Exploring a Body Image Paradox: Body Size, Family Racial Socialization, and Self-Image in African American Adolescent Girls.

Social psychologists have amassed a large body of work demonstrating that overweight African American women and girls feel better about themselves and have more positive attitudes about their bodies than do overweight females from other racial and ethnic groups. Substantial theoretical work has proposed that elements of African American cultural experience may contribute to these differences. In this paper, we evaluate these arguments by testing whether racial socialization within the family diminishes the influence of body size on the social self esteem of African American adolescent girls. Using a socio-economically diverse sample, we find that respondents with larger body sizes display lower social self esteem but also find that racial socialization moderates this relationship. In families where racial socialization activities are frequent, body size makes little difference in respondents' social self esteem. In contrast, when families engage in little or no racial socialization, larger girls display significantly lower social self esteem. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]