Jamie Shenton (Doctoral student, Vanderbilt University), under the guidance of Dr. Beth A. Conklin, will investigate indigenous women's changing body images in Mondaña, a Quichua community in the Ecuadorian Amazon. As a result of dramatic changes in the 21st century, political and professional horizons for indigenous women have widened promoting their empowerment. Access to a wide range of new media and commercial influences have presented new physical role models. For young Quichua women, these new forms of self-presentation compete with the more "traditional" identities of older generations of women who define themselves through domestic activities focused on producing crops, food, and children.
Through intensive interviews, participant observation, and quantitative body image assessments, this research aims to document (1) how new media and consumer options influence indigenous women's relations to their bodies; and (2) how gender ideals and roles are changing as young Quichua women in Mondaña respond to opportunities for education and careers on one hand, and new models of femininity on the other.
This project investigates theories of media influences and consumer culture as homogenizing forces. However, anthropological research shows that people in developing countries interpret media messages and foreign ideas to fit their own cultural values and personal identities. This study aims to understand how Quichua women interpret and pursue beauty images in cultural context. The significance of the research lies in how body image concerns compete with or complement other values and aspirations as young women - a critical source of human capital - make educational, career and ultimately health choices that will shape the future of their families and communities.
Indigenous women’s lives have changed dramatically in the 21st century. In many rural communities in Latin America and elsewhere, native women and girls have new opportunities for education, employment, professional advancement, and participatory citizenship. At the same time, new media, telecommunications, and consumer goods have transformed other aspects of social life. This research project documents these changes a small Quichua community in the Ecuadorian Amazon called Sacha Loma (pseudonym), based on 12 months of ethnographic field research. It explores intergenerational changes in female identities, perceptions of well-being, and aspirations for the future, focusing on the pressures and incentives Quichua youth experience in relation to the "western" body ideals promoted in new media, advertising, and interactions with outsiders. Much of the literature on the global spread of western body ideals via media and consumer culture sees these as poisonous and corrupting, misdirecting female energies and creating preconditions for eating disorders and other psychological problems. This project examines how one community of native women interpret and respond to these ideals in context, emphasizing how changing self-images relate to individuals’ aspirations for themselves, their families, and communities. Utilizing mixed methods—participant observation, interviews, focus groups, and surveys—the Co-PI (Shenton) explored how aspirational goals of health, morality, and empowerment are interwoven with notions of body and identity. She developed the concept of "bodily logics of production" to describe the emphasis that Quichua women of all ages place on how productive activities carried out on or through the body define proper female roles. The research found that older Quichua women idealize sturdy bodies capable of farm work; in contrast to younger women, the older generation tends to be less concerned with how women’s bodies look and more concerned with how their bodies function for producing crops, food, and children. In contrast, young women are more preoccupied with aesthetics, preferring bodies modeled after the beauty standards they see on television, in magazines, or during travels to urban centers. However, contrary to models of media influence that treat consumers as passively manipulated by advertising and media messages, Quichua youth do not value westernized body ideals for their own sake, nor simply as status symbols. Rather, the new body ideals are tied to new aspirations. Young women recognize that one’s outside appearance often is viewed as reflecting one’s intelligence and capacities; women who attain the body images that appeal to non-Quichua are perceived to be empowered for success in education, love, jobs, professional pursuits, and civic leadership. Beyond the obvious differences between generations, there are continuities as well. Quichua women, young and old, are critical producers for their community. Older women grow, harvest, and sell the farm goods necessary for their families’ survival. Moving away from the farm work that defined their mothers’ and grandmothers’ lives, younger women extend this Quichua logic in a new direction. Often full-time students, they produce the educational capital to propel themselves, their families, and their communities forward. For both generations, women’s role as producers is firmly rooted in their bodies. Changing body images reflect changing aspirations—from the ideal of sturdy farm bodies to stylish student bodies—directed to similar goals of individual empowerment and family and community well-being. Like their elders, young Quichua women see their bodies as productive resources. Where elder women wanted strong bodies to produce food and healthy children, young women who desire education, employment, and political participation now seek thinner, "whiter," more westernized body images. Appearances have changed dramatically, but the socially productive purpose is similar. In demonstrating how the younger generation of indigenous youth in this community integrates longstanding Quichua principles like the value of production into their new ideals of achievement in education, professions, and political participation, this project moves beyond studies that have highlighted the rapid abandonment of indigenous tradition or, at the other extreme, emphasized continuities of tradition while ignoring indigenous people’s agency in engaging with social change and global involvement. Quichua see the cultivation of particular kinds of female bodies as a tool to access education and opportunities for empowerment that benefit not just individuals but also the larger social group. This is consistent with research elsewhere that shows that empowered and educated young women are healthier, and their families and communities are, too (Temin and Levine 2009). As the UN and other international organizations have recognized, women in developing countries are a huge, untapped source of human capital. Although based in a remote Amazonian community, this project’s implications extend far beyond, pointing to how women in developing countries may respond to new media influences not simply by replicating patterns of passive consumer conformity, but by directing their pursuit of new self-images toward socially productive purposes.
