Comparing American and South Korean Cultural

FLOWER BOYS AND MUSCLED MEN: COMPARING AMERICAN AND

SOUTH KOREAN CULTURAL MODELS OF THE IDEAL MALE BODY

USING CULTURAL DOMAIN ANALYSIS

LAWRENCE THOMAS MONOCELLO

WILLIAM W. DRESSLER, COMMITTEE CHAIR JASON A. DECARO SONYA E. PRITZKER BEVERLY ROSKOS

A THESIS

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Anthropology in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama

TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA

2017

ABSTRACT

This study uses cultural domain analysis to understand the similarities and differences in ideal male body image between Americans and South Koreans. The prevalence of body image and eating disorders is rising all over the world, in women and in men. Due in large part to universalist assumptions about masculinity, the ways in which men’s body image is understood across cultures are understudied. Further, cross-cultural research on body image often fails to account for the effect of cultural differences through anything more than a nominal variable. Therefore, this study demonstrates an emically valid and scientifically reliable mixed methods approach to the study of body image that can be used in multidisciplinary research to more effectively operationalize “culture.” Results show that Americans understand body ideals largely through the dimension of individual control, while South Koreans understand body ideals through the dimensions of importance and desirability. Americans also more strongly endorse the instrumental aspects of male bodies, while South Koreans focus on their ornamental qualities, reflecting differing cultural scripts for achieving and projecting masculine status. Specifically, while Americans endorse highly muscular male bodies as ideal, South Koreans endorse more slender, “prettier” male images, of which one prominent example is the kkonminam, or “beautiful flower boy.”

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS

Avg Rank Average Place in the Freelist

BMI Body Mass Index

CCA Cultural Consensus Analysis

CDA Cultural Domain Analysis

DSM Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

EAT-26 Eating Attitudes Test

ED Eating Disorder(s)

EDE-Q Eating Disorders Examination-Questionnaire

EDI Eating Disorder Inventory

EDNOS Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified

IMF International Monetary Fund

K-Pop Korean Pop Music

KSA Korean Student Association

MDS Multidimensional Scaling n sample size p Probability of Results or Outcome

PROFIT Property Fitting Analysis r Pearson product moment correlation

iii

r2 Coefficient of determination

R Multiple Correlation Coefficient

RA Residual Agreement

SPSS Statistical Package for the Social Sciences

T.O.P. The Original Pimp, a K-Pop Performer

UA University of Alabama

WEIRD White, Educated, and from Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic Countries

% Percent

%Resp Percent of Respondents who Volunteered a Word or Phrase

< Less than

= Equal to

> Greater than

± Plus or Minus

≤ Less than or equal to

≥ Greater than or equal to

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

None of this would have been possible without, first, my parents, Larry and

Jennifer, who afforded me the freedom to explore the subjects that interested me, and allowed me to pursue a career that just feels right.

I would also like to thank my Anthropology professors from Case Western

Reserve University, who I truly believe shaped me into the anthropologist I am today.

Dr. Bruce Latimer’s impassioned defenses of the obligate bipedality of Australopithecus afarensis based on Lucy’s foot morphology, and Dr. Scott Simpson’s pedagogical use of

“prank” pig femora and “adorable” infant crania, taught me to approach research and teaching with equal parts rigor and levity. Dr. Vanessa Hildebrand’s consistent guidance and encouragement, starting from my Freshman year, gave me the confidence to pursue graduate school, and helped me to develop the critical thinking and writing skills necessary for my success. Dr. Lihong Shi sowed the seeds of my interest in East Asia and South Korea, and throughout this thesis I draw on her lectures and assignments in interpreting my findings. Finally, Dr. Eileen Anderson-Fye’s infectious enthusiasm for this material, my career, and for anthropology in general, has deeply shaped not only my theoretical paradigm for research, but also the way I teach and the kind of academic role model I hope one day to become.

I would also be nowhere without my undergraduate advisor, Dr. Cynthia Beall.

Her mentorship dramatically improved my writing, instilled in me high standards for rigor and quality, and a distaste for ambiguity in the reporting of research. Through her, I

received invaluable research experience at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Dr. Serpil

Erzurum cultivated such a positive laboratory environment that I was excited to spend the good part of a summer injecting high altitude urine into boiling hydrochloric acid to measure its concentrations of nitric oxide metabolites. Thank you as well to Allison

Janocha, Sudakshina Ghosh, Weiling Xu, and Queenie Cheong for the experience.

I need to thank Dr. Bill Dressler, my committee chair and advisor, for giving me the freedom to pursue my own research interests while giving me the guidance I need to do it right and make it worthwhile. I would also like to thank my other committee members, Drs. Jason DeCaro, Sonya Pritzker, and Beverly Roskos, for reading this tome of a Master’s thesis and offering me invaluable suggestions for improvement.

Finally, I would like to thank my Master’s cohort for their friendship, my academic big sister for her advice, my participants for the gifts of their time, and the Department of

Anthropology and the Graduate School for their generous support of my education and this research, both financial and otherwise.

CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... ii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS ...... iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... v

LIST OF TABLES ...... xii

LIST OF FIGURES ...... xiii

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1

1.1. Outline of the Thesis ...... 4

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 6

2.1. Introduction ...... 6

2.2. “Western” Male Body Image ...... 9

2.3. Body Image Across Cultures, and the Problem of “Westernization” ...... 20

2.4. South Korean Body Image...... 29

2.5. Conclusion ...... 34

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH POPULATIONS AND SETTING ...... 36

3.1. Introduction ...... 36

vii 3.2. Americans ...... 37

3.3. South Koreans ...... 40

3.4. University of Alabama ...... 45

3.5. Conclusion ...... 46

CHAPTER 4 THEORETICAL APPROACH ...... 47

4.1. Introduction ...... 47

4.2. Ethnopsychology… ...... 48

4.3. …and its discontents ...... 51

4.4. Cognitive Anthropology ...... 53

4.5. Conclusion ...... 58

CHAPTER 5 METHODS ...... 60

5.1. Introduction ...... 60

5.2. Sample ...... 60

5.3. Phase I: Freelisting ...... 64

5.4. Phase II: Pilesorting ...... 66

5.5. Phase III: Cultural Consensus Analysis ...... 68

5.5.1. Development of Survey ...... 68

5.5.2. Administration of Survey ...... 69

5.5.3. Descriptive Statistics, Consensus, and Residual Agreement ...... 70

viii

5.5.4. PROFIT Analysis ...... 72

5.5.5. Analysis of Follow-Up Questions ...... 72

CHAPTER 6 RESULTS ...... 73

6.1. Freelist Results ...... 73

6.2. Pilesort Results ...... 77

6.2.1. American Piles ...... 77

6.2.2. Korean Piles ...... 82

6.3. Phase III Descriptive Statistics ...... 89

6.4. Rating Tasks Results ...... 90

6.4.1. Cultural Consensus Analysis for Importance ...... 90

6.4.2. Residual Agreement Analysis for Importance ...... 91

6.4.3. Cultural Consensus Analysis for Desirability ...... 105

6.4.4. Residual Agreement Analysis for Desirability ...... 107

6.4.5. Cultural Consensus Analysis for Control ...... 121

6.4.6. Residual Agreement Analysis for Control ...... 123

6.4.7. Cultural Consensus Analysis for Kkonminam ...... 137

6.5. Property Fitting Analysis Results ...... 139

6.6. Follow-up Questions ...... 144

CHAPTER 7 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ...... 147

7.1. Introduction ...... 147

7.2. Cultural Models of Importance ...... 147

7.2.1. The American Cultural Model of Importance ...... 149

7.2.2. The South Korean Cultural Model of Importance ...... 151

7.2.3. Cross-cultural Differences in the Dimension of Importance ...... 153

7.3. Cultural Models of Desirability ...... 154

7.3.1. The American Cultural Model of Desirability ...... 157

7.3.2. The South Korean Cultural Model of Desirability ...... 164

7.3.3. Cross-cultural Differences in the Dimension of Desirability ...... 174

7.4. Cultural Models of Control ...... 176

7.4.1. The American Cultural Model of Control ...... 177

7.4.2. The South Korean Cultural Model of Control ...... 181

7.4.3. Cross-cultural Differences in the Dimension of Control ...... 184

7.5. Implications ...... 185

7.6. Conclusion ...... 187

REFERENCES ...... 189

APPENDIX A ...... 207

APPENDIX B ...... 210

APPENDIX C ...... 214

APPENDIX D ...... 225

LIST OF TABLES

Table 5.1. Descriptive data for Participants by Phase and Cultural Group ...... 62

Table 6.1. Items Most Frequently Freelisted by Americans...... 75

Table 6.2. Items Most Frequently Freelisted by South Koreans...... 76

Table 6.3. Items Provided to American Participants for Pilesorting ...... 78

Table 6.4. Items Provided to South Korean Participants for Pilesorting ...... 84

Table 6.5. American and South Korean Mean Deviation Values for Importance...... 94

Table 6.6. Americans’ Weighted Cultural Answer Key for “Importance.” ...... 98

Table 6.7. South Koreans' Weighted Cultural Answer Key for “Importance.” ...... 102

Table 6.8. Weighted Cultural Answer Key of "Desirability" for the Aggregate Dataset 106

Table 6.9. American and South Korean Mean Deviation Scores for “Desirability.” ..... 110

Table 6.10. Americans' Weighted Cultural Answer Key for "Desirability" ...... 116

Table 6.11. South Koreans' Weighted Cultural Answer Key for "Desirability" ...... 120

Table 6.12. Aggregate Weighted Cultural Answer Key for Control...... 122

Table 6.13. American and South Korean Mean Deviation Scores for “Control.” ...... 126

Table 6.14. Weighted Cultural Answer Key for Americans for Control...... 132

Table 6.15. Weighted Cultural Answer Key of South Koreans for Control...... 136

Table 6.16. Weighted Cultural Answer Key of the Dimension of Kkonminam ...... 138

Table 6.17. Pearson's r-values of BMI Vs American, South Korean, and Aggregate Cultural Competence coefficients ...... 146

xii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 6.1. MDS Plot of American Pilesorts...... 80

Figure 6.2. MDS Plot of Korean Pilesorts ...... 86

Figure 6.3. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Importance." ...... 92

Figure 6.4. RA Analysis of American and South Koreans' Mean Deviation Scores for "Importance." ...... 96

Figure 6.5. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Importance" among Americans...... 100

Figure 6.6. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Importance" among South Koreans...... 104

Figure 6.7. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Desirability." ...... 108

Figure 6.8. RA Analysis of American and South Koreans' Mean Deviation Scores for "Desirability." ...... 112

Figure 6.9. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Desirability" among Americans...... 114

Figure 6.10. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Desirability" among South Koreans...... 118

Figure 6.11. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Control." ...... 124

Figure 6.12. RA Analysis of American and South Koreans' Mean Residuals for "Control." ...... 128

Figure 6.13. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Control" among Americans...... 130

Figure 6.14. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Control" among South Koreans...... 134

Figure 6.15. PROFIT Analysis of American Dimensions ...... 141

Figure 6.16. PROFIT Analysis of South Korean Dimensions ...... 143

xiii

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Rates of body image and eating disorders are rising all over the world (Pike,

Hoek, & Dunne, 2014), yet comparatively little is known about the experiences of men across cultural groups. Recent estimates suggest that men account for 25-40% of cases of eating disorders, much higher than the 10% most commonly cited (Andersen, 2014;

Hudson, Hiripi, Pope, & Kessler, 2007). As male bodies are increasingly objectified, and men are expected to approximate unrealistic body ideals, rates of body image and eating disorders among men and women can only be expected to converge (Mitchison

& Mond, 2015; Pope, Phillips, & Olivardia, 2000). Because body image and eating disorders are the deadliest of all psychiatric illnesses (Arcelus, Mitchell, Wales, &

Nielsen, 2011), this poorly understood trend constitutes a significant public and global health crisis.

The dearth of research on men is not the only problem in body image studies.

While anthropologists have argued for over a decade that studies of body image must take culture more seriously (Becker, 2004a), most cross-cultural research fails to take into account culture as anything more than a nominal variable—that is, as a variable that merely groups people, usually on the basis of nationality, ethnicity, or language

(Anderson-Fye, McClure, & Wilson, 2015; S. Lee, 2004). This is often based on a failure to recognize the distinctions of emic and etic analyses of data. Emic data are those that are gathered and interpreted within a bottom-up framework of the cultural group under

study; etic data are those that are gathered and interpreted within a top-down, universalizing framework that glosses over cultural differences. For example, most cultural psychology is uncritically etic, employing psychometric scales across cultural groups with little attention to how survey items may be interpreted differently in different settings (Anderson-Fye, et al., 2015). An emic study of body image would rather focus on what people in a particular cultural group find meaningful about bodies and body images. The emic perspective serves to increase the validity of data interpretation, such that similar behaviors are not assumed to have the same motivation. Failing to consider emic notions of body image—e.g., not only what a desirable body looks like, but why it is considered desirable (Becker, 2004b)—runs the risk of ignoring the factors that may predispose individuals across cultural contexts to adopt disordered eating behaviors.

That said, employing mixed methods—especially ethnography—is admittedly difficult. Conducting ethnography is time consuming, analysis is often based on low sample sizes, and findings can lack replicability. However, deep knowledge of culturally particular patterns of understanding is invaluable for data interpretation. Cultural domain analysis (CDA; Borgatti, 1999) is set of methods that satisfies anthropologists’ call for greater cultural validity while maintaining the reliability and comparability of more quantitative psychological and epidemiological research. CDA relies on Goodenough

(1957)’s definition of culture as whatever one needs to know in order to function in a social group. Applied to body image, this definition can be used to explore what people understand to be the bodily attributes that allow one to participate fully in society.

Importantly, this definition recognizes that cultural knowledge is shared (that people within a cultural group tend to agree about certain features) and distributed (that there is

2 often vast intracultural variation in what is known by individuals). Radically emic, CDA relies on statistical modeling rather than investigator intuition to recognize cultural patterns. Further, CDA allows researchers to compare how people cognitively organize and interpret body image features across cultural groups, literally on their terms. Unlike psychometric screening tools, CDA will not assume cross-cultural uniformity in the ways ideal bodies are understood; rather, it works from the bottom-up to explore what is salient to the people in question and why. In other words, it can skillfully circumvent the pitfall of assuming universal meaning in body image features and related behaviors (Le

Grange, Louw, Breen, & Katzman, 2004; S. Lee, 1995; Puoane, Tsolekile, & Steyn,

2010).

This study uses CDA to explore the similarities and differences in American and

South Korean male body image ideals. Americans were chosen for their accessibility and because the vast majority of research conducted into male body image has focused on collegiate American samples. Though not ethnographic per se, the data garnered from these studies is interpreted in terms of Americans’ experiences of and beliefs about the body.

Koreans were chosen in light of a growing literature that suggests a move toward an ideal male body image often labeled as “feminized.” Referred to as a kkonminam, or a “pretty flower boy,” this body image is characterized by soft jaws, double eyelids, prominent noses, defined pectoral and bicep muscles, and an overall smooth and hairless body. Kkonminam also wear highly fashionable clothes, consume cosmetics, and even undergo plastic surgery (Lim, 2008; Maliangkay, 2013). Further, comparative research has suggested that Korean men have a considerably high drive for thinness,

especially as compared to American men (J. Jung, Forbes, & Lee, 2009). Facing

different body ideals and pressures to achieve them, Americans and Koreans are

excellent candidates for evaluating the utility of CCA in cross-cultural studies of body

image.

1.1. Outline of the Thesis

Chapter two introduces the concept of body image, and its relationship to

disordered eating behaviors. It then explores how body image and eating disorders

have been studied and understood over the last few hundred years, with emphasis on

the last century, to show how body image and eating disorders have been gendered

feminine. Studies of male body image have therefore been sparse and problematic. The

chapter then continues by examining the ways in which body image has been studied

across cultural groups, and argues for scientifically reliable methods that treat culture as

more than just a nominal variable. The chapter ends by arguing for the utility of the

methods of cultural domain analysis in filling that gap.

Chapter three explains the reasoning for using Americans and South Koreans at the University of Alabama. It discusses why body image is a particularly salient concept for these groups, and justifies the use of a group of native South Koreans residing in the

United States as informants.

Chapter four describes the theoretical approach taken in this paper. Previous studies of body image in anthropology have taken a largely ethnopsychological approach, trying to understand how body image is understood by the members of a particular cultural group rather than analyzing their situation through solely Western constructs. This study takes these a step further and argues for the methods of cultural

4 domain analysis from cognitive anthropology to compare and contrast emic models of the ideal male body between Americans and South Koreans.

Chapter five details the process of performing cultural domain analysis through the phases of freelisting, pilesorting, and cultural consensus analysis. Residual agreement analysis is also discussed. Chapter six explores the results of the study, showing concretely how cultural domain analysis can be used to understand cultural models of ideal male bodies.

Finally, chapter seven contextualizes the results within the cultural groups from which they were elicited. I show not only that different attributes of male bodies are valued across cultural groups, but also that differing cognitive models of what bodies themselves are for affect how body images are interpreted. Ultimately, I argue that cross-cultural studies of body image and eating disorders would do well to incorporate cultural domain analysis so as not to miss important cultural differences that could explain similar phenomena in highly diverse ways.

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1. Introduction

Body image and eating disorders comprise the deadliest of all psychiatric

disorders (Arcelus et al., 2011), with eating disorders like Anorexia nervosa having

mortality rates of up to 20% (Steinhausen, 2002). This mortality rate maybe be even

higher, considering that suicide was the cause of death in 20% of anorexics (Arcelus et

al., 2011), but cause of death by suicide in anorexics is frequently classified just as

depressive illness (Muir & Palmer, 2004). While eating disorders are often comorbid with depression (Norris et al., 2014; Strother, Lemberg, Stanford, & Turberville, 2014;

Weltzin et al., 2014), their role in individuals’ suicides often go unnoticed. Because body image and eating disorders are on the rise all over the world (Pike & Dunne, 2015; Pike et al., 2014), including in subclinical forms, in combination with their high rate of mortality they comprise a significant public health crisis. This chapter serves as a brief introduction to studies of body image and eating disorders, attending to the growing but problematic literatures of male-centered and cross-cultural body image research, and ending with a discussion of the extant research on body image in South Korean men.

Eating disorders stem in part from individuals perceiving their bodies as straying from what is considered the “ideal” body shape, and seeing this lack of consonance as

undesirable. These perceptions, feelings, and thoughts about the body are known as

“body image,” and the degree to which the lack of consonance between one’s body image and the ideal body is felt as negative is known as “body dissatisfaction” (Grogan,

1998). One of the major predictors of body image and eating disorders is body dissatisfaction. Although itself insufficient for explaining the development and persistence of body image and eating disorders (Grogan, 1998), body dissatisfaction is

nonetheless an important, and often necessary, risk factor.

Body dissatisfaction therefore often leads to disordered eating, and the

symptomology of eating disorders further perpetuates body dissatisfaction in a vicious

downward spiral of self-loathing. As an important component of eating disorders, body

dissatisfaction can only be understood in relation to the culturally informed prototypes of

ideal body images. In other words, body dissatisfaction cannot occur without some

cultural model to which one is socially and culturally conditioned to aspire. Without this

referent, “body dissatisfaction” is a meaningless concept. Therefore, it is important to

understand the ways in which people organize the concept of ideal bodies—what their

features are, and what these features mean on group and individual levels—in order to

understand peoples’ motivations and strategies used to achieve it.

Much ink has been spilled over the so-named “thin-ideal,” the bodily form whose

prestige is linked to its ever-decreasing waistline. Research on the thin ideal and its

contribution to the mushrooming of eating disorders has crossed disciplines, and can be

found in the publications of such diverse fields as media studies and journalism (e.g.,

Bissell & Chung, 2009), philosophy (e.g., Bordo, 2003), evolutionary biology (e.g., Abed,

1998), and even mathematics (e.g., Ciarcià, Falsaperla, Giacobbe, & Mulone, 2015);

7 however, the main bodies of literature can be found in psychology and psychiatry.

Media studies’ contributions elucidate how bodies are presented in popular culture, and speculate as to how these representations may affect the development of body image, body dissatisfaction, and eating disorders in young people. Sometimes, they use psychometric tools to test their hypotheses empirically. Feminist philosophy contributes arguments that expose the effects of patriarchal systems and structures on young peoples’ bodies. Evolutionary biology theorizes about how thinness may have been beneficial in the environment of evolutionary adaptation, and how thinness strategies continue to influence behaviors even though they may be maladaptive in the modern world. Finally, mathematics attempts to model equations to predict the course of eating disorders.

Psychology and psychiatry have made the biggest contributions to research on body image and its relationship to body dissatisfaction and eating disorders.

Importantly, they have access to cases of people suffering from body dissatisfaction— often the patients themselves—from whom they may draw their conclusions. Unlike the aforementioned fields—which nonetheless do important work in exposing the underlying social, cultural, and evolutionary mechanisms behind body dissatisfaction—psychology and psychiatry base their research on the experiences of actual people. The data from psychology and psychiatry are often clinical data, or data from laboratory-controlled or survey-based empirical research on peoples’ perceptions of their bodies.

Psychologists and psychiatrists have developed several tools for evaluating and studying body image and eating disorders in scientifically reliable ways. Some particularly important tools include the Eating Disorders Inventory—Drive for Thinness

8 scale (Garner, Olmsted, & Polivy, 1983), the Drive for Muscularity Scale (McCreary &

Sasse, 2000), the Drive for Leanness Scale (Smolak & Murnen, 2008), and the Eating

Attitudes Test (EAT-26, Garner, Olmsted, Bohr, & Garfinkel, 1982). Psychologist J.

Kevin Thompson’s Body Image Research group alone has developed at least fourteen different scales to measure body dissatisfaction (J. K. Thompson, 2017). These measures have been particularly useful in understanding the internalization of body image ideals, and the influence of that internalization on disordered behaviors related to body image and eating.

These tools are also highly flawed in that they have generally been developed and validated using WEIRD female college students (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan,

2010; Le Grange et al., 2004). WEIRD refers to the samples typically used in psychological research being comprised of white, educated people from industrialized, rich, and democratic populations. In other words, a lot is known about a small subset of the world’s population, but these data may not be as generalizable or universal as thought. Because of the specificity of the group on which psychometric tools about eating disorders have been validated, they may not be as reliable in measuring body dissatisfaction and disordered eating behaviors among people who exist at other intersections of gender, cultural, age, class, and political-economic axes. People at these intersections may endorse different body image ideals, and thus be vulnerable to body dissatisfaction in ways unmeasurable with the screening and diagnostic tools currently available.

