Browsing by Subject "Weight"
- Results Per Page
- Sort Options
Item Open Access Straight Hair, Brown Skin, and a Killa' Shape: Beauty Standards for Young Black Girls(2011-05-04) Johnson, NaomiMy goal in conducting this research is to include black adolescent women in the discourse on body image, respond to the shortcomings of the literature and research attempting to speak on behalf of black adolescent women, and empower black adolescent women to address and complicate these prevailing misconceptions by encouraging them to speak on their own behalf. Based on the qualitative research that I conducted with the 7th and 8th grade young black girls participating in “Girl Talk”, I found that there is a recognizable standard of beauty that young black girls desire to live up to. The girls identified straight, long, flowy hair, medium skin, and a curvy but skinny shape as an approved template for attaining beauty. On the other hand, the girls felt insecure when they did not have their hair done, were poorly dressed, or felt that their skin was too dark. As the girls actively negotiated black womanhood, they remained both connected and disconnected to a legacy that preceded them. The issues that the girls were facing such as a desire for agency, self-definition, inclusion and mobility were very similar to the desires of black women in the past. As the girls navigated beauty ideals, their awareness of the battle they were simultaneously fighting against racism (and the extent to which their social norms have been intoxicated with white ideals) remained vastly underdeveloped.Item Unknown The Characteristics of Depressive Subtypes among Adolescents and Their Role in the Relationship between Weight and Depression(2009) Connell, Alexa JoyFor several decades, researchers have sought to fully understand the nature of the relationship between depression and weight. To date, the research in this area has yielded highly inconsistent results, with some identifying null (Crumpton, Wine, & Groot, 1966; Moore, Stunkard, & Srole, 1962), positive (R. E. Roberts, Kaplan, Shema, & Strawbridge, 2000), negative (Silverstone, 1968; Simon, 1963) and gender specific relationships (DiPietro, Anda, Williamson, & Stunkard, 1992; Istvan, Savela, & Weidner, 1992; Onyike, Crum, Lee, Lyketsos, & Eaton, 2003). The author suggests that these inconsistencies can be explained by the use of measures of depression used which do not differentiate between various subtypes of depression associated with divergent somatic symptoms; including atypical depression (AD) and melancholic depression (MD). Adolescence may be an important intervention point to avert adult obesity and identification of subtypes may identify those at greatest risk. Yet, the characteristics of depression subtypes among adolescents are unknown. In order to identify subtypes of depression among adolescents that are differentially associated with weight, Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was conducted and resulting classes were tested for associations with weight. Six latent classes were identified. Four were uniquely associated with somatic symptoms including hyper- and hypophagia, suggesting that somatic symptoms play an important role in the distinction between depressive subtypes. Analyses showed an association with BMI for the 2 hyperphagic classes but not for the 2 hypophagic classes. The inclusion of depression class improved the fit of regression models for depression predicting BMI. This suggests that the inclusion of depression subtype in analyses may clarify the association between weight and depression.