both Mexico (the 2006 Encuesta Nacional de Salud y Nutricion; N=17,012) and the United States (the 1999–2009 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys; N=8,487), we compare weight status evaluations among Mexican nationals, Mexican immigrants, U.S.-born Mexicans, U.S.-born non-Hispanic Whites, and U.S.-born non-Hispanic blacks. Logistic regression analyses, which control for demographic and social-economic variables and measured body mass index and adjust for the likelihood of migration for Mexican nationals, indicate that the tendency to self-evaluate as overweight among Mexicans converges with levels among non-Hispanic whites and diverges from blacks over time in the United States. Overall, the results suggest a U.S. integration process in which Mexican-American women’s less critical self-evaluations originate in Mexico but fade with time in the United States as they gradually adopt U.S. white norms for thinner body sizes. These results are discussed in light of social comparison and negative health assimilation.

Acculturation, Acculturative Stress and Eating Disorder Symptoms Among Latina University Students

“…The finding that acculturative stress is negatively associated with eating disorder symptoms is consistent with other recent research that has examined acculturative stress but not acculturation (Claudat et al, 2016;Menon & Harter, 2012;Van Diest et al, 2014). Similarly, the finding that acculturation is positively associated with some symptoms of eating disorders is consistent with research that has considered acculturation but not acculturative stress (Altman et al, 2017;Poloskov & Tracey, 2013;Warren et al, 2005). However, this study stands apart from the few studies that have simultaneously examined acculturation and acculturative stress (Gordon et al, 2010;Warren & Rios, 2013) by testing and finding support for the hypothesis that acculturative stress mediates the association between acculturation and eating disorder symptoms.…”

“…However, eating disorder symptoms among Latinas have been found to be comparable, and at times higher, than their non-Hispanic, White counterparts (Stein et al, 2019). For example, Altman et al (2017) compared Mexican women living in the US to those living in Mexico and found that those in the US were more likely to inaccurately describe themselves as overweight, suggesting a negative influence of US culture on their body image. Poloskov and Tracey (2013) found that Latina college students who were more acculturated to the dominant White culture of the US were more dissatisfied with their bodies because they had internalized the thin body ideal.…”

Social network body size is associated with body size norms of South Asian adults

“…Our analysis did not find strong evidence that cultural identity or years in the U.S. were associated with perceptions of a health body size in South Asians. Although empiric data have shown that body size ideals differ across cultures (McCabe et al, 2015) and that immigrants may adopt the body size norms of their host culture over time (Altman et al, 2017), the associations between acculturation with body size norms and behaviors have not been consistent. Others have found that psychosocial stressors, socioeconomic status, and other cognitive processes may be more predictive of body size ideals or weight-related behaviors in immigrant adolescents and that these factors may also interact with acculturation and immigrant generation (Fialkowski et al, 2015; Sutin et al, 2015).…”

Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Metabolic Syndrome and Its Components in Latino Immigrants to the USA

“…Only two studies stratified Brazilian immigrants in their analyses [30,47]. Regarding country of origin of the immigrants studied, 14 studies involved Mexicans only [15,26,27,42,43,52,64,65,[74][75][76][77]79,81], 11 Mexicans and other Latinos [16,33,34,36,49,51,54,61,63,66,67], 10 investigated immigrants from South and Central America (Brazil [30,47], Haiti [30,32], El Salvador [30,40], Colombia [30], Guatemala [30,40], Dominican Republic [30,46], Honduras [30,40], Peru [40], Bolivia [40], Puerto Rico [32,46], Mexico [46], Guyana [82] and other unspecified coun-tries [32,35,…”