2.2. “Western” Male Body Image

Claiming that men’s body image is understudied is not groundbreaking. It has

been a point echoed in the psychological literature since the study of men’s body image

took off in the 1980s. Many factors play into the relative dearth of male-focused

research on body image and eating disorders, but the popular notion of body image

concerns being a problem faced only by women has been the most prominent.

Andersen (2014) argues that the medical descriptions of illnesses resembling

anorexia nervosa have existed since the 17th century, and they referred both to women

and men. However, it was not termed “anorexia nervosa” until 1873 by Sir William Gull,

and by then it was associated almost exclusively with women. Andersen (2014) claims

that men disappeared entirely from the eating disorders literature between the 1860s

and 1960s due to medical theory that associated anorexia with disorders only possible

in female bodies. For example, anorexia nervosa was originally thought to be a form of

post-partum pituitary necrosis, and men—lacking uteruses—are by definition unable to

suffer from post-partum issues. Later, during the hegemony of psychoanalysis, anorexia diagnoses required “a fear of oral impregnation,” a uniquely female symptom. But probably the longest-running (until the DSM-5) and most damaging diagnostic requirement in terms of the underdiagnosis of males has been the requirement of amenorrhea. In all of these cases, men would have been excluded by definition from diagnoses of anorexia nervosa (Andersen, 2014).

That is not to say that men with eating disorders were nonexistent in the medical literature during this time. The reaction to early cases of male anorexia set the groundwork for much of the stigma surrounding men with eating disorders. Zhang

(2014) notes that in the first half of the 20th century, British physicians attributed

anorexia nervosa in males to family dynamics that encouraged homosexuality. In other

words, anorexia nervosa was only recognized in men through the lens of feminization,

with the persisting assumption being that heterosexual, masculine men would be

immune to body image and eating disorders. These assumptions have led to persistent

stigma against and ignorance of men with eating disorders among laypeople and

practitioners alike.

It is generally now recognized that at least one-in-ten cases of eating disorders

occurs in men (Delinsky & St. Germain, 2012; Muise, Stein, & Arbess, 2003), although

the origin of that statistic is unknown (Räisänen & Hunt, 2014). One study replicated the

10% statistic (Weltzin et al., 2005); however, more recent analyses suggest that the

percent of cases of eating disorders that occur in men is between 25% (Hudson et al.,

2007) and 40% (Andersen, 2014). An Icelandic study found male-female ratios of lifetime prevalence rates of eating disorders to be 1:2.8 for all eating disorders, 1:3.5 for anorexia, 1:2 for bulimia nervosa, 1:1.7 for binge eating disorder, and 1:2.9 for eating disorders not otherwise specified (EDNOS; Kjelsås, Bjørnstrøm, & Götestam, 2004).

Wade, Keski-Rahkonen, and Hudson (2011) further suggest that 20 million women and

10 million men suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder. Mond (2014) argue that binge eating behaviors may be just as prevalent in men as they are in women, and that purging among men may be more common than originally thought. Further, sex- differences in restricting and purging may be diminishing (Mitchison & Mond, 2015).

Despite these statistics, gender-based assumptions about body dissatisfaction

and eating disorders—namely, that they are “female” disorders—have trickled down into

the general public and have been particularly potent in informing both lay theories and

clinicians’ underlying biases about men and eating disorders. O'Dea and Abraham

(2002) found that 9% of college men evidenced disordered eating behaviors, but none

of them were in treatment. Bunnell (2016) suggests that there is such a discrepancy in

treatment because “[m]asculinity norms foster and support the stigma men with ED face

by reinforcing the fear that these men will be seen as less masculine because they have

a ‘female’ disorder and because they are seeking assistance” (101). Bunnell’s argument

makes sense in light of O'Hara and Clegg Smith (2007)’s finding that 95% of media

reports dealing with eating disorders focus exclusively on women. According to

Räisänen and Hunt (2014), one of the major reasons for men’s delay in treatment

seeking for eating disorders is the relative lack of publicly available information about

eating disorders in men on the internet.

Among practitioners, Becker, Hadley Arrindell, Perloe, Fay, and Striegel-Moore

(2010) noted that clinicians often failed to diagnose eating disorders among patients who were not white, affluent women. In a qualitative study of men’s experiences of help- seeking for eating disorders, Räisänen and Hunt (2014) noted that barriers to treatment included giving meaning to their early signs and symptoms, recognizing that they had a problem, finding literature, and getting taken seriously by practitioners. As Bunnell

(2016) explains, men’s underrepresentation in eating disorders therapy exists because

“both people in the psychotherapeutic dyad bring their own explicit and implicit gender experiences, biases, anxieties, and beliefs into the relationship” (100). Even if therapists are trained to recognize the symptoms of eating disorders, their underlying biases about eating disorders’ gendered nature (let alone what constitutes masculinity itself; Isacco,

2015) stand a significant barrier to their recognition and subsequent treatment. The highly problematic gendering of eating disorders as feminine has serious repercussions

12 for therapists and patients alike. When social stigmas of femininity and vanity prevent men from seeking help, and when those who do present for help are ignored or rebuffed by practitioners working with similar assumptions, a cycle of minimization of men’s body image issues emerges and results in a system in which some of the deadliest psychiatric disorders become invisible among half of the world’s population.

Importantly, these biases also have affected the validity of screening and diagnostic tools used by clinicians and researchers to recognize disordered eating and to report prevalence rates of body image and eating disorders. An early issue in studying body image disorders in men resulted from averaging scores of body dissatisfaction. Men’s body satisfaction scores tend to take the form of an inverted U— they are generally happiest at a lean and muscular frame (Holmqvist Gattario, Frisén, &

Anderson-Fye, 2014). Therefore, when self-described “too small” men were averaged with the “too large” men, body dissatisfaction was overlooked.

Other research has noted issues with psychometric scales. One of the most popular eating disorders diagnostic tools, the EDI, has been found to have limited and contradictory reliability among men (Strother et al., 2014). Norris et al. (2014) notes that the EDI’s body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness subscales lack clinical cutoffs for men. Some research has found the EDI to be valid in diagnosing eating disorders in men (Keel, Baxter, Heatherton, & Joiner Jr, 2007; Olivardia, Pope, Mangweth, &

Hudson, 1995), but others (e.g., Rathner & Rumpold, 1994) have found it not to be valid. Strother et al. (2014) found that the subscales of the EDI, especially the body dissatisfaction scale, could not correctly predict eating disorders in men. The lack of reliability of the EDI among men may be another significant reason for the lack of

13 recognition of eating disorders among them.

Similar problems of gender bias have been found with the Eating Disorders

Examination-Questionnaire (EDE-Q). Darcy et al. (2012) found that males already diagnosed with anorexia nervosa scored lower than matched females on several items, including Shape Concern, Weight Concern, and Global scores. Reas, Øverås, and Rø

(2014) also found that fewer men endorsed any experience of objective binge eating, excessive exercise, dietary restraint, and vomiting, and none of them were in the clinically significant range. Stanford and Lemberg (2014) suggests that the discrepant results probably stem from the fact that these measures were developed for use among women. Andersen, Cohn, and Holbrook (2010) further note that the questions asked in diagnostic tools may be less relevant areas of concern for men. Raevuori, Keski-

Rahkonen, and Hoek (2014) point out that, “sex-specific differences have not been reflected in the eating disorders instruments, almost all of which have been developed and validated in females. This is a significant problem, which likely contributes to underdiagnosis and undertreatment in males” (429). The fact that questions about concerns with the largeness of thighs, shape of the buttocks, and lack of thinness may be irrelevant to most Western men likely explains why the aforementioned tools tend to be unreliable in diagnosing body image and eating disorders in men.

It is then incumbent upon body image researchers to develop diagnostic tools relevant to the experiences of men. Body image and eating disorders are feminist issues (Bordo, 2003; Orbach, 1978), and because of both the historical ignorance and continued derision of women’s health issues, it is understandable that men have not been the focus eating disorders research (Zhang, 2014). But Mitchison and Mond

(2015) note that men suffer from the full spectrum of body image disturbances and compensation behaviors that women do, and that these compensation behaviors may be increasing even more rapidly in men than in women. Woodside et al. (2001) noted that eating disorders manifest in largely the same way between men and women as well. What this means is that anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorders, et cetera, are for all intents and purposes the same disorder in men and women, even if their initial bodily concerns generally differ along gender lines. As men’s and women’s rates of disordered eating behaviors converge (Mitchison & Mond, 2015), men’s continued lack of visibility in the body image and eating disorders literature is a significant issue that deserves much more attention.

To that end, Pope et al. (2000) took an early step in this direction in their investigation of what they termed “the Adonis Complex.” Known clinically as “muscle dysmorphia,” it is considered the predominantly male parallel to the predominantly female anorexia nervosa. Like people with anorexia who desire to be thinner and thinner, people with muscle dysmorphia want to put on muscle mass to equally unhealthy and unattainable levels. As a form of body dysmorphic disorder, people with muscle dysmorphia see themselves as much smaller than they want to be. They are known to exercise obsessively, eat highly regimented diets, and even use anabolic steroids (Segura-García et al., 2010). Like eating disorders, muscle dysmorphia is often comorbid with depression, anxiety, and substance abuse (Phillips, Didie, Feusner, &

Wilhelm, 2008).

Pope et al. (2000) argue that the “Adonis complex” can be traced back to two recent phenomena: and the media’s increasingly objectifying lens on male bodies, and

15 the increased entry of women into male-dominated fields. From the perspective of media studies, they explored how the depictions of men in film, television, magazines, and even children’s toys have increased in musculature since the mid-20th century. For example, in examining G. I. Joe figurines, they noted that the original G. I. Joe from

1964 would, in grown adult proportions, stand five-feet-and-ten-inches tall, with a 32- inch waist, a 44-inch chest, and a 12-inch bicep—a slightly more robust physique than that of the author of this essay. In 1974, the figurine was noticeably more massive, with

15-inch biceps and greater muscle definition. But by 1991, the figurine’s waist shrunk to twenty-nine inches while his biceps grew to sixteen-and-a-half inches—practically unattainable without the use of anabolic steroids. They noted a similar progression in the musculatures of Luke Skywalker action figures from the Star Wars films between

1978 and 1995: the difference was said to have made Mark Hamill (who plays Luke

Skywalker in the films) exclaim, “Good God, they’ve put me on steroids!” (Pope, et al.

2000:43).

Likewise, Grogan (1998) contends that the focus in art shifted from eroticized male bodies to eroticized female bodies in the mid-1800s by artists like Coubert. The eroticized female remained the norm in art until the 1980s, when idealized male bodies became particularly prominent in media. By then, nude and seminude male figures had been divested of the taboo homoerotic connotations that dominated male images for over a century. The return of the eroticized male figure coincides with Pope et al.

(2000)’s findings of increased ideal musculature in the years just before and following the re-entry of eroticized male images to the public sphere.

Media messages have been established as important factors in the development

16 of body dissatisfaction among men as well as women (Becker 2004; van den Berg, et al. 2007), and are considered to be among the top three factors in developing body image: media, peers, and parents, known as the “tripartite influence” (van den Berg, et al. 2002). Pope et al. (2000) argue that the young men they interviewed internalized these messages in a way that led them to select unattainably muscular mesoform figures as their ideals.

Pope et al. (2000) also argue that the increased drive for muscularity in men results from their need to differentiate themselves from women in a society that perceives women to be inferior to men. In this vein, they maintain that the successes of the feminist movement are, in fact, the catalysts for these behaviors. In other words, as greater numbers of women have entered the traditionally male fields, men have begun to lose many of the symbols that historically would have unquestionably asserted their status as “male.” The propagation of women in STEM fields, the medical profession as physicians and not nurses, in business as executives instead of secretaries, and even the military, has resulted in these traditionally male-dominated fields as no longer indexing masculinity. As a result, men have retreated into the one thing that women cannot “take” from them: the biologically male body with a genetically-differentiated musculature that women cannot mimic. Likewise, Bordo (2003) has made a parallel argument concerning the rise of the thin ideal in women, in that as they encroach upon

“men’s domains” they must present as even more feminine through thinness. Taylor

(2015) notes that, among high schoolers, girls are actively discouraged from gaining muscle for the very reason that boys find muscular girls threatening. With increasing gender equality, the genders are encouraged to differentiate their physical bodies in

order to continue to perform their gender roles.

Further research has replicated these findings. Leit, Gray, and Pope (2002)

found that male participants’ dissatisfaction with their bodies increased significantly after

exposure to images of muscular men. Olivardia, Pope, Borowiecki III, and Cohane

(2004) found that college men choose ideal bodies that are more muscular and less fat

than they themselves currently are. McCabe and Ricciardelli (2004) found that even

adolescent boys are focused on increasing their muscle size. In terms of prevalence

rates, 80-90% of adult American men report dissatisfaction with their musculature

(Frederick et al., 2007; Tiggemann, Martins, & Churchett, 2008; Tiggemann, Martins, &

Kirkbride, 2007). Ridgeway and Tylka (2005) found that the most important features for

men were the abs and arms, and the chest for other men (but not themselves). Those

who endorsed the lean and muscular ideal said that their chests and calves were the

areas that most affected their body satisfaction. Tiggemann et al. (2007) have come to

describe muscle dissatisfaction as a “normative discontent” for men.

These body ideals are actively reinforced in adolescents’ social worlds. In her ethnography of an American high school, Taylor (2015) noted that nearly all of the boys

to whom she spoke endorsed a lean, muscular body ideal. She also found that boys

were as competitive as girls when it came to body image. They wanted more muscular

bodies in order to take care of physical tasks, but also in order to vie for social status

and dominance. Of highest importance were “six-pack abs”—having them afforded one significant symbolic capital. Boys with six-pack abs engaged in verbal jousting about their abs, and visual jousting by lifting their shirts both to compare with each other and to show off to girls. Girls were afforded social capital by associating with boys who had

18 six-pack abs, and boys, in turn, were afforded more social capital by virtue of also having a girlfriend. Those boys who lacked muscle or were considered too fat were constantly ridiculed, with short, thin boys being called “small penis” and fat boys called

“tittie boys” and told to wear bras; in both cases, their lack of muscularity called their masculinity into question. Surprisingly, boys were actually the primary source of most body shaming discourse in this context (see also Atkinson, 2014b). Greenhalgh’s (2015) male informants reveal similar histories, with both high- and low-weight-related teasing resulting in problematic compensation behaviors, including eating pathology, substance abuse, and no longer participating in favorite activities.

It must be remembered, however, that muscularity is not the only concern men have in terms of their body image. While “muscularity and masculinity can be, and often are, conflated” (Mansfield & McGinn, 1993, p. 49), under the Western model, men seek to be both prominently muscular and lean. Fatness is actually a fear among 50% of men, according to Tiggemann et al. (2008), and was generally considered among such features as muscularity, hair, height, and penis size to be the feature about which men worried most (muscularity and height were second). In another study, Frederick et al.

(2007) found that 51-71% of men are dissatisfied with their fatness. This may have to do with the fact that fat is feminizing to Western men (Monaghan, 2014a).

Further, eating disorder diagnoses are not static. Pope et al. (2000) discusses the case of one patient who evidenced anorexic behaviors earlier in life, and once he entered high school he began to obsessively exercise. Murray, Boon, and Touyz (2014) discuss the cases of two transgender eating disorder patients who, when identifying as female endorse the thin ideal and evidence behaviors associated with anorexia, and

when identifying as male endorse the muscular ideal and evidence behaviors

associated with muscle dysmorphia. Atkinson (2014a) found that certain athletes, like

swimmers and wrestlers, may come to associate thinness with masculinity vis-à-vis the

discipline required to maintain their diet, exercise accordingly, and power through

periods of purposeful emaciation. Following Connell (2005), within any given society

there are multiple masculinities that are endorsed in hierarchical fashion. Therefore,

while the muscular ideal may be the most prominent ideal among Western men, due to

its widespread association with a “masculine” body image disorder, it is certainly not the

only form of body ideals men face, nor should it preclude others from investigation.

2.3. Body Image Across Cultures, and the Problem of “Westernization”

As has been noted above, eating disorders and body image concerns have

historically been considered disorders of women. More specifically, they have been

considered to be disorders of higher-class white women. Eating disorders have even been considered “culture-bound syndromes,” bound to the culture of white, upper-crust

femininity (Nasser, 2007; Prince, 1983; Russell, 1985). As Hruschka (2017) has

pointed out, thin female bodies are associated statistically with higher socioeconomic

status across many cultures; as a result, the association of thin female bodies with

success may have morphed thinness into a goal-schema (D'Andrade, 1995; Dressler,

Oths, Balieiro, Ribeiro, & Dos Santos, 2012) for socioeconomic mobility and success.

When the association of “thin” with “rich” solidified, and because “rich” is associated with

“white,” the false conclusion of eating disorders as an issue of white women is, at least

historically, understandable. Because of the visibility of white women in media (Bordo,

2003), discourses that exclude nonwhite nonwomen from mental illness diagnoses

(Becker et al., 2010), assumptions of the universality of psychiatric phenomena

(Anderson-Fye, 2011), and the difficulty of translating materials reliably and validly across cultures (King & Bhugra, 1989; Le Grange et al., 2004), the studies of body

image and eating disorders across cultures are often methodologically limited and

epistemologically problematic.

The association of body image concerns and eating disorders with white women

persisted, in large part, until the mid-1990s, and is largely based in the aforementioned concept of body image and eating disorders as culture-bound syndromes. Nasser

(2007) explains, “the culture-boundedness/ specificity of eating pathology stood first on the assumption that societal mandates regarding thinness were rooted in western cultural values and conflicts, and was… based on epidemiologic evidence, i.e. the absence of sufficient published data to confirm their occurrence in non-Western cultures and societies” (294). In other words, the data did not exist to support the notion that eating disorders existed anywhere outside of the Western world. Because researchers could not find eating disorders across cultures, it was assumed that they did not exist, and were therefore Western culture-bound syndromes. However, S. Lee (2004) attributes the lack of findings about eating disorders across cultures to the fact that,

“with rare exceptions, research on eating disorders in the last few decades has ‘flirted with’ culture in a superficial way…[it] pays lots of lip service to culture but remains intellectually unexciting, if not stagnant, as far as ‘culture’ is concerned” (617).

Methodologically speaking, body image and eating disorders research in general has been limited by the treatment of “cultures” as mere nominal variables.

Generally, the Westernization model dominates discourse, and as such data tend

to be interpreted through the lens of the exportation of Western body ideals. While

research that only nominally considers culture ultimately misses the full breadth of

precursors, processes of internalization, lived experience, and consequences of body

ideals, the data they gather are not outright wrong. They are worthy of serious

consideration, but nonetheless should be taken with caution.

Overall, studies of body image and eating disorders in men across cultures

suggest that body dissatisfaction is on the uptick around the world, and it is mainly

related to concerns about muscularity. Frederick et al. (2007) found that 69% of

Ukrainian men and 49% of Ghanaian men (versus 90% of American men) wanted to be more muscular. McCabe, Fotu, and Dewes (2011) documented intense muscle

dissatisfaction among Fijian and Tongan boys. Raevuori et al. (2006) report that almost

30% of Finnish men between the ages of 22-27 are very dissatisfied with their

musculature. Valls, Bonvin, and Chabrol (2013) report that 85 % of male university

students in France report some level of dissatisfaction with their musculature. S. Lee,

Leung, Lee, Yu, and Leung (1996) noted that Chinese men experience muscle

dissatisfaction, and the drive for muscularity has been found in other studies of Chinese

men (Mellor et al., 2014; Xu et al., 2010), although it has also been disputed whether

Chinese men are actually more strongly driven toward thinness (Chen & Jackson, 2008) or even experience body dissatisfaction at all (Yang, Gray, & Pope, 2005). Generally, body dissatisfaction about muscles is found across cultures, but less than among

Western populations.

However, when studies of eating disorders are performed outside of the West (or even just outside of Anglophone contexts; Holmqvist Gattario et al., 2015), they are

often beset by the problematic assumption that body image and eating disorders would

appear in the same way everywhere and at all times. In other words, researchers

assume that eating disorders only occur if the DSM criteria—again, developed based on

information gleaned largely from interactions with white Western women—are met.

However, S. Lee, Ho, and Hsu (1993) documented the appearance of a form of anorexia among women in Hong Kong that did not fit DSM criteria. While these women refused food and had amenorrhea, fear of fatness was almost nonexistent. Rather than fear of fatness, women in Hong Kong blamed loss of appetite for their unwillingness to eat. While fear of fatness resides in the popular Western imaginary as probably the most significant attribution of eating disorders (contributing to the stigma against its sufferers as being vain), Chinese women found fatness to be of little concern. S. Lee et

al. (1993) coined this phenomenon as “non-fat phobic” anorexia. Ultimately, the example of “non-fat phobic” anorexia shows that body image and eating disorders may appear in differently across cultures, and without proper attention to cultural difference and its meaning phenomena are bound to be overlooked. Paralleling the underrepresentation of men in body image and eating disorders research, the underrepresentation of sufferers in non-Western cultures may be an artefact of not

looking for the right signs.

The underrepresentation of non-Western cultures in the eating disorders

research may also be an artefact of not asking the right questions. It has already been

suggested that psychometric tools for evaluating body image and eating disorders in

men underestimate prevalence rates due to the inappropriateness of the questions. The

same concern holds true in cross-cultural research as well.

Le Grange et al. (2004) provides an example in which an uncritical use of

psychometric tools validated on WEIRD women were found to be invalid among black

South African women, calling into question years of replicated research. In their study,

respondents’ answers indicated sky-high levels among black South African women,

which had previously not been found. Upon conducting post-test interviews, however,

they found that the EAT-26—untranslated—was inappropriate for measuring eating pathology among this population. Often, respondents could not understand the questions, as they were in English rather than their native Zulu. In this case, respondents reported marking random answers. However, those who could understand the questions still did not answer the questionnaire in expected ways. For example, the questions “I find myself preoccupied with food” and “I feel that others would prefer if I ate more” referenced feelings associated with self-starvation behaviors; to the South

African schoolgirls the questions referenced the inaccessibility of consistent, nourishing meals and the subsequent—unintentional—starvation due to their poverty. Further, “I have the impulse to vomit after meals” was interpreted by the investigators to indicate bulimic behaviors. However, to the South African girls it referenced the fact that when food was available they ate so much that they made themselves sick, not knowing the next time they would be able to eat. In other words, rather than indicating high levels of eating pathology, respondents’ answers to the questionnaire often reflected high levels of poverty.

These two studies exhibit two different ways in which the lack of attention to culture resulted in researchers missing crucial information. S. Lee et al. (1993) showed that psychiatrists and epidemiologists would have overlooked people suffering from

24 anorexia nervosa merely because Chinese patients often did not have fear of fatness.

On the other hand, Le Grange et al. (2004) showed that researchers could misinterpret responses, overestimate prevalence rates, and miss connections to larger social issues when validity checks are neglected. The problematic assumption that eating disorders are culture-bound illnesses among white, Western women has therefore been problematized by the findings that (a) the disorder can appear differently in different cultures, and (b) the symptoms of eating disorders can have multiple meanings across cultural groups.

Another problematic aspect of the conceptualization of body image and eating disorders as Western culture-bound syndromes has been the assumption that eating disorders occur alongside the exportation of body ideals from the West. Lester (2004) argues that the Westernization hypothesis relies on the idea that body image and eating disorders across cultures are evidence of and explanations for their culture- boundedness, and is therefore invalid. In other words, body image and eating disorders

“appearing” in non-Western cultural groups is taken as proof of the Westernization hypothesis because they are Western culture-bound syndromes, even though they appear in non-Western cultures. Yet, this is done without taking into consideration the culturally informed idiosyncrasies of their etiologies across space and time. As Lester

(2004) notes, “the appearance of similar clusters of behaviors in different contexts need not necessarily imply a similar phenomenology” (612).

While it cannot be ignored that body image and eating disorders do seem to appear in the wake of the introduction of Western media, the uptake of Western body ideals is neither uniform, nor homogenizing, nor guaranteed. As already noted, S. Lee

25 et al.’s (1993) subjects endorsed an indigenous thin ideal without including fear of fatness within their symptom repertoire of anorexia. In South Korea, women reported internalization of the thin ideal at even higher levels than Western women (Ko & Cohen,

1998). In Fiji, women’s body ideals shifted from robust bodies to thin bodies in the years immediately following the introduction of television, and the rate of bulimia skyrocketed.

However, thin bodies were thought to be neither attractive nor taken care of. Rather, they were a means to the end of gainful employment in Fiji’s rapidly modernizing economy (Becker, 1994, 1995, 2004b; Becker, Burwell, Gilman, Herzog, & Hamburg,

2002). In Japan, thinness was part and parcel of the indigenous ideal of kawaii

(cuteness), and its pursuit was best understood as a questioning of the adult Japanese female gender role of self-sacrifice for the elevation of her husband and son (Pike &

Borovoy, 2004). In Belize, in spite of the prevalence of Western media and a pervasive beauty pageant culture, the thin ideal was outright rejected in favor of an indigenous

“Coca-Cola” shape. Among Belizeans, disordered eating behaviors were only endorsed by women whose income came from the tourism industry and relied on their ability to attract American tourists to their businesses; regardless, they did not personally endorse the Western thin ideal (Anderson-Fye, 2003, 2004). Anderson-Fye (2004) claims to be an “ethnographic veto” of the Westernization model of body image and eating disorders.

With these data in mind, Pike and Dunne (2015) argue that the appearance of body image and eating disorders worldwide is better understood as the result of modernization than Westernization, concepts which are related but not synonymous.

They argue that changing body ideals and eating disorders are rather “driven by the

26 processes of industrialization and urbanization occurring independently from, or in tandem with, ‘western’ influence. These transformations include fundamental shifts in population demographics, food supply, global economies, gender roles, and the traditional family structure” (2). In other words, “Westernization”—the imposition of

“Western” ideals on a non-Western cultural group—itself is an insufficient explanation for the rise of eating disorders across cultures. Rather, “modernization”—the much broader changes in economic, demographic, gastronomic, social, and structural factors associated with industrialization and urbanization—is a better theoretical framework.

These terms are not synonymous because while modernization invites Western influence, it is not predicated on the uncritical adoption of Western ways of being. While modernization provides the economic and other structural opportunities to more fully engage with Western culture, it also provides opportunities to build up indigenous cultural forms.

They further suggest that, rather than conceptualizing body image and eating disorders as “culture-bound,” they are better thought of “as culture-reactive, whereby certain cultural contexts result in social and environmental changes that increase risk for

[eating disorders]” (9). Pike and Dunne (2015)’s concept of “culture-reactivity” therefore affords the flexibility of diagnosis without arguing for complete cultural relativity.

Considering the cultural variability of body ideals, Anderson-Fye et al. (2017) conducted a multi-sited ethnographic field study of body attitudes among Belizean,

Jamaican, and Nepali men and women. While noting that there were common themes of valuing visible muscularity among men, cultural conceptions of ideal male bodies varied widely. According to their interviews, the ideal body for Belizean men was bulky

and had muscle definition; Jamaican men were expected to have flat stomachs and

well-defined chests and upper arms; and Nepali men were expected to be lithe and slender.

However, there was also significant intracultural variation. In Nepal, there were regional and class differences in male ideals, with robustness being valued in the rural highlands as enabling one to work, and devalued in the cities as it was associated with laziness and made one unable to take public transportation. Further, working on the body was considered more important in the lower classes, while character and “mental self-discipline” were more highly valued by the (upper-class) university students (75). In

Belize, although men reported a strong drive for large muscles, women often reported preferring chubbier men due to association of them with character traits like gentleness, tenderness, being caring, and being less vain. Both genders also recognized the provider dynamic, nothing that “wallets and ‘good jobs’ can make up for waistlines” (63).

In Jamaica, while flat stomachs were considered the male ideal and women reported that they found fat men unattractive, men typically did not feel pressured to lose their bellies. Further, like the Belizeans, having the resources to be the provider gave them a

“waist allowance” in which a “good wallet” could stand in for a “good body” (67).

Dressler et al. (2012) noted a similar traditional value among Brazilians about stomachs referencing the size of one’s wallet, but recognized that it was giving way to body ideals concerned with male fitness.

Across cultures, ideal body images vary both in kind and in meaning. Assuming uniformity in experience runs the risk of overlooking important details that contextualize data and inform evaluations of validity. While body image and eating disorders occur

around the world, researchers must pay attention to cultural particularities in order to

understand how local meanings affect the internalization of bodily ideals and the

compensatory behaviors used to achieve them.

2.4. South Korean Body Image

As the previous two sections have noted, men and non-Westerners are

underrepresented in the body image literature. It is therefore important to study male

body image across cultures to understand both the breadth of the variability in body

images and the local meanings that affect body dissatisfaction and the course of eating

disorders. Very little is known about South Korean men’s body image. Few

psychometric studies have been published investigating body dissatisfaction among

Korean men, and the main body of research into South Korean male body ideals has

been generally etic. Insofar as South Korean men constitute two understudied groups

and prominently value a male body image that seems to run counter to the worldwide

drive for muscularity, they are an excellent candidate for anthropological exploration into

male body ideals.

So far, only one study has compared the body image experiences of Korean

men, Korean women, American men, and American women, finding culture- and

gender-mediated differences in body dissatisfaction: girls were more dissatisfied with their bodies than boys, and Koreans were more dissatisfied with their bodies than

Americans. Relative to one another, Korean women were the least satisfied with their bodies, followed by American women, followed by Korean men, followed by American men (J. Jung et al., 2009). This finding is consistent with previous work suggesting that

American women express less body dissatisfaction than Korean women (J. Jung &

Forbes, 2006, 2007). Interestingly, native Korean women living in South Korea have

also been found to be more dissatisfied with their bodies than Korean American women

living in the United States (Ko & Cohen, 1998), suggesting that the South Korean body image ideal is actually more stringent than that of the United States, which is still considered to be high by the rest of the world’s standards. This is made all the more interesting and complicated when it is considered that, although the difference between

American women and Korean men in terms of the drive for thinness was statistically significant, it was less than the intra-cultural variation by gender—in a sense, the ideal thinness as reported by Korean men in this study does not differ greatly from the ideal thinness of American women (J. Jung et al., 2009), which is considerably thin.

The high drive for thinness in Korean men, especially as compared to American men whose body image concerns are predicted to be in greater accordance with the

Adonis complex and its drive for muscularity, should call into question the notion of

“Westernization” as driving change in body image sensibilities. J. Jung et al. (2009) only predicted higher body dissatisfaction in Korean men as compared to American men, and assumed it would follow the pattern seen in the West, based on feminist theory that describes the rapidity of sociocultural change as predictive of body dissatisfaction.

South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world post-Korean War, yet is now, sixty years later, one of the most developed (Schwekendiek & Jun, 2010). The modernization hypothesis would predict that Koreans would have higher levels of body dissatisfaction, so their hypothesis made sense. However, they barely acknowledged the high drive for thinness among Korean men, and did not contextualize their findings.

Regarding women’s body image, Holliday and Elfving-Hwang (2012) explain that

the seemingly Western tendencies in Korean women’s body image (e.g., bigger eyes

and more angular faces)—almost ironic when considered from a post-colonial perspective—can be seen as just as much an embrace of Western beauty ideals as it is a rejection of colonial Japanese standards of beauty. Holliday and Elfving-Hwang

(2012) further argue that the “Westernization/ Whitening” discourse fails because popular procedures in South Korea are either also very popular among white women

(blepharoplasty)—questioning whether a procedure can be “whitening” for white women—or extremely popular only in South Korea (double-jaw surgery)—questioning whether cosmetic surgery at large is really a process of Westernization. Cosmetic surgeons Baek, Kim, Tokunaga, and Bindiger (1989) argue that Asians who request blepharoplasty do it to make their faces consonant with local notions of beauty rather than Western ones, noting that “the patient wants folds that are well defined but not too high (as one might make them in order to imitate the Caucasian eye)” (241). Recently,

Leem (2016a) has argued that many Korean plastic surgeons actively oppose surgery that makes Koreans look more white, considering the aesthetic to be “cheap looking”

(43). Positioning South Koreans as passive receptacles of hegemonic bodily ideals ignores their agency and serves to obscure culture-specific meanings of and motivations for achieving ideal body images (Leem, 2016b; Pitts-Taylor, 2007).

Likewise, adherence to the thin ideal in Korean men should be considered the psychometric manifestation of the popularity of the kkonminam in Korean media, rather than an imported ideal. Kkonminam translates to “beautiful flower boy,” and refers to the

“soft” image portrayed by the young men in Korean dramas and manhwa (cartoons).

The kkonminam is characterized by softer jaws, double eyelids, prominent noses,

31 defined pectoral and bicep muscles, and an overall smooth and hairless body (Holliday

& Elfving-Hwang, 2012; S. Jung, 2011; Maliangkay, 2013). Holliday and Elfving-Hwang

(2012) characterize the move toward a kkonminam aesthetic as a feminization-by-

Western-standards of men motivated by newly empowered women. S. Jung (2011) argues that this “new man” was formed in the wake of the South Korea’s 1997

International Monetary Fund crisis, in which traditional gender roles situating men as providers were upended. Through economic self-sufficiency and a skewed gender ratio in their favor, Korean women have fashioned a male body ideal that symbolizes a desire to have a satisfying relationship with one’s wife more than with one’s business associates (Holliday and Elfving-Hwang 2012). This coincided with the rapid shift in

Korean understandings of the body as a fixed, biological family asset and the seat of one’s filial piety to an individualized, alterable medium for expressing one’s subjectivity

(E.-S. Kim, 2009).

In both music and film, the kkonminam is a symbol of a man who can love and protect his partner. Being attractive to women and considered a physical manifestation of upper-class masculinity that affords one social and professional respect (Holliday and

Elfving-Hwang 2012; Lim 2008), many Korean men find it an important body ideal to which they should aspire, especially in a professional culture that requires headshots along with resumes and considers physiognomy—or the equation of facial traits with personality traits—in hiring decisions. According to Ahn (2015), beauty culture is as important for men as it is for women, because it is associated with cosmopolitanism and transnational mobility. Brewis, Han, and SturtzSreetharan (2017) found that rates of depression rose with BMI in Korean women and men, indicating that Korean men also

32 experience fat phobia (if not necessarily fat stigma; Anderson-Fye, personal communication). S.-G. Kim, Yun, and Kim (2016) found that while only males were bullied for being overweight, socioeconomic status affected the likelihood of being the victim of relational aggression, which suggests that fatness in South Korea may have more of a connotation with social status than with morality (as it does in the U.S.).

Further, celebrities are often valorized for the discipline they purportedly employ in dramatic weight loss. In one example, Xiumin, a member of a popular boy band indicated that he lost a great deal of weight, now weighing less than 60 kgs (133 lbs) from not eating and working hard during rehearsal. In another example, T.O.P., another member of a popular boy band, was reported to have lost 20 kgs in 40 days on the suggestion of his manager, which he accomplished through excessive exercise and a diet of red bean jelly and water (Y. Jung, 2013), and his band mates frequently make jokes about his discomfort with his body. Yet other “behind the scenes” video content depict male K-Pop singers lamenting their lack of double eyelids, bragging about self- starvation, running in place to “be thin,” and speaking disparagingly of their faces as puffy “like bread.” In other words, indigenous media may encourage body dissatisfaction and fat talk (Nichter, 2000) among men in ways as of yet unstudied.

As Choi (2005) notes, media messages are extremely pervasive in the lives of

South Koreans, and they are often seen to mimic everything television stars do, from fashion and hairstyles to modes of speech. K. B. Kim (2014) argues that the media and

Internet heavily influence conceptions of a “socially correct” appearance among South

Koreans (291), and that Koreans are more likely than Americans to consider discrepancies between ideal bodies and their own bodies as related to lack of resources

33 rather than biological inability. It is clear, then, that South Koreans are strongly affected by media messages and peer perceptions. Therefore, it is likely that their body images are informed by media and reinforced through interactions that value thinness and high socioeconomic status in men. As a result, it is hypothesized that Korean male body ideals will reflect the popular kkonminam aesthetic.

2.5. Conclusion

Historically, body image and eating disorders research have focused largely on white, Western women. While Western women statistically suffer from these issues with more frequency than any other population (as far as we know), they also occur in women and men across the world. The dearth of research at the other intersections of human experience constitute a serious gap in our knowledge of how body image and eating disorders manifest, how they can be treated, and how they can be prevented.

As rates of body image and eating disorders rise all over the world, it is important to study body image to understand the body ideals to which people aspire. Many disciplines, especially psychology, have offered powerful tools for researching and combating these deadly disorders. However, among other non-American cultural groups the ethnocentrism of the tools makes their data problematic at best. Because body dissatisfaction increases the likelihood that one develops an eating disorder, and because of body image and eating disorders’ high mortality rates, researchers need to be able to account for gender and cultural differences in the experience of body image.

Effective research cannot be performed with tools that underestimate prevalence rates in some groups and are interpreted differently in others. Systematic methods are needed that will evaluate the emic validity of psychometric tools and offer culturally

sensitive improvements as necessary.

Cognitive anthropology offers scientifically reliable and emically valid tools for investigators to use to understand body image—what the ideals look like, and what features of them are especially important in that cultural context—from the perspective

of the people in question. Because body image is individually held but culturally

patterned, methods are needed that give researchers the flexibility to consider individual

variation in body image. Cultural domain analysis allows for the systematic investigation

of these models, leading to much more accurate and culturally meaningful data, that

also leaves the potential for investigations of the subjective experience of individuals in

a cultural group (Borgatti, 1999).

CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH POPULATIONS AND SETTING

3.1. Introduction

This chapter explains the rationale for using American and native South Korean

students at the University of Alabama. While studies of psychological import have been

widely criticized for attempting to draw universalizing conclusions from college and

university populations that tend to be WEIRD (Henrich et al., 2010), the problem with university samples is not that university samples are bad, in and of themselves. Rather, the problem lies, in part, in studies’ lack of attention to the contexts in which their participants operate. In fact, important anthropological work has been conducted on university populations, such as Holland (1992)’s and Eisenhart (1990)’s studies of cultural models of romance among college women, or Henderson and Dressler’s (in press) work on stigma related to cultural models of addiction causality among a population particularly exposed to substance abuse. The difference between non- anthropological and anthropological work on college and university populations, then, is that anthropologists are careful to be clear about the limitations of their findings, and are often explicit about how individuals’ life stories contribute to the variation in their results.

In other words, an anthropological lens contextualizes the data and explicitly recognizes the limits of their generalizability. Therefore, this chapter justifies the use of male and female American and native South Korean students at the University of Alabama by reviewing the contexts in which their body images may be formed.

It must be remembered that this study is not one of personal opinions or feelings about American and South Korean male body images, but of the shared and distributed cultural models of the ideal male body images within a particular cultural group. In other words, it does not seek to describe individuals’ own personal experiences of male body image, but of what they know the ideal male body image to be. Because both men and women are engaged in the production, reproduction, internalization, and embodiment of male body images, men’s and women’s perspectives are integral to developing emically valid cultural models of ideal bodies. The following sections will expand briefly on women’s roles in the production and reproduction of male body images through personal relationships and media representations of male bodies, while linking them to larger sociocultural and historical themes.

3.2. Americans

Anderson-Fye et al. (2017) argues that anthropological studies of body image among college students are highly appropriate because college students are a population for which body image is particularly salient. She notes that college students are an upwardly mobile population, “by definition in profound social transition” (55), which has been argued by Pike and Dunne (2015) to be one of the major risk factors for body image and eating disorders. Further, the stresses of finding romantic partners and gainful employment during and after college have been shown to increase attention to body image (Anderson-Fye et al., 2017; Eisenhart, 1990; Holland, 1992; Hruschka,

2017). Finally, Anderson-Fye et al. (2017) argues that college students’ social worlds encourage the consumption of media, technology, and messages about ideal bodies

(Anderson-Fye & Floersch, 2011), and are therefore particularly vulnerable to stressors

37 that can lead to unhealthy relationships with the body image. Because they sit at the

nexus of these pressures, college students are actually excellent candidates for

anthropological studies of body ideals.

American college students were chosen both for their accessibility and for the fact that they are the most studied group in psychological research. Because of their distinctive presence in the literature of body image, the “American” (particularly, white

American) experience of body image is well understood relative to the vast majority of other cultural groups. As has been already noted, white American women tend to be the group upon whom most of the psychometric tools in use today have been developed and validated, but men’s experience of body image have been studied using these tools as well.

As was previously mentioned, studies that tend to rely on WEIRD university students are problematic, in part, because this particular population’s behaviors cannot be uncritically generalized as representative of Americans, Westernerns, or humanity- at-large. However, these studies are not problematic only in trying to generalize beyond a limited subset of the human experience. Rather, they also fail to look critically inward at the population being studied. These issues are two sides of the same coin: researchers cannot assume that all humans behave as WEIRD university students do, but researchers also rarely look at WEIRD university students as a distinct social group worthy of study in their own right, with their own cultural construction of the world.

Criticisms of WEIRD studies are predicated on that fact, yet emically oriented studies of

WEIRD men and women in which their WEIRD-ness is an important feature are few and far between.

In this study, Americans are used as a quasi-control group. This is not done to privilege their experience of body image, nor does it establish the American body image as the norm from which Korean body image may deviate. Rather, it recognizes that

American body image has been privileged in the literature; therefore, a good deal of information is known about American body image, and the results of this study can be compared against a much wider body of knowledge.

American college life is marked by, and even centered on, romance, sexuality, and “hooking up” (Bogle, 2008; England, Shafer, & Fogarty, 2008; Paul, McManus, &

Hayes, 2000; Sweeney, 2013, 2014b). Both Eisenhart (1990) and Holland (1992) have explored how women “learn to romance” in university, finding that women’s bodies were the main medium through which they gained social status. Men, on the other hand, had multiple modes of gaining social status, including money, athletics, and academics.

Later work by Bogle (2008), however, suggests that body capital is also becoming important for college men in navigating relationships. This makes sense in light of the increased visibility of the male body (Grogan, 1998; Pope, Olivardia, Borowiecki III, &

Cohane, 2001), and increased recognition of women as serious scholars (cf. Pope et al., 2000). Further, a male collegian’s ability to “hook up” has a direct effect on how he is perceived as a masculine subject, especially among fraternity men (Sweeney, 2013,

2014a, 2014b). As body image affects college men’s ability to accrue social capital, they may be under considerable pressure to exhibit the ideal male body image themselves.

Because consensual heterosexual “hookups” and relationships require assessments of

(at the very least) non-repulsion, and because these assessments will be based, at least in part, on cultural models of ideal male bodies, both men and women can be

expected to be to be able to identify their features.

In a larger sense, the generation currently in university is “the first generation raised in a world obsessed with the ‘crisis of childhood obesity’” (Greenhalgh, 2015, p.

13). Not only have they, through ubiquitous media and social networking technologies, been constantly exposed to images of ideal male and female bodies through their entire lives; they have also been inundated with public health messages that have ultimately positioned individuals with fat bodies as physically disgusting, medically unfit, and morally compromised. Because of messages pitting good “thin, fit biocitizens” against discursively unpatriotic fat subjects,

fat stigma today is so severe that fat people are often treated as not quite human. Not only is it acceptable to abuse them, but they are seen to deserve such treatment because they are deviant and bad people who harm the rest of us. Fatness today is a mark of shame so discrediting and life- diminishing that people will go to extraordinary extremes to eliminate it (Greenhalgh, 2015, p. 22; emphasis original).

In other words, current college students have been brought up with messages that

position fat people as Other, as enemy. While fat stigma has been shown to be not only

ineffective at reversing the rising tide of obesity, but actually counterproductive (Puhl &

Heuer, 2009), it is nonetheless integral to American college students’ conceptions of body image. As a result, American male college students are motivated to pursue lean and muscular bodies through the carrot of social capital and the stick of abjection, and

will go to great lengths in order to achieve them.

3.3. South Koreans

Native South Korean students studying at the University of Alabama were

chosen due to their accessibility, and a literature suggesting that South Korean men

ascribe to a different set of body image features than American men do. Namely, the

celebrated male images to which South Koreans tend to be exposed depict men as

“either slim or athletic, always well-groomed and dressed, modest and courteous in

demeanour [sic], and cosmopolitan” (Maliangkay & Song, 2015, 164). This type of male image is known as the kkonminam, which translates to “beautiful flower boy.” Although often described as “feminine” (e.g., Lim, 2008), Maliangkay (2013) has suggested that

the trend toward male grooming, attention to fashion, and consumption of cosmetics

and cosmetic surgery be seen as a valorization of “beauty” rather than “effeminacy.”

While “beauty” evokes an image that is softer than “handsome,” he argues, it does not

imply that modern South Korean male body ideals emasculate men. According to Lim

(2008), it is masculine by definition, since it is what men are expected to do. In a sense,

embracing the “soft masculinity” (S. Jung, 2011) of the kkonminam projects masculinity

through conspicuous consumption and a pursuit of modernity (S.-Y. Kim, 2013). Men

who can achieve the look can do so because they have achieved the material success

to access luxuries like fashion, cosmetics, and exercise.

Further, the use of these male images in media and marketing directed at women

constructs images of ideal partners for women and paragons of social status for men.

Maliangkay (2013) describes how male models in South Korea are often used to market

products, such as makeup and even bras, to women. Further, the images of male

romantic interests (and ideal partners) in Korean dramas—again, directed to women (Y.

Kim, 2005)—are co-constructed with these women fans (Y. Kim, 2013a), and are almost

exclusively represented by the kkonminam. Y. Kim (2013b) argues that these constructions of masculinity actually afford women an imaginary sense of empowerment

41 in an otherwise traditional Confucian society. In fact, Di Moia (2013) notes that couples often undergo blepharoplasty together. In any case, South Korean women have a strong sense of what the South Korean ideal male body look like, and use their quickly growing social and economic power to pressure men to conform to these ideals (Y. Kim,

2013b).

One obvious criticism of using native South Korean students at an American university is the potential for acculturation to American body ideals based on exposure to American body discourse. However, entering an environment with different body ideals than one’s natal group does not necessarily entail losing sight of the body ideals with which one grew up. According to the tripartite influence model of body image and eating disorders (van den Berg, Thompson, Obremski-Brandon, & Coovert, 2002), parents, peers, and media are the three major factors that contribute to body image development. As Greenhalgh (2015) notes, Asian parents tend to retain body image ideals from their native cultures, and encourage their children to fall in accordance with them. This is true even as there is dissonance between parents’ ideals and the ideals of their current cultural environment. While Confucian ideals positioning individuals’ bodies as the seat of filial piety—to be used for the betterment of the family—are changing (E.-

S. Kim, 2009), South Korean parents still exert significant control over their children’s bodies. To ensure that their children are competitive in a culture that ties body capital to competence, South Korean parents have been known to devote significant percentages of their income to cosmetic surgery (Ho, 2012) and growth hormone therapy

(Schwekendiek, Yeo, & Ulijaszek, 2013) to improve their children’s looks and stature. In this sample, the parents of all the participants either currently live in South Korea, or

recently moved from South Korea to the United States for work.

In university, peers may be an even more important source of body image ideals due to the ubiquity of their presence relative to parents. While the heavy influence of peers in university would seem to problematize their use in a study of South Korean body ideals, Abelmann (2009) importantly notes that South Korean students at

American universities tend to self-segregate. Because of variously subtle and overt rejection from white students, as well as the comfort of a common language and cultural reference with other South Koreans, they tend to form peer groups with other South

Koreans and East Asians in their university communities (see also, Fong, 2011). While

the boundaries are porous (I, a white, male graduate student, was welcomed to South

Korean events), they are also protective against a social environment that ranges from

apathetic to hostile. Further, social media allows for yuhaksaeng (South Korean

students studying abroad) to keep in constant contact with their peers back home (Park,

2013; Sung, 2013). As a result, South Korean students are never fully, or even strongly,

disconnected from their natal culture. Overall, both a strong connection to their home

culture and a lack of full immersion in their host culture suggests that their peer groups

may, in fact, serve to retrench South Korean cultural models of the ideal male body

among them.

According to the tripartite influence model, media is the third major factor that

people draw upon when developing their body images. Obviously, coming to the United

States immerses one in American media. However, several issues complicate the

pathway from “dominant images” to “dominating imaginary.” First is the idea that South

Koreans would not be exposed to American media prior to landing in the United States.

Putting aside the fact that the globalization of American media is the very crux on which

the Westernization hypothesis of eating disorders development is based, South

Koreans have been exposed to American media since at least before the Korean War.

Moreover, it has only grown since the establishment of social media. Second,

Anderson-Fye (2003) notes that body image ideals are not necessarily internalized immediately upon the arrival of foreign media; rather, ethnopsychologies have the potential to mediate which features are ignored and which are adopted, if at all. Third, it

has been noted that South Koreans are particularly attached to their popular culture

because its images are familiar, its messages reflect their values, and it represents

male Asians as multifaceted characters (Y. Kim, 2013a), while in the rare event of Asian men’s representation in American media, they tend to appear as either wimpy nerds or asexualized stoics (Fung, 2005). Further, South Koreans living in the United States tend to go to Korean language websites before any others when looking for anything from entertainment to medical advice (e.g., Grinker et al., 2015). In other words, exposure to

American cultural images does not inevitably lead to personally endorsing American ideals over their natal ones (Anderson-Fye, 2004), especially because South Koreans

have such easy access to South Korean media.

As students at an American university, South Koreans will be exposed to

American media and messages about the American ideal body. However, exposure to

these messages is not novel to them, nor does the pervasiveness of American media

mean that they will be unable to consume South Korean media. Moreover, even if

foreign cultural models are internalized, it does not necessitate that natal cultural

models are forgotten (e.g., Trainer, 2017). Most psychologists agree that body images

are formed by age seven (Brown & Slaughter, 2011; Takana, 2006), and all of the South

Korean participants migrated to the United States years after that. Further, it is possible

to be competent in multiple models simultaneously (Strauss, 1990), such that South

Korean students should be able to draw upon the model of the ideal South Korean male

body even if they personally endorse the “American” ideal. In summary, exposure to

American cultural models does not compromise the validity of this sample.

3.4. University of Alabama

The University of Alabama is a large, public university located in Tuscaloosa,

Alabama. Tuscaloosa has an estimated population of 98,332 people, of whom 53.8% identify as white alone, and 1.8% identify as Asian alone (United States Census Bureau,

2017). At the University of Alabama itself, white students comprise 84.1% of undergraduate and 70.6% of graduate students, while Asian students comprise 2.3% and 2.1%, respectively. “Non-resident alien” students comprise 2.3% and 11.9% of undergraduate and graduate students, respectively (Office of Institutional Research &

Assessment, 2017). In Fall 2016, a total of 69 South Korean students (international and permanent residents inclusive) were enrolled in graduate, undergraduate, and English

Language Institute programs (Wang, 2017).

At the University of Alabama, 11,220 students are involved in 62 Greek-letter

organizations, comprising 36% of the student population. These numbers include

traditionally white (Alabama Panhellenic Association and Inter-Fraternity Council), historically black (National Pan-Hellenic Association), and multicultural and special interest (Alabama Greek United Council) Greek-letter organizations. Of these, the most prestigious are the Alabama Panhellenic Association (APA) and Inter-Fraternity Council

(IFC) sororities and fraternities which, until recently, were effectively segregated.

Nonetheless, they are still heavily skewed white: 97% of APA sorority members are white, while less than 1% are Asian; 98% of IFC fraternity members are white, while less than 1% are Asian. A smaller percentage of members have “Non-resident alien” status, but ethnicities are not reported (Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life, 2017). In other words, social life at the University of Alabama is dominated by images of white students near the top. While Asian students are engaged at all levels of the University and have non-Korean and non-Asian friends and acquaintances, they constitute a generally underassimilated and underrepresented minority within the greater University social sphere.

3.5. Conclusion

In conclusion, American and South Korean students at the University of Alabama constitute an appropriate population on which to perform a study of cultural models of body image. As university students, they are engaged in an environment intended to facilitate class reproduction and mobility. Further, university students often feel pressure to enter relationships and “hookup.” Both of these pressures are known to cause men and women to pay particular attention to their and each others’ bodies. Additionally,

South Korean students remain highly engaged with their native media even while overseas, and should be able to draw upon their native models of ideal male bodies even if they have personally come to endorse American ideals.

CHAPTER 4

THEORETICAL APPROACH

4.1. Introduction

One of the perennial problems of cross-cultural research is the issue of emic validity in the constructs being analyzed. Emic validity refers to the cultural relevance of an analytical framework, as opposed to the etic, or outsider, perspective that tends to

look for general themes and ignore cultural particularity. In other words, cross-cultural research is often performed without attention to whether the framework of the data being collected is “psychologically real” to population under study (Spradley, 1972).

Constructs that are highly salient in one cultural group may be differently meaningful, or entirely lack meaning, in another. It is therefore important to understand the cultural contexts in which phenomena—like body image and eating disorders—occur on a much deeper level than just the nominal variables so frequently given for their analysis (S.

Lee, 2004; Lester, 2004). Considering the study of body image through the frame of ethnopsychology, this chapter explores seminal work done in psychological anthropology that underscores the necessity of culturally-sensitive study designs in body image research. It then covers issues of reliability and replicability in ethnography.

Finally, it suggests ways in which the approach to culture of cognitive anthropology provides data that is satisfying to anthropologists and operationalizable across disciplines.

4.2. Ethnopsychology…

Anthropology is a field of study uniquely poised to undertake the important task

of understanding the ways in which culture interacts with body image. Cultural

anthropologists’ analytical framework of ethnography requires a deep understanding of

the cultural contexts in which phenomena occur, studying how phenomena are

understood and navigated in peoples’ everyday lives. Ethnopsychology, or the concept

of “indigenous modes of constituting persons, selves and experience” (White, 1992, p.

21), is the dominant framework with which body image is investigated in anthropology.

Because of “thick” ethnographic contextualization, anthropological work has

effectively exposed the ways in which culture affects the uptake of messages about

ideal bodies. For example, Anderson-Fye (2004) showed that Belizean schoolgirls

rejected Western models of ideal bodies. Instead, they endorsed a curvy body ideal

known as a “Coca-Cola” shape, finding the comparatively “flat” models in American

magazines to be unattractive. Further, emic understandings of the body position the

body as God-given and not subject to change; however, if one did not naturally have a

“Coca-Cola” shape, it was perfectly legitimate to pad to achieve it. Because pursuing

the “thin ideal”—through exercise, eating disorders, whatever—would require the

rejection of a strong ethnopsychology known as “never leave yourself,” the thin ideal

had little impact on the San Andres community (Anderson-Fye, 2003, 2004). Recently, however, the narrative has begun to shift in response to increased upward mobility and the requirement for thin female bodies in professional environments (Anderson-Fye et al., 2017).

Becker (2004b) found that Fijians quickly began to endorse thin bodies as ideal,

48 despite recently identifying strongly as a “fat-loving” culture (Becker, 1994, 1995). Within three years of the introduction of television, the rates of purging behaviors increased from non-existent to concerning (Becker et al., 2002). However, thin bodies were not seen as attractive (robust bodies were still desirable); rather, they were seen as empowering. Fijian girls reported wanting to be strong like Xena in Xena: Warrior

Princess, and wanted access to luxury like the girls in 90210. Importantly, however, thin bodies also are understood to be bodies that are not cared for (Becker, 1995).

Continued ethnographic work among Fijians has suggested that they now “hedge” their body ideals on a middle-level weight, understanding too-robust bodies as unemployable and too-thin bodies as undesirable (Becker, 2017). Reflecting traditional Fijian ideals of the family as the level on which bodies are “worked on” (Becker, 1995), families

(especially mothers and grandmothers) now provide purgatives to their young women in order to help them achieve their “moderate” body weight (Becker, 2017). The examples of Fiji and Belize, therefore, demonstrate that while thin ideals may spread across cultures, they are internalized, cognitively organized, made meaningful, and pursued with respect to ethnopsychologies specific to cultural groups (Anderson-Fye, 2003).

Further, Rebecca Lester, in her ethnographic comparison of a Mexican eating disorders clinic and an American one, suggested that, in different cultural contexts the same etically defined psychiatric phenomena can appear to be “fundamentally different diseases” (Lester, 2007, p. 370). Moreover, they appear this way because of variations in how eating disorders are treated and conceptualized in both environments. For example, in the U.S. patients with eating disorders are often treated as if their disease is a choice, and based in a lack of independence. On the other hand, eating disorders

49 patients in Mexico are treated as if they are addicted, and that they must be “rescued” by their families from their disease (Lester, 2007). To the Mexicans, well-being was found in patients’ enmeshment in the family and in the community; to the Americans, enmeshment was precisely the problem. Therefore, differences in cultural conceptions of psychiatric well-being inform how psychiatric illnesses are understood, as well as the strategies employed to alleviate the suffering

The aforementioned anthropological studies are some of the rarefied few that have taken the concept of culture seriously in considering its effect on the lived experience of body image and eating disorders. In keeping with the concept of ethnopsychology, they illustrate that body image and eating disorders are neither uniform concepts, nor are apparently similar versions of these phenomena experienced in the same way across culture groups. It is therefore important to understand body image and eating disorders based on how they interact with culture. This includes ideas about what the ideal body looks like, what the features of the ideal body represent, and how the “valid” means of achieving it shape how illnesses are experienced by the ill and perceived by the people surrounding them. By “valid,” it is not meant that the strategy is necessarily objectively healthy or morally forthright; rather, it means that culture lays the groundwork for people dissatisfied with their bodies to view certain strategies as acceptable. For example, a Christian ethic that valorizes suffering, moralizes fasting, and venerates the self-disciplined may contribute in part to the—albeit false— association of anorexia with positively perceived self-control in the gluttonous world of rising obesity rates. Culturally valued behaviors that have deleterious effects, especially when taken to extremes, are not uncommon across cultural groups.

4.3. …and its discontents

While ethnographic work is important to understanding the cultural-specifics of body image ideals, it can be difficult to translate to outcomes-based research.

Anthropological work has criticized psychology for its reliance on measures that are not necessarily emically valid (e.g., King & Bhugra, 1989; S. Lee, 2004), but ethnography can likewise be easily criticized for its issues of feasibility, generalizability, reliability, and replicability. In terms of feasibility, ethnography is time consuming and often requires fieldwork lasting at least a year. Further, ethnographic findings are often particular to a specific place and time, and can be minimally generalizable. Finally, covering reliability and replicability, although ethnographers are trained to be the objective instrument of analysis in their studies, it is inevitable that the intersections of their life experiences may color their interpretations of the data they collect, if not the very data itself

(Anderson-Fye, 2012). In certain cultural contexts, the ethnographer may only be privy to certain kinds of information. Further, how do ethnographers deal with the fact that individuals’ understandings of their cultures may vary considerably?

Considering how the investigator sees is equally important in developing an understanding of how body image manifests across cultures. Disagreements in the literature on body image in South Korea illustrate this point. South Korea is well-known for its pervasive beauty culture, such that Korean men and women are some of the most frequent consumers of cosmetic surgery in the world. Because of the prevalence of blepharoplasties (double eyelid surgery) and rhinoplasties (“nose jobs”) social commentators often insist—through a neocolonial lens—that ballooning rates of cosmetic surgery appear as the result of “Westernizing” influences (e.g., Kaw, 1993; T.

Kim, 2003). In other words, they believe that South Koreans are pressured by cross- national stimuli to present more “white.”

Others argue that the rise in cosmetic surgeries in South Korea is related rather to the South Korea’s rapid development, with its increase in average wealth and access to procedures that can give them the features Koreans already deemed attractive

(Holliday & Elfving-Hwang, 2012; Pike & Dunne, 2015). Holliday and Elfving-Hwang

(2012) further argue that the “Westernization/Whitening” discourse fails because popular procedures in South Korea are either also very popular among white women

(blepharoplasty)—questioning whether a procedure can be “whitening” for white women—or extremely popular only in South Korea (double-jaw surgery)—questioning whether cosmetic surgery at large is really a process of Westernization. While the commentary from which the Westernizing discourse is drawn comes largely from media studies, anthropologists have not been immune to its effects. For example, Kaw (1993) glosses over Asian women’s reported reasons for getting eyelid surgery (to look less

“sleepy”), instead situating blepharoplasty as a response to neocolonial and patriarchal pressures on nonwhite female faces. As Ong (1999) observes, relying on “the postcolonial critique that attributes all modes of domination to the West…[restrains us from] paying close attention to the emergent forms of power and oppression that variously ally with and contest Western forces” (22; emphasis original). In other words, we need to look at and take seriously individuals’ observations about the sources and outcomes of the pressures they face to achieve certain ideal forms.

Even ethnographic and seemingly culturally sensitive work can fall into the pitfall of presenting the investigator’s biases over the emic reality of the situation. However,

52 recognizing cross-cultural body image research as intersubjective is not to say that a strong postmodern stance—that it is impossible to report completely accurately on the experiences of others—should be taken and one should therefore not even bother with a fruitless endeavor. On the contrary, it means that methods are needed that are both scientifically reliable and emically valid to investigate how people within a specific cultural group organize their worldview on the topic of body image. By scientifically reliable, it is meant that the data should be replicable—anyone should be able to come to the same conclusion. By emically valid, it is meant that the data should make sense to the people being studied based on their own worldviews. Cognitive anthropology offers a particularly powerful set of theory and methods to achieve this goal.

4.4. Cognitive Anthropology

Cognitive anthropology is organized around the definition of culture as knowledge, that which an individual must know to be able to survive in a given social environment (Goodenough, 1957). In cross-cultural studies of body image, a “culture as knowledge” paradigm allows for a radically emic approach to the investigation of culture through the elicitation of what people know from members of the culture themselves.

According to cognitive culture theory, cultural knowledge is organized into domains which individuals hold in and express through shared models. These models consist of schemata, or skeletal mental representations of items in a domain that can be held in the working memory, and prototypes, or “fleshed-out” schemata representing the “most typical” version of a domain (D'Andrade, 1995). As people develop schemata and organize their worlds around them, they also learn what in life is valued and should be pursued, becoming “goal-schemas,” which can be psychologically painful not to satisfy

(D'Andrade, 1992).

Moreover, people are capable of cognizing multiple models within the same

domain simultaneously. Horizontal containment happens when two sets of unrelated

beliefs are equally theorized and held in separate cognitive compartments. Vertical

containment happens when one set of beliefs is more theoretically developed, and thus

more easily accessible and cognitively salient. Integration happens when seemingly

disparate ideas are held at the same time and in the same voice (Strauss, 1990). These

ideas can be illustrated with American and South Korean body images. In horizontal

containment, a respondent will be able to describe American and South Korean models

of body image with near-equal detail, while considering them separate and minimally

interacting. In vertical containment, a respondent will be able to describe American and

South Korean models of body image, but if he is American his American model will

probably be more fleshed out than his Korean model, thus more readily accessible for

use in interpretation and decision-making, and possibly subsuming the less-theorized model. Finally, in Integration, American and South Korean ideals are combined into a single model.

Understanding culture as knowledge also means that culture must be understood as learned. However, considering that culture is learned does not necessitate that it be explicitly, actively instructed by a more expert individual (although it certainly happens in some cases). Rather, it is more likely that this cultural knowledge is “groped” for, per

Sapir (1934). In other words, cultural knowledge is acquired largely in the microinteractions of everyday life—although significant events and interactions (e.g., criticisms) are often reported to be “tipping points” that cause people to develop full

blown eating disorders (Greenhalgh, 2015)—and internalized through the positive and negative experiences associated with these interactions. Social psychologists have located the perpetuation of body image messages in what they call the “Tripartite

Influence Model of Body Image and Eating Disturbance” (van den Berg et al., 2002). In van den Berg et al. (2002)’s original formulation, Tripartite Influence Model suggests that body image messages are passed mainly through interactions with parents, peers, and the media. Among Americans, this model has been replicated in adolescent girls

(Keery, van den Berg, & Thompson, 2004; Shroff & Thompson, 2006), and young men

(Tylka, 2011).

A more anthropological approach may replace “parents” with something along the lines of “meaningful authority figures, especially kin.” Indeed, narratives from an ethnically diverse sample of young people in Southern California suggest that, aside from parents, other authority figures that influence young peoples’ experience of their bodies include affinal and fictive kin, coaches, teachers, and even nurses and physicians (Greenhalgh, 2015). Peer interactions (as well as many mother-daughter interactions) often take the form of “fat talk,” (Nichter, 2000), a type of conversation in which people talk about their perceived fatness not out of explicit insecurity over their appearance, but rather in order to develop relationships with others. According to Taylor

(2015), women have these conversations with other women in order to build rapport by subtly implying that one is not better than her peers. Men will fat talk with girls in order to gauge romantic interest without having to deal with an explicit rejection. Fat talk, despite its effort after social cohesion, also has negative effects on people’s body image

(H. E. Lee, Taniguchi, Modica, & Park, 2013).

In any case, the Tripartite Influence Model reflects the notion that external messages about the ideal body come from all degrees of emotional closeness, from the most personal messages from meaningful authority figures to the least personal messages found in the popular media. In other words, they come from the shared models within the entire cultural group. Considering Sapir (1934) again, individuals then grope their way through these diverse messages, forming their body images, learning body ideals, and comparing their body images to them in the process.

Therefore, studies of body image cross-culturally are effectively framed within a cognitive theory of culture. However, for a cognitive theory of culture in body image to be useful, it must include methods for its employ. Cultural domain analysis (Borgatti,

1999) provides a particularly useful methodological framework. Cultural domain analysis is a set of methods used to elicit shared models about a specific topic, the cultural domain. It is both scientifically reliable, in that its results are—at least, in theory—replicable, and emically valid, in that its results are elicited from the members of the culture themselves. The data are framed and refined from the informants’ perspectives, with minimal input from the researcher. Beyond its reliability and validity, cultural domain analysis’s mixed methods approach is also useful for bridging more characteristically qualitative anthropological research with the more stereotypically quantitative psychological and biomedical sciences. This study also uses residual agreement analysis (Dressler, Balieiro, & Dos Santos, 2015) to explore the similarities and differences in cultural models of the ideal male body among Americans and South

Koreans.

Cultural consensus analysis (Romney, Weller, and Batchelder, 1986) and

residual agreement analysis are important methodological tools, and used in concert

they allow for a rich exploration of cultural models. Using the cultural consensus method

returns three important sets of values: cultural competence coefficients, residual

agreement coefficients, and the cultural answer key. Cultural competence coefficients

and residual agreement coefficients are attributed to individual participants based on the

ways in which their answers agree and disagree with the cultural answer key. Cultural

competence coefficients describe how well an individual knows the cultural model (i.e.,

the probability that an individual will provide the culturally “correct” answer within a given

set of questions). Residual agreement coefficients describe how an individual’s answers

deviate from the cultural answer key.

When graphed against each other, competence coefficients and residual

coefficients can show the patterns of “agreement in disagreement.” In other words,

within a given cultural group individuals may diverge from the cultural answer key in

culturally patterned ways, such as by age or by political orientation. This is known as

residual agreement (Dressler, Balieiro, & Dos Santos, 2015; Henderson & Dressler,

2017). Residual agreement analysis effectively removes the effect of cultural agreement

in order to find the factors on which the subgroups disagree.

Generally, these methods are used to identify whether a single culture exists

around a particular domain (Weller, 2007). However, this study begins with the

assumption of a single culture around male body image as a quasi-null hypothesis, based on the glut of psychological studies that fail to account for emic perspectives across cultural groups. By hypothesizing that these nominally distinct cultural groups will also be quantitatively and qualitatively distinct in their ideal body images, this study

57 deviates slightly from the traditional approach to cultural domain analysis. Rather than assuming one culture throughout all phases of research, I collected and analyzed

Americans’ and South Koreans’ data separately in the freelisting and pilesorting phases.

In the rating task phase, items from both groups were combined into a single questionnaire to allow for direct comparison in the consensus model. This not only made data collection and analysis manageable (e.g., participants only had to pilesort and describe up to 35 cards, rather than 50 or more), it also allowed me to maximize the emic validity of my data by relieving participants of the responsibility of trying to figure out terms for which they potentially had no reference. Keeping the freelists and pilesorts separate also provided a rich body of information for interpreting both the differences and the nominal similarities discovered through consensus analysis.

4.5. Conclusion

Eating disorders are on the rise all over the world, and it is important to study body image to understand the body ideals to which people aspire. Many disciplines, especially psychology, have offered powerful tools for researching and combating these highly deadly disorders. However, among other non-American cultural groups the ethnocentrism of the tools makes their data problematic at best. The framework of ethnopsychology, investigated through ethnography, has been used effectively by anthropologists trying to understand the cross-cultural variation in body image ideals.

However, ethnography is often difficult to translate to quantitative, outcomes-based work. Cognitive anthropology offers scientifically reliable and emically valid tools for investigators to use to understand body image—what the ideals look like, and what features of them are especially important in that cultural context—from the perspective

of the people in question. Because body image is individually held but culturally

patterned, methods are needed that give researchers the flexibility to consider individual

variation in body image. Cultural domain analysis allows for the systematic investigation

of these models, leading to much more accurate and culturally meaningful data, that also leaves the potential for investigations of the subjective experience of individuals in a cultural group.

CHAPTER 5

METHODS

5.1. Introduction

In order to explore the similarities and differences in ideal male body images

among Americans and South Koreans, this study employed a cross-sectional static group research design. The methods of cultural domain analysis were employed in three phases: freelists, pilesorts, and cultural consensus analysis (Borgatti, 1999). The

Institutional Review Board of the University of Alabama approved the study on 29 June

2016 (IRB Protocol: 7842). All data collection occurred between July 2016 and March

2017. Phase I occurred between August and November 2016, Phase II between

November 2016 and February 2017, and Phase III between February and March 2017.

5.2. Sample

American and native South Korean students between the ages of 18 and 32 at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa were sampled by convenience for this study through posters hung in university buildings and the investigator approaching them in the hallways of ten Hoor Hall between classes. During Phase I, students were also recruited through presentations in summer classes and through snowball sampling.

South Korean students were snowball sampled through the investigator’s Korean language instructor and the Korean Student Association at the University of Alabama.

All participants were remunerated with a $3 Amazon.com gift card for their time, each time they participated.

Across all three phases of research, 17 South Korean Students and 38 American students were recruited for this study (Table 5.1). Because the South Korean student population was so small, the same students were asked to participate in all phases of the research. Thirteen of the 17 South Korean students participated in more than one of the phases of research. Any American students who had participated in a previous phase and offered the investigator their contact information were also given the opportunity to participate again; however, only one American student participated in all three phases of the study, and only six participated in two phases.

Table 5.1. Descriptive data for Participants by Phase and Cultural Group.

Phase I Phase II Phase III Total American South Korean American South Korean American South Korean American South Korean n 17 (53) 14 (50) 13 (39) 13 (54) 15 (74) 15 (47) 40 (60) 19 (42) (%Female)

Age 19.9 ± 1.2 23.2 ± 3.6 20.5 ± 1.0 24.2 ± 3.7 21.1 ± 3.4 24.0 ± 3.4 20.6 ± 2.2 23.2 ± 3.3 (Years)

Years of Residency in the -- 8.7 ± 6.1 -- 6.7 ± 4.3 -- 7.6 ± 3.7 -- 8.6 ± 5.7 U.S.

When the study was initiated, there were 79 South Korean students on campus,

many of whom participated in the English Language Institute program. The University of

Alabama has consistently enrolled 80-100 South Korean students each year for the past

5 years; however, for the 2016-2017 school year only 69 enrolled. Further, at least 10

graduated either from a degree program or from the English Language Institute (Wang,

2017). In fact, the author’s first recruitment attempt with the Korean student population

resulted in an invitation to what turned out to be a going-away picnic for these students

returning to South Korea the next morning. The dramatic decrease was even palpable

for the South Korean population, with one participant remarking that it would have been

better had the study been conducted during the previous year when everyone else was

still there. Because of this unprecedented shift in the South Korean student population

at the University of Alabama, the research had to make do with a smaller available pool.

However, the South Korean sample size is less of an issue than it seems.

Participants included graduate students and undergraduate students in a variety of

programs, exchange students and matriculated students, and students with varying

lengths of time spent in the United States. While many of the South Korean students

were close friends with one another, this was neither true across the population of

South Korean students at the University of Alabama, nor across the sample.

Further, this study investigated cultural models about the ideal male body.

Cultural models are built based on individuals’ knowledge about how people in their culture organize a particular domain—respondents are answering questions about phenomena external to them (Borgatti, 1999). Questions were structured to elicit what people in a participant’s cultural group typically say or believe about ideal male bodies,

63 not what participants personally believe. Because women are also engaged in the production, reproduction, and consumption of male body images, and regardless of sexual orientation are inundated with messages about what features are valued in men, they are equally viable and valid participants in studies of male body image. In heterosexist societies that tell men what they should be and women what they should want, both presumably understand what the model is even if their motivations for pursuing it differ. Finally, Romney et al. (1986) noted that cultural consensus could be achieved with as few as five participants if the average competence were high enough; based on the following results, the sample size was more than sufficient.

5.3. Phase I: Freelisting

Seventeen American and fourteen South Korean students at the University of

Alabama were sampled by convenience through posters, class presentations, being approached by the author in the hallway of ten Hoor Hall between classes, or snowball sampled through previous participants and the author’s Korean language instructor.

Each participant was informed that the exercise would take approximately ten minutes, and that they were free to end the interview at any point. Those who accepted were asked to sign a consent form, and then interviewed individually by the author. Interviews were recorded with the participant’s permission.

First, demographic information (age, gender, and amount of time spent in the

United States) was gathered. I then asked the participant to list all of the words or phrases that people in their culture used to describe the ideal male body. When vague terms like “masculine” or “objectively handsome” were mentioned, the participant was asked to explain what the features of the vague term would be. Once the participant’s

list was exhausted, I asked them to identify a public figure who represented the ideal

male body, as well as describe what features this public figure has that puts them in line

with the ideal. Participants were then asked to identify a public figure who represents

the opposite of the ideal male body, and describe features of the opposite of the ideal

male body (See Appendix A).

Free lists were analyzed using ANTHROPAC (Borgatti, 1996). In total, 483 items

related to the ideal male body were elicited. Per Borgatti (1999), synonyms were

combined if one of the synonyms appeared rarely (e.g., “Roman” nose was combined

into “Strong” nose), and left separate if they were individually mentioned frequently

(e.g., “thin” and “skinny”). Comparatives (“short” and “shorter”) were generally combined

if they were elicited with the same question. For example, when asked about ideal

features, some participants mentioned “tall” and others mentioned “very tall” (some

mentioned both), which were therefore combined. However, “well-groomed” and “too

well-groomed” were not combined because “well-groomed” was mentioned as positive, but “too well-groomed” was mentioned as negative. Finally, words at a lower level of contrast than the rest of the items (e.g., one respondent listed four specific dyed hair colors that were considered non-ideal) were combined into a higher level of contrast more on par with the other items (Borgatti, 1999).

Items were then analyzed through ANTHROPAC based on the cultural group of each participant, and the author continued to combine items based on the above criteria within each group. For example, Americans were more likely to mention “overweight,” while Koreans were more likely to mention “fat” – therefore, free-list items were combined based on emic criteria. When no more words or phrases could be combined

without losing meaning, Americans had 190 items, and South Koreans had 172.

5.4. Phase II: Pilesorting

For the pilesorts, items were chosen based primarily on their frequency of mention as determined through ANTHROPAC. According to Borgatti (1999), “[t]he pilesort task is used primarily to elicit judgments of similarity among items in a cultural domain…[and] to elicit the attributes people use to distinguish among the items” (131).

The 30 most salient items for Americans and 36 most salient items for Koreans were chosen. Korean items were also included if they were provided in Korean (e.g., 쌍꺼풀

[“ssangkkeopul,” double eyelid]), or it was clear that the participant directly translated a term from Korean (e.g., “small muscle”).

Thirteen South Korean students were recruited to participate in the pilesorting exercise based on the items elicited from South Korean participants. Twelve of these students had participated in Phase I, and an additional South Korean student was reached through snowball sampling. Two of the original fourteen participants explained that they were too busy to participate in this phase of the research. The new participant was asked to sign a consent form.

Thirteen American students were recruited to participate in the pilesorting exercise based on items elicited from the American participants. Six of the students participated in Phase I, and seven more were approached in the hallways of ten Hoor

Hall between classes. All students, American and South Korean, were asked if they would be able to spend ten to fifteen minutes on the pilesorting exercise for the author’s

Master of Arts thesis. If they agreed, the new participants were asked to sign a consent form. Interviews of South Koreans and American students were recorded with their

66 permission.

Participants were asked a set of demographic questions (Appendix B), and then handed a set of coded note cards with the individual items from their respective freelists printed on each card. They were asked to sort the cards into however many piles of items that they deemed necessary, and based on whatever criteria they saw fit. The only constraint was that they needed to make more than one pile. They were also asked to think aloud for the recording. Once they had finished sorting their cards, the author took a pile, laid out the cards, and asked the participant why they sorted those cards into that pile. Participants were also asked what they would name the pile, and whether any of the cards in that pile were difficult to sort or felt to be irrelevant. Piles and responses were recorded, and participants were provided a $3 Amazon.com gift card for their time.

The codes of the pilesorts from the American and South Korea participants were then entered into ANTHROPAC based on their cultural group. Each pilesort is coded into an individual proximity matrix in which 0 means that item X and item Y did not appear in the same pile; 1 means that item X and item Y did appear in the same pile.

The individual proximity matrices are then averaged together within their cultural group, calculating one aggregate proximity matrix each for Americans and South Korean

(Borgatti, 1999). The aggregate proximity matrices were then run through the nonmetric multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) and cluster analysis functions in ANTHROPAC.

Nonmetric multidimensional scaling calculates coordinates in two dimensions based on the proximity matrix. In other words, the more frequently the items were piled together, the closer they are mapped in two-dimensional space. Likewise, the less

frequently the items were piled together led to greater distance between items.

Nonmetric multidimensional scaling through ANTHROPAC provides binary coordinates

for each term, which were imported to SPSS (IBM Corp, 2013) in order to plot. MDS plots were developed for Americans and South Koreans individually.

Cluster analysis uses the proximity matrix to classify the items. A cluster is a set of items identified as being part of a homogenous cluster. In other words, it identifies which features are related to which other features, in turn also indicating the boundaries of a cluster.

5.5. Phase III: Cultural Consensus Analysis

5.5.1. Development of Survey

MDS plots were analyzed for patterns. These patterns, or “dimensions,” are hypothesized from the MDS plots and informed by prior ethnographic work, especially participants’ explanations of why they sorted each card into each pile. Four dimensions were chosen based on the American and Korean pilesort interviews and MDS plots:

1. The degree to which people pay attention to each trait (“Importance”)

2. The degree to which each trait is desirable or undesirable (“Desirability”)

3. The degree to which men can control whether or not they have each trait

(“Control”)

4. The degree to which each trait is necessary for one to be considered a

kkonminam (beautiful flower boy). (“Kkonminam”)

The first dimension (Importance) was derived from the Korean participants, the

third dimension (Control) was derived from the American participants, and the second

dimension (Desirability) seemed to be a salient feature for both. The fourth dimension

(Kkonminam) was not derived from the pilesorts, but from the frequency of its mention

in the literature on body image in South Korea (Holliday & Elfving-Hwang, 2012; S.

Jung, 2011; Lim, 2008; Maliangkay, 2013; Maliangkay & Song, 2015), and was

therefore only presented to the South Korean participants. All items were translated into

Korean with the assistance of a native speaker.

5.5.2. Administration of Survey

The survey consisted of four demographic questions, followed by rating tasks for

each dimension and five follow-up questions (APPENDIX C). Unlike phases I and II, in

which I conducted the interview face-to-face, the phase III was self-report. First, they were asked to self-report their gender, age, cultural group, and number of years lived in the U.S. Thirty-five items were included in the rating tasks, and repeated over each of the dimensions presented to them. Eleven items were common between cultural groups either through direct overlap (e.g., Abs, Tall) or emic-definitional overlap (e.g., Fat,

Overweight). Items that participants in Phase II deemed to be irrelevant were not used.

In total, 29 items were chosen from the Korean data, 18 were chosen from the

American data, and of these 12 overlapped. Participants were asked to rate each term on a scale of 0-3 for each dimension, where 0 represented the lowest level and 3 represented the highest. Americans completed rating tasks for dimensions of

Importance, Desirability, and Control, while South Koreans completed rating tasks for dimensions of Importance, Desirability, Control, and Kkonminam.

Participants were then asked to identify body forms that most closely represented the ideal in their cultural group. These were evaluated using silhouette scales of adiposity (M. A. Thompson & Gray, 1995) and muscularity (Lynch & Zellner, 1999).

Finally, they were asked to self-report their height, weight, and sexual orientation.

Fifteen South Korean students participated in Phase III of the research. Thirteen of them were repeat participants, and two more were recruited through snowball sampling. The two new participants were asked if they had 15-20 minutes to complete a questionnaire for the author’s Master of Arts thesis. If they accepted the offer, they were given a consent form to read and sign, and then were sent the questionnaire through email or Facebook Messenger.

Fifteen American students participated in Phase III as well. Two of them were repeat participants, and thirteen were recruited by approaching them in the hallways of ten Hoor Hall and on the steps of the Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library on the University of

Alabama campus. They were asked if they had 15-20 minutes to complete a questionnaire for the author’s Master of Arts thesis. If they accepted the offer, they were given a consent form to read and sign, and then provided the questionnaire. All participants received a $3 Amazon.com gift card upon completion of the questionnaire.

5.5.3. Descriptive Statistics, Consensus, and Residual Agreement

Answers were coded and entered into SPSS. Descriptive statistics were obtained for the demographic and follow-up questions. Cultural consensus analysis was performed on each of the dimensions, once for both Americans and South Koreans in the same model, once for just Americans, and once for just South Koreans. Consensus analysis works by more heavily weighting answers provided by the people who agree

more, and less heavily weighting answers provided by people who disagree. In other

words, the more culturally competent the respondent, the more their answers count.

The output from cultural consensus analysis provides eigenvalue ratios for the

dimension and the cultural answer key; it also provides the individual cultural

competence and residual agreement coefficients for each participant. The rule of thumb

for determining whether one has sufficient consensus to argue that they have found a

cultural model is an eigenvalue ratio of 3:1 (Romney et al., 1986). The cultural answer

key reflects the ways in which people typically agreed in their rating of items. Cultural

competence coefficients indicate the degree to which individuals’ answers agree with

the model, and accounts for as much of the variation as possible. Residual agreement

coefficients indicate the degree to which respondents agree in their disagreement. In

other words, residual agreement coefficients can be analyzed to determine the

existence of subgroups the within the data. In this study, residual agreement coefficients

can be used to determine whether there is significant difference between Americans and South Koreans in how they judge the same aspects of body image (Dressler,

Balieiro, & Dos Santos, 2015).

Following Boster and Johnson (1989), the relationship between competence coefficients and residuals for each dimension was explored graphically. Each individual participant was plotted using their competence coefficient as the x-coordinate and their

residual agreement coefficient as the y-coordinate. Clustering indicates that there may be agreement beyond the cultural consensus itself, which is referred to as “residual agreement” (Boster, 1986, p. 432; Dressler et al., 2015, p. 24). Following Dressler et al.

(2015), the cultural answer key was subtracted from the answers of each individual. For example, the cultural answer key score for the importance of abs is 2.60. Respondent 2 rated the importance of abs to be 2.00. Therefore, the residual calculated is 2.00 minus

2.60, which equals -0.60. This process serves to remove the variation accounted for by

cultural consensus, leaving only the degree to which a respondent disagrees with the cultural model. Residual agreement coefficients were then analyzed based on cultural group.

5.5.4. PROFIT Analysis

Property Fitting (PROFIT) analysis was then performed upon the dimensions with

eigenvalue ratios of 3:1 or greater. PROFIT analysis fits the cultural answer key of a

given dimension to the coordinates of the MDS plot in order to determine whether that

dimension contributes to the organization of the items. It works by running a series of

multiple regression analyses in which the x- and y-coordinates are independent variables and the cultural answer key is the dependent. PROFIT analysis results in lines that inform the direction in which items “increase in value” on a given attribute (Borgatti,

1999, p. 139).

5.5.5. Analysis of Follow-Up Questions

Mann-Whitney tests were then performed on the figure rating tasks, in which participants decided which of the adiposity and muscularity silhouettes most closely represented the ideal male bodies in their cultural group. Mann-Whitney tests were used

because the answers were not distributed normally, and thus nonparametric tests were

required. Finally, Height and Weight were converted to BMI, and Pearson’s correlations

were used to evaluate whether one’s BMI was related to one’s cultural competence in

any of the dimensions.

CHAPTER 6

RESULTS

6.1. Freelist Results

Seventeen American and fourteen South Korean students at the University of

Alabama were interviewed individually by the author. Demographic information (age, gender, and amount of time spent in the United States) were gathered. I then asked the participant to list all of the words or phrases that people in their culture used to describe the ideal male body. The interview was conducted primarily in English, but I was clear that words or phrases could be in either English or Korean. Once the participant’s list was exhausted, I asked them to identify a public figure who represents the ideal male body, as well as describe what features this public figure has that puts them in line with the ideal. Participants were then asked to identify a public figure who represents the opposite of the ideal male body, and describe features of the opposite of the ideal male body (See Appendix A).

Free lists were analyzed using ANTHROPAC (Borgatti, 1996). In total, 483 items related to the ideal male body were elicited. Synonyms (e.g., “Roman” nose, strong nose) and comparatives elicited under the same question (e.g., short, shorter; tall, very tall) were combined, and highly specific items (e.g., tubeullog and daendi; maentumaen

and monami) were generalized into umbrella terms (e.g., styled hair; stylish). Some

items, for example Well-Groomed and Very Well-Groomed, were mentioned by multiple

people as not synonymous, and were therefore not combined. For these items, Well-

73 Groomed was a positive trait, but Very Well-Groomed was a negative trait. Americans who mentioned these items typically presented being Well-Groomed in opposition to a

Slob, but then added that men could be Too Well-Groomed. For example, when asked about traits associated with the opposite of the ideal male body, one female American participant responded, “Not very well… like… not manicured…but you know what I’m talking about. Hygiene is important.” Taking care of one’s appearance was one thing, but there was a limit before men grooming became considered feminine or vain. Other items that either were non-descriptive or did not have to do with bodily traits (e.g., unemotional, objectively handsome, aggressive) were removed. Once only distinct items remained, there were 302 items across the entire data set. The number of items elicited from Americans was 190, and the number of items elicited from South Koreans was 172. The most frequently mentioned American items are presented in Table 6.1,

and the most frequently mentioned Korean item are presented in Table 6.2.

Table 6.1. Items Most Frequently Freelisted by Americans. %Resp refers to the percentage of participants who freelisted that item, Avg Rank refers to the average place in the freelist in which that item first appeared, and Salience is a calculation based on the %Resp and Avg Rank. American Positive Negative Term %Resp Avg Rank Salience Term %Resp Avg Rank Salience Muscular 94 5.188 0.701 Overweight 53 3.444 0.380 Tall 88 3.667 0.769 Short 47 3.875 0.292 Well Groomed 53 14.444 0.214 Poorly Groomed 41 5.857 0.180 Tan 47 7.125 0.311 Skinny 18 1.667 0.147 Lean 47 8.750 0.281 Big 18 3.000 0.111 Strong 41 9.000 0.251 Out of Shape 12 3.500 0.072 Defined Jaw 35 11.167 0.190 Round 12 3.500 0.073 Big 35 11.167 0.168 Facial Hair 12 3.000 0.083 Toned 35 9.333 0.211 Light Skin 12 10.500 0.048 Fit 35 5.167 0.274 Thin 12 4.000 0.083 Athletic 29 8.600 0.186 Small 12 6.500 0.034 Abs 29 13.800 0.118 Defined 29 11.000 0.176 Aggressive 24 11.250 0.114 Broad Shoulders 24 3.750 0.197 Low Body Fat 18 8.333 0.097 In Shape 18 13.667 0.077 Prominent 18 11.000 0.094 Healthy 18 10.667 0.081 Not Overweight 18 9.333 0.088 Short Hair 18 14.333 0.088 Instrumental 12 10.500 0.024 Active 12 10.000 0.071 Big Hands 12 7.000 0.063 Very Well Groomed 12 15.000 0.043 Confident 12 8.000 0.078 Physical 12 7.000 0.091 Sharp Nose 12 17.000 0.023 Handsome 12 12.500 0.073 Facial Hair 12 12.000 0.059 Light Eyes 12 16.500 0.043 Not Bulky 12 13.000 0.038 Stylish 12 12.500 0.060 Dominant 12 12.000 0.052 Symmetry 12 22.500 0.012 Muscular Arms 12 13.500 0.056 Facial Hair 12 7.500 0.086

Table 6.2. Items Most Frequently Freelisted by South Koreans. %Resp refers to the percentage of participants who freelisted that item, Avg Rank refers to the average place in the freelist in which that item first appeared, and Salience is a calculation based on the %Resp and Avg Rank..

South Korean Positive Negative Term %Resp Avg Rank Salience Term %Resp Avg Rank Salience Tall 71 3.700 0.625 Fat 71 4.200 0.365 Light Skin 57 8.000 0.357 Short 57 2.125 0.483 Big Eyes 57 10.000 0.337 Muscular 29 4.500 0.158 Small Muscle 57 9.500 0.346 Small Eyes 29 3.500 0.183 V-Line Jaw 50 16.429 0.160 Pimples 29 5.000 0.131 Broad Shoulders 50 13.000 0.227 Dark Skin 21 2.667 0.151 Skinny 50 4.143 0.412 Short Legs 21 3.000 0.140 Double Eyelid 43 13.833 0.181 Skinny 14 3.000 0.088 Long Legs 43 13.833 0.183 Big Face 14 6.500 0.050 Stylish 36 14.000 0.167 Small 14 1.500 0.131 High Nose 36 8.800 0.249 Big Head 14 6.000 0.066 Abs 36 7.600 0.214 Small Head 36 9.800 0.212 Muscular 29 6.750 0.197 Styled Hair 29 8.500 0.209 Clear Skin 21 15.667 0.086 180 CM 21 8.000 0.148 Straight Teeth 21 19.000 0.082 Six Feet 14 7.000 0.101 Big Nose 14 3.500 0.112 Small Pecs 14 8.500 0.081 Cute 14 8.000 0.076 Deep Voice 14 11.500 0.091 Thin 14 2.500 0.129 Sharp Nose 14 9.000 0.090 Small Nose 14 18.000 0.032 No Body Hair 14 6.500 0.102 Swimmer 14 11.500 0.086 Soft Complexion 14 11.500 0.062 Lean 14 9.500 0.082 Short Hair 14 6.500 0.113 Masculine 14 2.000 0.136 Small 14 10.000 0.098 Arm Veins 14 11.000 0.047 Big Hands 14 16.500 0.040 Smart 14 15.000 0.075 Paldeungsin 14 15.000 0.047 Eye Smile 14 18.000 0.065

6.2. Pilesort Results

Because there were so many distinct and important items across the cultural groups, it was decided that American and South Korean participants would be provided separate sets of items for pilesorts. Americans were presented with 30 items, and

Koreans were presented with 36 items drawn from their respective free lists. These items were chosen primarily based on the frequency with which they were mentioned.

Other, less frequently mentioned items were included if they were provided in Korean or if the literature suggested that a term may be important. Each term was typed onto a label and given an individual code between 1 and 30 (36 for the Koreans’ items). The labels were printed and attached to individual notecards.

Each participant was interviewed individually. Thirteen Americans and 13 South

Koreans were provided their respective set of note cards. I instructed them to sort the cards into however many piles of items that they deemed necessary, and based on whatever criteria they saw fit. The only constraint was that they needed to make more than one pile.

6.2.1. American Piles

American participants were provided a set of cards with the items listed in Table

6.3. In parentheses is the percentage of participants who provided each term, and the items are listed by frequency of mention in descending order.

Table 6.3. Items Provided to American Participants for Pilesorting. Parenthetical numbers indicate the percentage of participants who mentioned that term. Terms with two numbers in parenthesis indicate the percentage of participants who mentioned the term in a positive way (the first one) and a negative way (the second one).

Americans

Muscular (94) Abs (35) In Shape (18)

Tall (88) Defined Jaw (35) Muscular Arms (12)

Toned/Defined (59) Fit (35) Stylish (12)

Well Groomed (53) Facial Hair (35)(24) Physical (12)

Very Well Overweight (53) Big (35)(18) (12) Groomed

Tan (47) Athletic (29) Sharp Nose (12)

Lean (47) Broad Shoulders (24) Out of Shape (12)

Short (47) Skinny (18) Styled Hair (12)

Low/No Body Fat Poorly Groomed (41) (18) Thin (12) Percentage

Strong (41) Short Hair (18) Light Eyes (12)

American participants sorted their cards into a total of 56 piles, averaging of 4 piles per participant, and with a range of 2 to 7 piles. Pilesort data were entered into

ANTHROPAC, and a proximity matrix indicating the proportion of times that a term was piled with another term versus the times that it was not was returned. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling (MDS) was then performed on the proximity matrix, and coordinates for each term were calculated. ANTHROPAC reported a stress of 0.123 for a solution in two dimensions.

Figure 6.1. MDS Plot of American Pilesorts.

Coordinates were then transferred into SPSS to create an MDS plot (Figure 6.1).

In ANTHROPAC, cluster analysis was performed to determine which items were most frequently piled together. Cluster analysis returned three clusters: “Negative,

Controllable Characteristics”, “Aesthetic Characteristics,” and “Instrumental/Body.”

Unlike in the free-lists, during which many participants noted that there were limits to how well-groomed one can be, only one participant in the pilesorting phase repeated the freelisters’ distinction between being Well-Groomed and being Very Well-Groomed: positive and negative, respectively. Others voiced confusion at why both were included in the exercise, since in their eyes the items referred to the same thing.

Poorly Groomed, Out of Shape, and Overweight clustered together under

“Negative, Controllable Characteristics.” These characteristics were seen as controllable, unhealthy, and “bad.” These were three of the four items that one woman said would be complete deal breakers.

Skinny, Low Body Fat, Thin, Muscular, Lean, Abs, Fit, Physical, Muscular Arms,

Athletic, In Shape, Broad Shoulders, Toned/Defined, Strong, and Big made up the

“Instrumental/Body” cluster. Participants typically described these as “physical” or

“body” terms. These characteristics were considered to be more closely associated with the neck-down, physical aspects of the body. Often, they were associated with health, fitness, or athleticism.

The final pile was made up of Tall, Short, Defined Jaw, Short Hair, Stylish, Styled

Hair, Sharp Nose, Light Eyes, Very Well-Groomed, Well-Groomed, Facial Hair, and

Tan. These were considered to be “Ornamental/Head” characteristics, often described as aesthetics, versus the biological body, or “things you can help.” They generally had

81 to do with grooming and accessorizing, as well as all things related to the face. Except

for Short, they were generally considered attractive. Short likely ended up in this cluster

because it was often piled with Tall, was considered unrelated to well-being, and overall more based in aesthetics. One participant who described Tall and Short as changeable was referring to change in height over the life course, rather than through intervention.

6.2.2. Korean Piles

South Korean participants were provided a set of cards with the items listed in

Table 6.4. In parentheses is the percentage of participants who provided each term, and the items are listed by frequency of mention in descending order. Skinny was mentioned by 50% of participants as positive, and by 14% as negative. Seven items were provided in Korean, and two Korean items referred to the same concept in English. Korean language items appear below their English counterparts, italicized and in parentheses.

The seven Korean items were ssamkkeopul, jangeunyuk, boggeun, chokorris, nopeun ko, nunuseum, and paldeungsin. Ssamkkeopul translates to “double eyelid,”

and refers to the crease on the upper eyelid that East Asians tend to lack.

Blepharoplasty, which results in a double eyelid, is the most common cosmetic surgery

in South Korea. Jangeunyuk translates to “small muscle,” and refers to a body type with

a lot of muscle definition, but little muscle mass. Boggeun translates to “abs;” chocorris

is a Koreanization of “chocolate,” and refers to highly defined abdominal muscles

resembling a bar of chocolate that can be broken into individual squares. Nopeun ko

translates to “high nose,” and refers to the bridge of the nose raised off the face.

Koreans mentioned that they tend to have “flat” noses, and often undergo rhinoplasty in

order to “heighten” their noses. Nunuseum translates to “eye smile,” and refers to the

space between the eyelids resembling an upside-down U when one smiles. Finally,

paldeungsin translates to “eight-head body” and refers to an ideal bodily proportion in

which one’s body is the length of eight of his heads stacked on top of one another. One

participant noted that childeungsin (seven-head body) was also fine, but that people who are yugdeungsin (six-head body) were often ridiculed.

Table 6.4. Items Provided to South Korean Participants for Pilesorting Parenthetical numbers indicate the percentage of participants who mentioned that term. Terms with two numbers in parenthesis indicate the percentage of participants who mentioned the term in a positive way (the first one) and a negative way (the second one).

South Koreans

Abs Tall (71) (36) Thin (14) (Boggeun, chokorris ) High Nose Fat (71) (36) Big Hands (14) (Nopeun ko )

Big Eyes (57) Small Head (36) Big Head (14)

Light Skin (57) Muscular (29) Lean (14)

Short (57) Small Eyes (29) Small (14)

Small Muscle (57) Pimples (29) Arm Veins (14) (Jangeunyuk )

Skinny (50)(14) Not Much Muscle (29) Masculine (14)

V-Line Jaw (50) Styled hair (29) No Body Hiar (14)

Broad Shoulders (50) At Least Six Feet (21) No Facial Hair (14)

Double Eyelid (43) Clear Skin (21) Sharp Nose (14) (Ssamkkeopul ) Eye Smile Long Legs (43) Short Legs (21) (14) (Nunuseum ) Eight-Head Body Stylish (36) Straight Teeth (21) (14) (Paldeungsin )

South Korean participants sorted their cards into a total of 43 piles, averaging 3 piles per participant, with a range of 2 to 5 piles. Pilesort data were entered into

ANTHROPAC, and coordinates for each term were returned. Coordinates were calculated based on how frequently each term was piled with every other term through a process known as multidimensional scaling (MDS). ANTHROPAC reported a stress of

0.124 for a solution in two dimensions.

Figure 6.2. MDS Plot of Korean Pilesorts

Coordinates were then transferred into SPSS to create an MDS plot (Figure 6.2).

In ANTHROPAC, cluster analysis was performed to determine which items were most frequently piled together. Cluster analysis returned clusters of masculine features, desirable unisex features, desirable feminine features, body size features, undesirable features, “No facial hair and small eyes,” and “No body hair.”

The first cluster was comprised of Big Hands, Arm Veins, Masculine, Muscular, and At Least Six Feet. These features had to do with masculine features that were considered to be attractive. Three participants included these items in piles they called

Masculine, and one referred to the pile in which he sorted these cards as the Navy Seal pile.

The largest cluster consisted of Tall, Broad Shoulders, Eye Smile, Clear Skin,

Light Skin, Big Eyes, Stylish, High Nose, V-Line Jaw, Long Legs, Abs, Paldeungsin,

Sharp Nose, Straight Teeth, Styled Hair, and Small Head. These were generally considered to be desirable, unisex features. They were described as “what people want,” “positive,” and “these matter.” One said, “no woman will say ‘I don't like this guy because he has this’” in reference to these traits. Finally, one referred to these as Alpha

Male characteristics.

The third cluster consisted of Skinny, Lean, Light Skin, Small Muscle, and Double

Eyelid. This cluster was described as feminine traits that were still attractive in men. In general, people noted that they felt ambivalent about their importance—they were traits that could be taken or left; they were good to have, but not necessary. Skinny and

Double Eyelid were considered to be Alpha Male characteristics, while Lean was considered a Navy Seal characteristic.

87 The fourth cluster, comprised of Thin and Not Much Muscle, were feminine features that tended to be judged more negatively by participants. Except for Thin, these were considered to be Beta Male characteristics by one respondent. These features were considered less than ideal—they trended toward the negative, but were generally ambivalent. Thin was judged more positively, overall, while Not Much Muscle was judged more negatively.

The final cluster, comprised of Small, Short, Fat, Short Legs, Pimples, Small

Eyes, and Big Head were labeled Undesirable Features. These features were piled as

Not Good, Unattractive, Girls Don’t Want to Date, Beta, and Negative. During freelists, one participant referred to the cluster of these features as anyeodwae (안여돼), which he translated to mean “bad looking guy.” Anyeodwae is a contraction of the words angyeong (안경; glasses), yeodeureum (여드름; pimples), and dwaeji (돼지; pig), and refers to someone who is fat, wears glasses, and has acne.

Neither No Facial Hair nor No Body Hair clustered with any other traits.

Generally, people explained during freelisting that facial hair and body hair were either undesirable or up to individual taste. Multiple Korean participants noted that chest hair, arm hair, and leg hair were undesirable characteristics, with one mentioning that men commonly shave them in order to get rid of body hair. One specifically said that men

“who don’t shave the hairs on their body” are the opposite of the ideal. There was a similar aversion to beards and mustaches in the pilesorts. Therefore, No Body Hair and

No Facial Hair were selected as glosses for those features. However, when they were pilesorted these traits got placed in desirable, undesirable, or neutral/“up to the

88 individual piles.” No Body Hair and No Facial Hair were almost evenly split between desirable and undesirable piles.

Because facial hair and body hair were only freelisted in negative ways, the lack of meaningful clustering of these traits may be more of the product of confusion based on the “no”. This is evidenced by responses during the pilesorts. For example, when reading the No Body Hair card, many Korean participants emoted disgust. This was surprising in light of the freelists, which suggested that “no body hair” was a desirable trait. However, one respondent in particular wrinkled her nose at the card, said “I don’t like body hair,” and then put No Body Hair in her “Hate” pile.

It may also be the case, that No Body Hair” was taken literally by some to mean

“completely bereft of body hair.” During free-listing, one Korean man said that, “Korean guys are obsessed with their pubic hair.” So, while chest, arm, and leg hair are non- ideal, the entirety of the body lacking hair may also be seen as undesirable. The potential to interpret No Body Hair in both ways could also partially explain the difference between the expectation that it would be sorted positively and the reality that it was not.

6.3. Phase III Descriptive Statistics

Thirty-five words gathered from both pilesorting exercises were combined into a single set of items for the rating task. Along with the rating task, a simple demographic survey was administered. The Phase III survey can be found in Appendix C. Descriptive statistics of the demographic survey can be found in Figure 5.1.

Fifteen South Koreans (50%) and 15 Americans (50%) participated in the third phase of the research, for a total sample of 30 students. The sample was comprised of

18 females (60%) and 12 males (40%). The average age of all participants was 22.6

years old. The median age of South Korean participants was 24 years old, and the

median age of American participants was 21.2 years old. Among South Koreans, 7

were female (47%) and 8 were male (53%). Among Americans, 11 were female (73%)

and 4 were male (27%). On average, South Korean participants had resided in the U.S.

for 7.6 years, with a range of less than one year to 14 years.

6.4. Rating Tasks Results

Participants were then asked to evaluate three dimensions: Importance, or the

degree to which people in their culture pay attention to a given features; Desirability, or

the degree to which people in their culture find a given feature to be desirable; and

Control, or the degree to which men can control whether or not they have a given

feature. South Koreans were asked to evaluate a fourth dimension, kkonminam, or the

degree to which a given feature was necessary to have for one to be a kkonminam.

These dimensions were derived from the results of the pilesorting exercise, based on

the piles created, the MDS plots developed, and the cluster analysis.

6.4.1. Cultural Consensus Analysis for Importance

Consensus analysis of the “Importance” dimension revealed that models of

importance were not shared between American and Korean participants. With an

eigenvalue ratio between the first and second factors of 1.687, the dimension did not

meet the 3.0 threshold considered by (Romney et al., 1986) to be the rule of thumb that indicates whether one has consensus. In other words, there was not sufficient agreement in the data for there to be considered one culture. Because Americans and

South Koreans are ostensibly different cultural groups, the lack of consensus was

90 expected in the data.

6.4.2. Residual Agreement Analysis for Importance

While residual agreement is typically used to explore intracultural diversity

(Dressler et al., 2015; Henderson & Dressler, in press), it can also be used to demonstrate the ways in which members of different cultural groups agree and disagree in the same rating task. While residual agreement has been used to explore intracultural difference, residual agreement pragmatically explores how cultural groups on any level respond to the same set of questions inconsistently between groups but consistently within groups. Obviously, there may be further intracultural variation; indeed, when the consensus model containing South Koreans and Americans was broken down into individual consensus models, both cultural groups had second factor eigenvalues greater than one. With larger sample sizes, future research can better explore the intracultural variation. In this study, residual agreement analysis can more effectively visualize the items on which people disagree, and the degree to which cultural groups disagree on the importance of these factors.

Figure 6.3. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Importance." 92

Graphing the consensus factor by the residual factor revealed a striking dichotomization of the data (Figure 6.3). This graph depicts the patterns of agreement on the x-axis (how closely respondents’ answers matched the “cultural answer key”), against the patterns of disagreement on the y-axis (how respondents’ answers diverged from the “cultural answer key”). Figure 6.3 shows that South Koreans as a group answered the rating task in ways that were both highly divergent from Americans and internally consistent.

Residual agreement ratings for each item are calculated by subtracting the aggregate cultural answer key’s value of an item from each individual’s rating of an item. Within cultures, these residuals were then averaged for each item. Positive residuals indicate that members of a cultural group typically rated a term as more important than the cultural answer key, while negative residuals indicate that members of a cultural group typically rated a term as less important than the cultural answer key.

Table 6.5. American and South Korean Mean Deviation Values for Importance.

Importance Item American South Korean Item American South Korean Abs 0.123 -0.210 Low Body Fat 0.040 -0.160 Athletic 0.200 -0.267 Muscular 0.333 -0.333 Big Body -0.187 0.080 PalDeungSin -0.957 0.643 Big Eyes -0.257 0.277 Pimples 0.927 -0.340 Big Hands -0.210 -0.010 Short 0.960 -0.440 Big Head 0.117 0.050 Short Leg 0.607 -0.260 Broad Shoulder -0.243 0.023 Skinny/Thin 0.747 -0.453 Chest Hair 0.847 -0.620 Small Body 0.580 -0.220

Clear Skin 0.167 -0.167 Small Eye -0.037 0.163 Defined Jaw 0.457 -0.410 Small Head -0.660 0.540 Double Eyelid -0.557 0.510 Small Muscle -0.270 0.397 Eye Smile -0.503 0.430 Strong 0.303 -0.297 Facial Hair 0.730 -0.603 Stylish 0.257 -0.210 Fat 0.983 -0.550 Tall -0.087 0.047 Grooming 0.087 -0.113 Tan Skin 0.417 -0.450 High Nose -0.797 0.670 Toned Muscles 0.190 -0.277 Light Skin -0.133 0.133 V-Line Jaw -0.247 0.087 Long Legs -0.613 0.320

Table 6.5 presents Americans’ and South Koreans’ mean deviation values of item rankings on the dimension of importance. These means show where Americans deem certain features to be more important than South Koreans do, and vice-versa.

These values were then graphed in Figure 6.4.

Figure 6.4. RA Analysis of American and South Koreans' Mean Deviation Scores for "Importance."

Figure 6.4 presents the data from Table 6.5 graphically. Items on which there was general agreement are found toward the origin, while items on which there was disagreement are found toward the extremes. There was a strong negative correlation between deviation scores (r = -0.936, p < 0.001). Therefore, those features deemed more important by Americans were considered to be less important by the South

Koreans, and vice-versa. For instance, chest hair, facial hair, fat, shortness, pimples, defined jaws, tanned skin, and muscularity were deemed more important by the

Americans and less important by the South Koreans. On the other hand, paldeungsin, high noses, small heads, double eyelids, “eye smiles,” long legs, small muscles, and big eyes were deemed more important to the South Koreans than to the Americans.

Although there was a lack of consensus among the aggregate group of

Americans and South Koreans, residual agreement analysis provided sufficient justification to perform consensus analysis on each group separately. Accordingly, consensus analysis was then performed on each cultural group independently in order to explore culture-specific models of the importance of these features in evaluating the ideal male body. Consensus analysis was performed on the Americans first, and resulted in an eigenvalue ratio of 5.100. This factor accounted for 78.3% of the variance in the domain of importance of body image features in peoples’ judgments of ideal male bodies for Americans (average cultural competence = 0.678). This means that

Americans generally rated the importance of features of male body image in the similar ways from person to person. The cultural answer key for ratings of importance among

Americans is provided in Table 6.6. Items are ordered from highest-rated to lowest- rated.

Table 6.6. Americans’ Weighted Cultural Answer Key for “Importance.”

Item Answer Key Item Answer Key Abs 3.00 Skinny/Thin 1.86 Small Muscle 2.92 Big Eyes 1.77 Low Body Fat 2.90 Broad Shoulders 1.77 V-Line Jaw 2.88 Light Skin 1.74 Tan Skin 2.76 Athletic 1.72 Stylish 2.68 Small Head 1.71 Chest Hair 2.62 Toned/Defined 1.59 Fat 2.60 High Nose 1.56 Strong 2.60 Big Body 1.54 Long Legs 2.59 Short 1.51 Defined Jaw 2.58 Double Eyelid 1.08 Big Head 2.39 Big Hands 0.89 Muscular 2.26 Paldeungsin 0.85 Short Legs 2.24 Small Eyes 0.79 Pimples 2.23 Clear Skin 0.74 Tall 2.16 Small Body 0.71 Facial Hair 2.15 Grooming 0.63 Eye Smile 2.10

Figure 6.5 presents the Americans individuals’ cultural competence coefficients versus their residual agreement coefficients on the domain of importance. The graph shows that there is a strong cluster of people at the far right of the graph, and a smaller cluster of three Americans whose answers diverged from the general consensus to a similar degree, indicating that there may be intracultural subgroup variation in how the importance of traits of ideal male bodies are conceived among Americans.

Further, the eigenvalue of the second factor was 1.446. In factor analysis, eigenvalues greater than 1 conventionally indicate the presence of a latent variable. In cultural consensus analysis, these latent variables are theorized to be culture. Although the eigenvalue indicates the potential for subgroups of intracultural variation, a larger sample would be needed to test its validity.

Figure 6.5. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Importance" among Americans.

100

Consensus analysis was then performed on the South Koreans, resulting in an eigenvalue ratio of 6.756. This factor accounted for 80.7% of the variance in the domain of Importance for South Koreans, and the average cultural competence was 0.747. This means that South Koreans strongly agree on the domain of importance of body image features in peoples’ judgments of ideal male bodies. The weighted cultural answer key for ratings of Importance for South Koreans are presented in Table 6.7. Items are ordered from highest-rated to lowest-rated.

101

Table 6.7. South Koreans' Weighted Cultural Answer Key for “Importance.”

Item Answer Key Item Answer Key Stylish 3.00 Small Eyes 1.86 Light Skin 2.92 Athletic 1.77 Big Head 2.90 Double Eyelid 1.77 V-Line Jaw 2.88 High Nose 1.74 Abs 2.76 Strong 1.72 Fat 2.68 Clear Skin 1.71 Long Legs 2.62 Tall 1.59 Grooming 2.60 Short Legs 1.56 Paldeungsin 2.60 Skinny/Thin 1.54 Tan Skin 2.59 Eye Smile 1.51 Chest Hair 2.58 Small Body 1.08 Small Muscle 2.39 Big Hands 0.89 Low Body Fat 2.26 Muscular 0.85 Small Head 2.24 Pimples 0.79 Defined Jaw 2.23 Short 0.74 Toned/Defined 2.16 Broad Shoulders 0.71 Big Body 2.15 Facial Hair 0.63 Big Eyes 2.10

102

Figure 6.6 represents the cultural competence coefficients of individual South

Koreans versus their residual agreement coefficients on the domain of importance. The graph depicts a large cluster toward the far right of the graph, indicating high cultural consensus. Three moderately competent Koreans also diverged from the main cluster, indicating that there may be intracultural subgroup variation in how the importance of traits of ideal male bodies are conceived among South Koreans. Further, the eigenvalue of the second factor was 1.278, adding evidence of the presence of cultural subgroups.

However, the sample was too small to explore this further.

103

Figure 6.6. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Importance" among South Koreans.

104

6.4.3. Cultural Consensus Analysis for Desirability

Consensus analysis of the “Desirability” dimension revealed that models of

desirability were shared between American and Korean participants. With an eigenvalue

ratio between the first and second factors of 6.138, the dimension met the 3.0 threshold

considered by Romney et al. (1986) to be the rule of thumb that indicates whether one

has consensus. In other words, there was sufficient agreement in the ratings for there to

be considered one culture. The first factor explains 82.5% of the variance in the domain

of desirability of body image features in American and South Korean men. Because

Americans and South Koreans are ostensibly different cultural groups, consensus was not expected in the data. The weighted cultural answer key is provided in Table 6.8.

105

Table 6.8. Weighted Cultural Answer Key of "Desirability" for the Aggregate Dataset

Item Answer Key Item Answer Key Tall 2.87 Eye Smile 2.01 Abs 2.81 Light Skin 1.99 Muscular 2.81 Big Eyes 1.99 Toned/Defined 2.79 Big Body 1.81 Broad Shoulders 2.76 Small Head 1.65 Grooming 2.75 Double Eyelid 1.58 Clear Skin 2.74 Small Muscle 1.52 Athletic 2.68 Skinny/Thin 1.31 Strong 2.67 Chest Hair 1.08 Low Body Fat 2.66 Big Head 1.04 Stylish 2.63 Small Eyes 0.89 Long Legs 2.63 Small Body 0.84 Big Hands 2.35 Facial Hair 0.63 Defined Jaw 2.30 Short Legs 0.46 V-Line Jaw 2.27 Short 0.45 Paldeungsin 2.11 Fat 0.26 Tan Skin 2.10 Pimples 0.24 High Nose 2.09

106

Each term received a score based on individuals’ ratings. The ratings of the participants who agreed with each other more were weighed more heavily than those who agreed less. Weighted answer key values that approach 3.00 indicate items considered to be very desirable, whereas values that approach 0 indicate items considered to be very undesirable.

6.4.4. Residual Agreement Analysis for Desirability

Although there was sufficient agreement among Americans and South Koreans on the dimension of Desirability to point to a single culture per Romney et al. (1986), the second factor had an eigenvalue of 3.097, and explained a further 13.4% of the variance in the data. Eigenvalues greater than one indicate the presence of another latent variable. In this case, the eigenvalue refers to another cultural organization of the data. To investigate this, individuals’ Factor 1 competence coefficients were graphed against their Factor 2 residual agreement coefficients (Figure 6.7).

107

Figure 6.7. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Desirability."

108

Similar to Figure 6.3, there was a visible bifurcation of the data, with South

Koreans clustering on the second factor (vertical axis) above 0, and the Americans clustering on the second factor below 0. Generally, both groups are highly competent in

the model, but they rate body image terms on their desirability in different yet consistent

ways. In order to investigate these sub-cultural consistencies, the weighted cultural

answer key was subtracted from the individual ratings of the desirability of each item.

This served to remove the variation due to consensus, leaving only the deviation

scores. These deviation scores were then averaged for each item, within cultural

groups. In other words, Koreans’ deviation scores were averaged separately from

Americans’ deviation scores.

109

Table 6.9. American and South Korean Mean Deviation Scores for “Desirability.”

Desirability Item American South Korean Item American South Korean Abs 0.057 -0.077 Low Body Fat 0.140 -0.193 Athletic 0.320 -0.347 Muscular 0.123 -0.143 Big Body -0.143 0.123 PalDeungSin -0.577 0.557 Big Eyes -0.257 0.277 Pimples -0.173 0.293 Big Hands -0.083 0.050 Short 0.150 -0.050 Big Head 0.227 -0.240 Short Leg 0.207 -0.193 Broad Shoulder -0.093 0.040 Skinny/Thin 0.223 -0.177 Chest Hair 0.453 -0.480 Small Body 0.160 -0.173

Clear Skin 0.127 -0.140 Small Eye 0.043 -0.023 Defined Jaw 0.567 -0.633 Small Head -0.783 0.817 Double Eyelid -0.447 0.420 Small Muscle -0.720 0.813 Eye Smile -0.277 0.257 Strong 0.197 -0.270 Facial Hair 0.320 -0.413 Stylish 0.037 -0.030 Fat 0.007 0.007 Tall -0.070 0.063 Grooming -0.083 0.117 Tan Skin 0.433 -0.500 High Nose -0.423 0.443 Toned Muscles 0.143 -0.190 Light Skin 0.077 -0.057 V-Line Jaw -0.003 -0.003 Long Legs -0.320 0.347

110

Table 6.9 presents the averages of Americans’ and South Koreans’ deviation scores for each item. The items were then graphed in order to visually represent which items were considered similarly desirable across cultural groups, and on which items there were disagreement.

Figure 6.8 shows that the items upon which Americans and South Koreans most closely agreed cluster toward the origin, while the items upon which they disagree can be found toward the extremes. There was a strong, negative correlation between

Americans’ and South Koreans’ deviation values (r = -0.992, p < 0.001). Americans and

South Koreans tended to agree on the desirability (or undesirability) of small bodies, clear skin, thinness, grooming, height, big bodies, abs, shortness, broad shoulders, light skin, big hands, being stylish, having small eyes, being fat, and having a V-line jaw.

However, Americans tended to find defined jaws, tan skin, chest hair, athleticism, facial hair, muscle tone, strength, short legs, big heads, muscularity and low body fat more desirable (or less undesirable) than South Koreans did. Conversely, South Koreans tended to rate paldeungsin, small heads, small muscle, double eyelids, high noses, big eyes, eye smile, and pimples as more desirable (or less undesirable) than Americans did.

111

Figure 6.8. RA Analysis of American and South Koreans' Mean Deviation Scores for "Desirability."

112

Since there is both ethnographic and statistical evidence of more than one culture in this data, consensus analysis was run on each cultural group individually in order to understand specifically how they organized the desirability of body image items on their own cultural terms. This is necessary because the aggregate cultural answer key will not accurately reflect how Americans and South Koreans rate the desirability of the items on which there was disagreement. Therefore, consensus analyses were run within cultural groups in order to arrive at the emic organizations of these items.

Consensus analysis of the dimension of Desirability among Americans resulted in an eigenvalue ratio of 19.274. The first factor explains 92.5% of the variance in desirability among Americans, and the average cultural competence of American participants was 0.872 ± 0.037. No other factor had an eigenvalue greater than one; therefore, Americans tended to agree strongly on the desirability of features of male bodies, with little evidence of subgroup variation.

113

Figure 6.9. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Desirability" among Americans.

114

Figure 6.9 presents a visualization of the distributions of individual Americans’ cultural competence coefficients graphed against their residual agreement coefficients.

The graph depicts a highly culturally competent group with little by way of intracultural variation. In general, the Americans graphed tightly with one another, meaning that they answered the rating task for desirability in similar ways.

115

Table 6.10. Americans' Weighted Cultural Answer Key for "Desirability"

Item Answer Key Item Answer Key Athletic 3.00 Eye Smile 1.75 Toned/Defined 2.94 Big Eyes 1.74 Muscular 2.93 Big Body 1.68 Abs 2.88 High Nose 1.67 Strong 2.87 Paldeungsin 1.55 Defined Jaw 2.87 Chest Hair 1.54 Clear Skin 2.86 Skinny/Thin 1.51 Low Body Fat 2.81 Big Head 1.27 Tall 2.80 Double Eyelid 1.14 Broad Shoulders 2.68 Small Body 0.99 Grooming 2.66 Small Eyes 0.94 Stylish 2.66 Small Head 0.87 Tan Skin 2.53 Small Muscle 0.80 Big Hands 2.27 Short Legs 0.67 V-Line Jaw 2.27 Short 0.60 Facial Hair 2.21 Fat 0.26 Long Legs 2.20 Pimples 0.06 Light Skin 2.07

116

The weighted answer key for desirability among Americans is presented in Table

6.10. Among Americans, features like athleticism, muscle tone, muscularity, abs,

strength, low body fat, and tallness are considered to be highly desirable. Features like

pimples, fat, shortness, small muscles, small heads, small eyes, small bodies, and

double eyelids are considered to be more undesirable. Thinness, chest hair, and

paldeungsin tended to be met with ambivalence.

Consensus analysis was then run on the desirability ratings from the South

Korean participants, resulting in an eigenvalue ratio of 15.641. The first factor explains

89.4% of the variance, and the average cultural competence was 0.824 ± 0.103. These

values indicate that this cultural model is shared and strong. No other factor had an

eigenvalue greater than one; therefore, South Koreans tended to agree strongly on the

desirability of features of the male body, with little evidence of subgroup variation.

117

Figure 6.10. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Desirability" among South Koreans.

118

Figure 6.10 presents a visualization of the distributions of individual South

Koreans’ cultural competence coefficients graphed against their residual agreement

coefficients. The graph depicts a highly culturally competent group with little by way of

intracultural variation. In general, the Americans graphed tightly with one another,

meaning that they answered the rating task for desirability in similar ways.

119

Table 6.11. South Koreans' Weighted Cultural Answer Key for "Desirability"

Item Answer Key Item Answer Key Tall 2.94 Eye Smile 2.25 Grooming 2.87 Big Eyes 2.25 Long Legs 2.87 Double Eyelid 2.01 Broad Shoulders 2.82 Light Skin 1.93 Abs 2.75 Big Body 1.93 Paldeungsin 2.70 Defined Jaw 1.67 Muscular 2.67 Tan Skin 1.62 Toned/Defined 2.62 Facial Hair 1.50 Clear Skin 2.62 Skinny/Thin 1.11 Stylish 2.60 Small Eyes 0.82 High Nose 2.54 Big Head 0.77 Low Body Fat 2.50 Small Body 0.67 Small Head 2.50 Chest Hair 0.59 Strong 2.44 Pimples 0.45 Big Hands 2.42 Short 0.32 Athletic 2.35 Fat 0.26 Small Muscle 2.33 Short Legs 0.25 V-Line Jaw 2.28

120

The weighted cultural answer key is presented in Table 6.11. Among South Koreans, features like tallness, grooming, long legs, broad shoulders, abs, paldeungsin, muscularity, and clear skin were considered highly desirable. On the other hand, short legs, fatness, shortness, pimples, chest hair, small bodies, big heads, and small eyes were considered highly undesirable. Facial hair, tan skin, and defined jaws were met with ambivalence.

6.4.5. Cultural Consensus Analysis for Control

Consensus analysis of the Control dimension revealed that models of one’s ability to control features of male bodies were shared between American and Korean participants. With an eigenvalue ratio between the first and second factors of 7.820, the dimension met the 3.0 threshold considered by Romney et al. (1986) to be the rule of thumb that indicates whether one has consensus. In other words, there was sufficient agreement in the ratings for there to be considered one culture. The first factor explains

88.7% of the variance in the domain of control over body image features in American and South Korean men, and the average cultural competence coefficient was 0.650.

Because Americans and South Koreans are ostensibly different cultural groups, consensus was not expected in the data. The weighted cultural answer key is provided in Table 6.12.

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Table 6.12. Aggregate Weighted Cultural Answer Key for Control.

Item Answer Key Item Answer Key Grooming 2.90 Light Skin 0.61 Stylish 2.64 Chest Hair 0.59 Toned/Defined 2.54 V-Line Jaw 0.47 Athletic 2.51 Small Body 0.44 Muscular 2.48 Eye Smile 0.32 Fat 2.42 Double Eyelid 0.31 Abs 2.36 High Nose 0.29 Low Body Fat 2.33 Tall 0.24 Strong 2.21 Big Eyes 0.21 Small Muscle 2.09 Long Legs 0.16 Clear Skin 1.72 Big Hands 0.16 Skinny/Thin 1.67 Big Head 0.15 Tan Skin 1.61 Small Eyes 0.12 Facial Hair 1.51 Short Legs 0.11 Pimples 1.31 Small Head 0.10 Big Body 1.29 Short 0.10 Broad Shoulders 1.27 Paldeungsin 0.09 Defined Jaw 0.62

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Each item received a score based on individuals’ ratings. Those ratings that agreed with others’ ratings were weighted more heavily, and those ratings that disagreed with others’ ratings were weighted less heavily. Weighted answer key values that approach 3.00 indicate items considered to be under full control, whereas values that approach 0.00 indicate items over which people are considered to bear no control.

6.4.6. Residual Agreement Analysis for Control

Although there was sufficient agreement among Americans and South Koreans on the dimension of Desirability to point to a single culture per Romney et al. (1986), the second factor had an eigenvalue of 2.198, and explained the remaining 11.3% of the variance in the data. Eigenvalues greater than one indicate the presence of another latent variable. In this case, the eigenvalue refers to another cultural organization of the data. To investigate the presence of multiple cultures, individuals’ Factor 1 competence coefficients were graphed against their Factor 2 residual agreement coefficients (Figure

6.11).

123

Figure 6.11. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Control."

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Unlike the dimensions of Importance and Desirability, the Control dimension did

not bifurcate into two generally compact groups separated by their culture. While the

Americans appear to be highly competent in the model, the South Koreans were

distributed across positive x- and y-axes. This indicates that while Americans may agree in the controllability of bodily features, South Koreans neither agree with the Americans nor with each other. In order to investigate these differences, the weighted cultural answer key was subtracted from the individual ratings of the desirability of each item.

This served to remove the variation due to consensus, leaving only the deviation scores. These deviation scores were then averaged for each item, within cultural groups. In other words, Koreans’ deviation scores were averaged separately from

Americans’ deviation scores.

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Table 6.13. American and South Korean Mean Deviation Scores for “Control.”

Control Item American South Korean Item American South Korean Abs 0.040 -0.360 Low Body Fat 0.003 -0.197 Athletic 0.157 -0.443 Muscular 0.120 -0.280 Big Body -0.023 0.310 PalDeungSin -0.090 0.977 Big Eyes -0.143 0.790 Pimples 0.090 -0.177 Big Hands -0.160 0.907 Short -0.100 0.433 Big Head -0.150 0.783 Short Leg -0.043 0.290 Broad Shoulder -0.537 0.863 Skinny/Thin 0.263 -0.403 Chest Hair -0.057 0.143 Small Body -0.040 0.360

Clear Skin 0.013 0.080 Small Eye -0.120 0.413 Defined Jaw -0.087 0.247 Small Head -0.100 0.500 Double Eyelid -0.310 1.090 Small Muscle -0.223 0.177 Eye Smile -0.053 0.680 Strong 0.257 -0.543 Facial Hair 0.223 -0.243 Stylish 0.093 -0.307 Fat 0.047 -0.487 Tall -0.107 0.827 Grooming 0.100 -0.300 Tan Skin -0.077 0.057 High Nose -0.223 1.043 Toned Muscles 0.060 -0.273 Light Skin -0.210 0.857 V-Line Jaw -0.203 0.597 Long Legs -0.160 0.707

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Table 6.13 presents the average of Americans’ and South Koreans’ deviation

scores for each item. The items were then graphed in order to visually represent which

items were considered similarly controllable across cultural groups, and on which items there were disagreement. Figure 6.12 shows that the items upon which Americans and

South Koreans most closely agreed cluster toward the origin, while the items upon

which they disagree can be found toward the extremes. There was a strong, negative

correlation between Americans’ and South Koreans’ deviation values (r = -0.828, p <

0.001). Americans and South Koreans tended to agree on the one’s ability or lack

thereof to control being muscular and stylish, and having facial hair, abs, small bodies,

small muscle, big bodies, defined jaws, pimples, low body fat, chest hair, long legs, tan

skin, and clear skin. However, Americans tended to rate grooming, athleticism, strength,

thinness, fat, and muscle tone as more controllable than South Koreans did.

Conversely, South Koreans tended to rate broad shoulders, double eyelids, big hands,

big heads, high noses, big eyes, small eyes, paldeungsin, light skin, small heads,

height, V-line jaws, shortness, eye smile, and short legs as more controllable than

Americans did.

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Figure 6.12. RA Analysis of American and South Koreans' Mean Residuals for "Control." 128

Unlike Figure 6.4 and Figure 6.8, the data graphed in Figure 6.12 have a much

steeper slope. This is because Americans and South Koreans in the previous residual

agreement analyses generally deviated reciprocally. On the dimension of control,

however, Americans tended to be more competent, as indicated by the highly dense

clustering of Americans in Figure 6.11. In other words, there was less deviation from the cultural answer key among Americans than among the South Koreans. Therefore, the range of average deviation scores is much lower for the Americans than the South

Koreans. As a result, South Koreans’ deviation scores disperse over a much larger area. When plotted against one another, a larger vertical range and a smaller horizontal range will produce a steeper line of best fit than a plot of two more comparable ranges.

Since there is both ethnographic and statistical evidence of more than one culture in this data, consensus analysis was run on each cultural group individually in order to understand how they organized the ability to control each of the body image items on their own cultural terms. This is necessary because the aggregate cultural answer key will not accurately reflect how Americans and South Koreans rate the controllability of the items on which there was disagreement.

Consensus analysis of the dimension of Control among Americans resulted in an eigenvalue ratio of 29.971. The first factor explains 94.1% of the variance in control among Americans, and the average cultural competence of American participants was

0.873. No other factor had an eigenvalue greater than one; therefore, Americans tended to agree strongly on the controllability of features of male bodies, with little evidence of subgroup variation.

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Figure 6.13. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Control" among Americans. 130

Figure 6.13 presents a visualization of the distributions of individual Americans’ cultural competence coefficients graphed against their residual agreement coefficients.

The graph depicts a highly culturally competent group with little by way of intracultural

variation. In general, the Americans clustered tightly with one another, meaning that

they answered the rating task for controllability in similar ways.

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Table 6.14. Weighted Cultural Answer Key for Americans for Control.

Item Answer Key Item Answer Key Grooming 3.00 Chest Hair 0.53 Stylish 2.75 Small Body 0.41 Athletic 2.68 Light Skin 0.40 Muscular 2.61 V-Line Jaw 0.26 Toned/Defined 2.60 Eye Smile 0.25 Strong 2.49 Tall 0.11 Fat 2.48 High Nose 0.07 Abs 2.42 Short Legs 0.07 Low Body Fat 2.34 Big Eyes 0.06 Skinny/Thin 1.94 Double Eyelid 0.00 Small Muscle 1.89 Long Legs 0.00 Facial Hair 1.73 Big Hands 0.00 Clear Skin 1.72 Big Head 0.00 Tan Skin 1.53 Small Eyes 0.00 Pimples 1.41 Small Head 0.00 Big Body 1.27 Short 0.00 Broad Shoulders 0.74 Paldeungsin 0.00 Defined Jaw 0.53

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The weighted answer key for control among Americans is presented in Table

6.14. Features where the answer key approaches 3.00 indicate that Americans consider those to be highly controllable, whereas those that approach 0.00 are considered to be uncontrollable. Among Americans, features grooming was considered to be under full control, and style, athleticism, muscularity, muscle tone, strength, fatness, abs, and low body fat were considered to be highly controllable. Features like small head, small eyes, shortness, long legs, paldeungsin, double eyelid, big head, big hands, and big eyes, short legs, high noses, and tallness were considered to be traits over which people bear little to no control.

Consensus analysis was then performed on the controllability ratings from the

South Korean participants, resulting in an eigenvalue ratio of 3.221. The first factor explains 76.3% of the variance, and the average cultural competence was 0.553. These values indicate that this cultural model is shared, but not particularly strongly. The second factor had an eigenvalue of 1.909, and explained the remaining 23.7% of the variance. This indicates the presence of intracultural variation among South Koreans.

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Figure 6.14. RA Coefficients vs Competence Coefficients for "Control" among South Koreans.

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Figure 6.14 presents a visualization of the distributions of individual South

Koreans’ cultural competence coefficients graphed against their residual agreement coefficients. The graph depicts a highly culturally competent cluster with an array of other South Koreans distributed along the positive axes. Because the distribution in

Figure 6.14 strongly resembles the distribution in Figure 6.11, it may be that the cluster

of South Koreans who are highly competent in the dimension of Control are more

acculturated to American culture than the South Koreans who are more distributed.

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Table 6.15. Weighted Cultural Answer Key of South Koreans for Control.

Item Answer Key Item Answer Key Grooming 2.71 Double Eyelid 0.93 Stylish 2.45 V-Line Jaw 0.90 Toned/Defined 2.41 Defined Jaw 0.77 Small Muscle 2.41 High Nose 0.76 Low Body Fat 2.32 Chest Hair 0.67 Muscular 2.25 Tall 0.55 Abs 2.23 Big Eyes 0.55 Fat 2.22 Eye Smile 0.54 Athletic 2.21 Long Legs 0.54 Broad Shoulders 2.20 Small Body 0.52 Clear Skin 1.78 Big Hands 0.51 Strong 1.72 Big Head 0.47 Tan Skin 1.72 Small Eyes 0.35 Big Body 1.37 Paldeungsin 0.35 Skinny/Thin 1.21 Small Head 0.33 Facial Hair 1.14 Short 0.28 Pimples 1.12 Short Legs 0.19 Light Skin 1.02

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The weighted answer key for control among South Koreans is presented in Table

6.15. Features where the answer key approaches 3.00 indicate that South Koreans

consider those to be highly controllable, whereas those that approach 0.00 are

considered to be uncontrollable. Among South Koreans, grooming, style, small muscle,

muscle tone, low body fat, muscularity, abs, fatness, athleticism, and broad shoulders

were considered to be highly controllable. Features like short legs, shortness, small

heads, small eyes, paldeungsin, big heads, big hands, small bodies, long legs, eye

smiles, tallness, big eyes, chest hair, high noses, defined jaws, V-line jaws, and double eyelids were considered to be less controllable.

6.4.7. Cultural Consensus Analysis for Kkonminam

Consensus analysis of the Kkonminam dimension revealed that Koreans agreed strongly in what features were and were not part of the kkonminam aesthetic. With an eigenvalue ratio between the first and second factors of 12.810, the dimension met the

3.0 threshold considered by Romney et al. (1986) to be the rule of thumb that indicates whether one has consensus. In other words, there was sufficient agreement in the ratings for there to be considered one culture. The first factor explains 88.8% of the variance in the domain of kkonminam, and the average cultural competence coefficient

was 0.833 ± 0.064. The weighted cultural answer key is provided in Table 6.16.

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Table 6.16. Weighted Cultural Answer Key of the Dimension of Kkonminam

Item Answer Key Item Answer Key Clear Skin 2.87 Athletic 1.54 Paldeungsin 2.80 Big Hands 1.37 Long Legs 2.75 Skinny/Thin 1.25 Grooming 2.71 Strong 1.14 Low Body Fat 2.69 Big Body 1.00 High Nose 2.62 Double Eyelid 0.65 Small Head 2.61 Defined Jaw 0.65 Tall 2.54 Tan Skin 0.51 Eye Smile 2.46 Small Eyes 0.38 Stylish 2.45 Pimples 0.31 Light Skin 2.42 Small Body 0.30 Toned/Defined 2.41 Facial Hair 0.24 Small Muscle 2.41 Big Head 0.24 V-Line Jaw 2.34 Short 0.18 Big Eyes 2.33 Fat 0.06 Broad Shoulders 2.16 Chest Hair 0.00 Abs 1.94 Short Legs 0.00 Muscular 1.60

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Each term received a score based on individuals’ ratings, with the answers of

those participants who agreed with other participants being weighed more heavily than

those who did not agree. Weighted answer key values that approach 3.00 indicate items

considered to fully necessary to be kkonminam, whereas values that approach 0.00

indicate items considered to be unnecessary to be kkonminam. No other factors had

eigenvalues greater than one, meaning that there is little reason to suspect the

presence of multiple cultures.

6.5. Property Fitting Analysis Results

Property Fitting (PROFIT) analysis was then conducted. In PROFIT analysis, the

cultural answer key is the dependent variable, and the MDS coordinates are the

independent variables. PROFIT analysis tests the degree to which a given dimension’s

cultural answer key fits the distribution of points on the MDS plot. If the points on the

MDS plot were arranged based on that dimension, then PROFIT analysis would find

that items on the MDS plot will be arranged in increasing importance in the direction.

For example, consensus analysis found that Abs were noted by Americans to be

extremely important. If Importance is a dimension on which the MDS was organized,

Abs should appear relative to the other items as closer to the head of the PROFIT

arrow.

Figure 6.15 presents the PROFIT Analysis of the dimensions as rated by

Americans. Because consensus analysis did not find a single culture among the aggregate data set for importance, American and South Korean cultural answer keys were used for their respective PROFIT analyses. Further, residual agreement analysis indicated that Americans and South Koreans responded differently to the same rating

139 tasks on the same dimensions. Therefore, American and South Korean cultural answer keys were used for their respective PROFIT analyses on the dimensions in which consensus was found.

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Figure 6.15. PROFIT Analysis of American Dimensions

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PROFIT Analysis found that the dimension of Importance was not one on which

Americans organized body image items (R = 0.144, p = 0.582). This was expected, because Importance seemed to be a dimension used exclusively by South Koreans.

Therefore, the dimension of Importance bears little interpretive value, and is excluded from the plot.

PROFIT Analysis found that the dimension of Desirability had an R = 0.429 (p =

0.083). Its r-square is higher than Importance’s (0.184), although it is low. However, unlike the dimension of Importance, the dimension of desirability still bears some interpretive value. Undesirable items are located at the tail of the arrow, while more desirable items are located toward the head, and a few of the American participants organized features based on their desirability in the pilesorts. However, it was not dominant.

Finally, PROFIT Analysis found that the dimension of Control had an R = 0.659

(p=0.011). Given that only a subset of the attributes pilesorted were included in the rating task, the dimension of control is considered interpretable as a dimension underlying the arrangement of items in the MDS plot. Seeing as the vast majority of

Americans mentioned controllability during their pilesorts, the dimension of control is included in the graph.

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Figure 6.16. PROFIT Analysis of South Korean Dimensions

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Figure 6.16 presents the PROFIT analysis of the dimensions as rated by South

Koreans. The dimension of Importance had a high multiple R (R = 0.825, p < 0.001),

Importance was mentioned frequently by South Koreans, in concert with desirability, in their pilesorts. Further, the use of a subset of terms from the pilesort may have affected the analysis. These factors justify considering Importance to be an important dimension affecting the distribution of features in the MDS.

Further, the dimension of Desirability also had a high multiple R (R = 0.883, p <

0.001). It was mentioned by almost all of the Korean participants as important to their pilesorting, and is therefore included in the plot.

Next, the dimension of Control had a low multiple R (R = 0.323, p<0.168). This dimension also performed weakest among South Koreans on consensus analysis, and was not mentioned by South Koreans during pilesorts. It is therefore excluded from the plot.

Finally, the dimension of Kkonminam provided a high multiple R (R = 0.824, p<0.001), comparable to the dimension of desirability. This is interesting, because although it was not mentioned explicitly by Korean participants (which could be an artefact of performing the study mainly in English), the dimension of kkonminam nonetheless appears to organize how South Koreans performed their pilesorts.

6.6. Follow-up Questions

Mann-Whitney tests were conducted on participants’ responses to figure drawing scale ratings. Mann-Whitney tests were used because the distributions of ideal adiposity and ideal muscle among Americans and South Koreans were non-normal. Participants were asked to choose which silhouette in M. A. Thompson and Gray (1995)’s adiposity

144 scale most accurately represented the ideal male form in their culture. The question was

repeated for Lynch and Zellner (1999)’s muscularity silhouettes.

Mann-Whitney tests showed that the median ideal adiposity was significantly

different between cultures, with Americans endorsing a higher median ideal adiposity

than Koreans (p = 0.041). However, Mann-Whitney tests of the median ideal muscularity was not significantly different between cultures (p = 0.184).

Finally, Pearson’s correlations were performed with BMI against the cultural competence coefficients in each dimension to evaluate whether there were relationships between these variables. Pearson’s r values are presented in Table 6.17. None of the correlations were statistically significant, indicating that BMI was not related to cultural competence in any of the dimensions.

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Table 6.17. Pearson's r-values of BMI Vs American, South Korean, and Aggregate Cultural Competence coefficients

American South Korean All (n = 15) (n = 15) (n = 30) Importance 0.401 0.152 0.114

Desirability -0.032 0.018 -0.097 Control 0.064 0.015 -0.030 Kkonminam ----- 0.185 -----

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CHAPTER 7

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

7.1. Introduction

This section contextualizes the data presented in Chapter 6, explaining how the dimensions of Importance, Desirability, and Control fit into Americans’ and South

Koreans’ emic models of the ideal male body. The data from all three dimensions suggest significant differences in how Americans and South Koreans understand male bodies and assess their value. For Importance, there was insufficient cross-cultural

agreement to suggest a single cultural model. For Desirability, there was sufficient

cross-cultural agreement to suggest a single cultural model, but the analysis of residual

agreement showed that overall agreement masked significant variation in which

features are considered desirable, and in how similarly rated features are considered

(un)desirable for different reasons. Finally, there was sufficient agreement to suggest a

single cultural model of Control, but further analysis suggests that the agreement was

sufficiently strong among Americans and a minority of South Koreans to overcome the

threshold despite the majority of South Koreans not endorsing a cultural model of

control. This section ends with a discussion of the implications of the research and

future directions.

7.2. Cultural Models of Importance

The dimension of “Importance” was measured by asking participants how much

attention people in their culture pay attention to body image traits in men. Researchers

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need to understand the degree to which people pay attention to body image features because it informs what people look at and, therefore, where people may be dissatisfied. Although importance may, in some ways, be related to desirability, they are not the same. For example, the prevalence of fat stigma in the United States would suggest that fat is both highly “important” and highly “undesirable” among Americans

(Greenhalgh 2015). When consensus analysis was performed on Americans and South

Koreans at the same time, cultural consensus was not achieved. This indicates that there was not agreement among the aggregate sample in terms of the importance of body image items among men.

However, the bivariate residuals versus competence graph including Americans and South Koreans for importance indicated Americans and South Koreans graphed into homogenous clusters. In other words, Americans clustered with other Americans, and South Koreans clustered with other South Koreans. This suggests that Americans agree with other Americans in largely the same ways that they disagree with the South

Koreans, and vice versa. Residual agreement analysis was performed, and confirmed that Americans and South Koreans judge the importance of features of male bodies in different but internally consistent ways. For example, Americans indicated that they were more concerned with features like fatness, skinniness, shortness, pimples, chest hair, tan skin, muscularity, and small bodies than South Koreans were. On the other hand, they were less concerned than South Koreans with paldeungsin, high noses, small heads, double eyelids, eye smiles, long legs, small muscle, and big eyes. This means, overall, that Americans and South Koreans evaluate the importance of body image features differently.

148 7.2.1. The American Cultural Model of Importance

While PROFIT analysis did not indicate that Americans thought about male body

image in terms of the importance of features, the eigenvalue ratio from cultural

consensus analysis indicated that there was still cultural agreement. Because the

dimension of Importance was derived from the South Korean nonmetric MDS, this result

was not unexpected. I argue that dimensions that have consensus but poorly fit the

MDS plot are not invalid dimensions; rather, they represent examples of what Strauss

(1990) calls “vertical containment.” In vertical containment, some models are more developed than others, and they therefore appear at a “higher” salience than other models. In other words, more developed models are easier to “grab” cognitively, but less developed models can still be drawn upon with effort. Among Americans, there is clearly agreement on the importance of body image features in men; however, there were other, more salient dimensions utilized in the pilesort. Even though Americans may not organize body image terms by their importance during pilesorts, the fact that there was consensus indicates that Americans have a fairly consistent set of features to which they pay attention while they ignore others.

Because there was consensus, there is still value in understanding the cultural answer key. According to the cultural answer key, Americans found universally deemed

“Abs” to be highly important. They were also very concerned with whether people had small muscle, low body fat, V-line jaws, tan skin, style, chest hair, fatness, strength, long legs, defined jaws, big heads, muscularity, short legs, pimples, tallness, facial hair, and eye smile. They were less concerned with how thin men are, whether they have big eyes, broad shoulders, light skin, athleticism, small heads, muscle tone, high noses, big

149 bodies, shortness, double eyelids, big hands, paldeungsin, small eyes, clear skin, small bodies, or grooming.

The cultural importance of Abs makes sense among Americans. As Taylor

(2015) notes, men’s abs are a source of significant symbolic capital for both men and women. Social status is practically centered on the presence of abs among high school students. Boys engage with other boys in verbal jousting about the quality of their abs, and show them off to other men as a sign of dominance; those without lean muscle are often heavily ridiculed. Girls gain status by having boyfriends with abs, and boys show off their abs to girls in order to impress them. For boys, abs give them social status among other boys and make them attractive to girls; by being attractive to girls, boys’ masculine status is further enhanced.

As was previously noted, features of bodies can be deemed important regardless of their desirability. This explains why both “low body fat” and “fat” are considered to be highly important in the American model. Decades of evidence suggest that fat bodies are highly derided in American culture (e.g., Puhl & Heuer, 2009); therefore, whether or not one has fat should have appeared among the highly important items. Further, the fact that thinness appears much more ambivalent does not contradict these data. In men, body dissatisfaction can occur because one feels either too fat or too thin.

However, Tiggemann et al. (2008) note that men are generally more concerned about being too fat than being too thin, a point echoed by other scholars of male body image

(Atkinson, 2014a; Monaghan, 2014a). This may, again, be due to the pervasive fat stigma in American culture: fatness carries a sense of immorality that is not associated with thinness among American men.

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7.2.2. The South Korean Cultural Model of Importance

High levels of consensus were also found among South Koreans. The dimension of importance also fit the MDS plot much better than it did for Americans. This makes sense, because the dimension of importance was hypothesized from the South

Koreans’ MDS plots, not the Americans’. Although Borgatti (1996b) suggested an r2 of

0.800 to be the rule of thumb used in validating a cultural model, I argue that, insofar as

0.800 is only a rule of thumb, these data are sufficient to say that South Koreans drew upon the dimension of control to organize the piles. It is important to consider that only a subset of the terms that South Koreans pilesorted appeared in the rating task. In order to perform PROFIT analysis, those terms and their coordinates were isolated, and the

PROFIT analysis was run with only a subset of the datapoints from both phases of research. The fact that the p-value is so low and the r2 value approaches 0.8 to that extent using only a subset of the datapoints is suggestive of a cultural model.

Being stylish was the item most highly rated as Important by South Koreans.

According to Lim (2008), men being stylish and highly groomed is a sign of the “new male” in South Korea. It is evidence of a cosmopolitan individual who has the means to consume luxury. One’s appearance is therefore associated with one’s social status, and the hierarchical nature of South Korean culture instills a strong responsiveness to status cues. Light skin has from history remained an important feature in South Korean society, as it indexes that one performs work indoors and has therefore had the competence to get a well-paid office job; tan skin is also highly important due to its negative connotations with manual, outside labor.

Although all South Korean participants mentioned height as important (many

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said, “tall, at least six feet”), height appeared to be less important than would be

expected. Schwekendiek et al. (2013) have reported that middle class Korean parents often provide children with traditional medicines to improve their stature, and upper class Korean parents may send their children to expensive clinics to have them injected with human growth hormone. Based on my data, however, it seems that height itself is not as important to South Koreans as the proportionality of a person. This is evidenced by the relative importance of long legs, paldeungsin, big heads, and small heads. One

participant noted,

People make fun of people who have big head[s], and [are] like short. So, even if a guy is not too tall but they have good body proportion, then they pref- they like it. This applies to girls too, not only to guy[s], so smaller heads are valued…I think height goes with that because although a tall guy can have a big head but at least their body proportion than a guy with the same size head but shorter…it’s not common to have like yukdeungsin (6-head body), but [Koreans] like make fun of people who are short but have big heads.

In other words, height may only be important insofar as it gives someone paldeungsin and makes their heads appear smaller. Height allows one more leeway in peoples’ assessment of whether they have paldeungsin, but having proper proportions is the goal.

South Koreans appear to be ambivalent about the importance of eyes as well.

This was surprising, because all of the South Korean participants mentioned eyes in one form or another in their freelists. Further, blepharoplasty (double eyelid surgery) is

the most common cosmetic surgery procedure performed in South Korea, and it is

avidly consumed by both men and women in order to get the double eyelid and big

eyes. In fact, performers are often judged if they lack a double eyelid. However, South

Koreans also noted that the presence of some features could mitigate the lack of others.

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One participant described during freelists that the highly popular singer Rain

has small eyes. I think after he appeared some small eyes guys with small eyes started to be valued, but it doesn’t mean people like small eyes. He at least has eye smile, and then he’s really tall. And I think he- his eyes are valued because it has a good balance with other parts of his face, and at least he has a nice nose, although some people think his eyes are too small.

On the other hand, there were also situations in which the bodily context of a person did not mitigate negative features like small eyes. One participant, when asked to identify a celebrity who represented the opposite of the ideal male body responded, “Kim

Jongguk. He’s very tanned, muscular, kind of short, no double eyelids, [and a] square jaw line.” Therefore, it may be that many of contested features are not important to

Koreans except in concert with other features. Rather than evaluating each characteristic individually, Koreans may take a more global approach to many of these features, only finding them particularly important once a certain threshold of unacceptability is met.

7.2.3. Cross-cultural Differences in the Dimension of Importance

Several terms derived from the South Korean sample were deemed to be relatively unimportant to Americans. Again, this would be expected, especially if these items are either common among Americans (e.g., light skin, double eyelids, and high noses), or are concepts that are out of their depth (e.g., small heads and paldeungsin).

Because most white Americans have light skin, double eyelids, and high noses, these features may tend to be glossed over by them. It may be that Americans would be put off by a lack of a double eyelid or a “flatter” nose, but the fact that double eyelids and high noses are the norm could explain why they are not things to which Americans pay attention. In terms of skin color, light skin may be seen as the norm whereas tan skin is

153 something to which people pay attention, likely due to its connotations with leisure time.

Further, small heads and paldeungsin are related concepts about the head’s proportion to the body. While any beginning artist’s guide to drawing the human form would instruct one to envision the ideal height as a proportion of seven to eight heads to one body, this is more specialized knowledge that may not be a part of American discourse on body ideals.

Likewise, many items derived from Americans were deemed relatively unimportant to South Koreans. These include things like facial hair and chest hair, which Koreans consider to be uncommon among them anyway. One of the interesting disparities was in fatness – residual agreement found the strongest disagreement between Americans and South Koreans on the importance of fatness. However, their weighted answer keys show their ratings of the importance of fatness to be 2.60 and

2.47, respectively. This may reflect potential cultural differences regarding fatness in

American and Korean cultures, such that this small difference in “Importance” reflects large differences in meaning.

7.3. Cultural Models of Desirability

The dimension of “Desirability” was measured by asking participants to evaluate how desirable or undesirable people in their culture found each body image characteristic to be in men. Researchers need to understand how and why body image features are differentially valued across genders and cultures in order to interpret responses to psychometric and epidemiological surveys. Current tools often lack reliability across genders and validity across cultures because they fail to account for the social and cultural diversity in body ideals, social expectations, and motivations

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(Anderson-Fye et al., 2017; Darcy & Lin, 2012; King & Bhugra, 1989; Le Grange et al.,

2004). Through consensus analysis of desirability of men’s body image terms, similarities and differences in male body ideals across cultures can be better understood, and researchers can anticipate and adapt to potential reliability and validity issues.

Cultural consensus analysis found sufficient agreement among Americans and

South Koreans to suggest a single cultural model of desirability. In a study of American and South Korean men and women assessing the attractiveness of female models,

Bissell and Chung (2009) found that Americans’ and South Koreans’ evaluations of beauty converge in some respects but also diverge in culturally patterned ways. For example, in their study the most attractive model as assessed by Americans was the second-most attractive model to the Koreans, and vice-versa. Further, both Americans and Koreans, on average, agreed on who the third-most attractive model was, which they use to argue for the Americanization of Korean beauty. However, Appadurai (1990) notes that ideas transferred across cultural groups are not unilaterally imposed but rather are adapted to local beliefs, and Anderson-Fye (2003) argues that media messages about body ideals are filtered through ethnopsychological frameworks that ultimately lead individuals within a cultural group to endorse certain features and ignore others. In other words, Americans and Koreans agreeing that certain models were more attractive than others, means neither that they were focused on the same features nor that they found the same features to be attractive in the same ways.

While there is sufficient consensus between groups to derive an eigenvalue ratio that signals one culture, the value of the second factor is still greater than one, indexing

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the presence of other cultures. Residual agreement analysis and within-group

consensus analyses indicate that Americans strongly agree with each other in how they

disagree with the Koreans when evaluating the desirability of male traits, and vice-

versa. According to residual agreement analysis, Americans agreed that defined jaws,

chest hair, tan skin, facial hair, athleticism, and strength were much more desirable than

Koreans did. Koreans, on the other hand, agreed that small heads, small muscle,

paldeungsin, high noses, and double eyelids were more desirable. This reflects

differences in opinions of what is desirable and what is not across cultural groups.

Even those that residual agreement finds to be rated largely the same can have

different meanings across cultural groups. While both Americans and Koreans rated

muscularity as similarly desirable, what is less evident from these data is what

muscularity means. For example, muscularity is considered to be a very desirable, but

not dominant, feature for Korean males, while it seems to be practically imperative for

American men. While muscularity reflects a less dominant masculinity among Koreans,

it is a highly important trait for Americans. Considering height, Americans reported

valuing tallness because of its association with physical dominance; Koreans reported

valuing tallness because it facilitated the approximation of paldeungsin. What these

examples suggest is that, while there will be similarities and differences between what

people find to be desirable, an uncritical acceptance of similarities ignores important

cultural reasonings about pressures to adopt those images. Without paying close

attention to emic understandings of even similarly rated terms, researchers can easily come to unsound conclusions.

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7.3.1. The American Cultural Model of Desirability

Based on the Americans’ cultural answer key for desirability, Americans universally deemed athleticism to be very desirable. Other very desirable features include muscle tone, muscularity, abs, strength, defined jaws, clear skin, low body fat, tallness, broad shoulders, grooming, style, and tan skin. Desirable features include big hands, v-line jaws, facial hair, long legs, and light skin. Highly undesirable features include pimples and fat. Shortness, short legs, small muscle, small heads, small eyes, small bodies, and double eyelids, constitute other undesirable features. Big heads, thinness, chest hair, paldeungsin, high noses, big bodies, big eyes, and eye smile were met with more ambivalence. Overall, the assessments of desirability resulted in patterns of instrumentality, ornamentality, and healthy, active bigness.

7.3.1.1. Instrumentality

The desirability of male athleticism among Americans is well-known, and underscores the pervasiveness of valuing male bodies based on their instrumental aspects. Generally, women’s bodies are said to be valued for their ornamental aspects

(i.e., whether they are pleasing to the eye) while men’s bodies are said to be valued for what their bodies allow them to do (Freedman, 1990). According to Franzoi (1995), men’s bodies tend to be seen as “processes” whereas women’s bodies are seen as

“objects.” The emphasis on instrumentality is further supported by the greater desirability of traits generally pilesorted as instrumental: muscle tone, muscularity, abs, strength, low body fat, and broad shoulders. Even athletes who engage in emaciation do it for instrumental purposes (Atkinson, 2014a). In providing examples of celebrities who have ideal male bodies, one participant described them as being “purpose-built”:

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As far as ‘purpose-built’ goes, Michael Phelps would be…ideal for what he's doing. And then someone like Derek Henry would be ideal for what he's trying to do.

That is not to say, however, that male bodies are valued only for their instrumental qualities. Moreover, the categories of instrumentality and ornamentality are not mutually exclusive, but are rather heuristics for understanding the general predisposition of Americans to view male body features in one way or another.

However, culturally the male body is supposed to be valued for its instrumental aspects, and thus Americans often struggle to maintain these distinctions. In the same vein, these data show that while abs are considered to be highly important and highly desirable by Americans, athleticism is considered highly desirable but only moderately important. In other words, athleticism is highly desirable due to its consonance with the traditional narrative of instrumentality as desirable. However, one does not need necessarily to be athletic to have abs (nor do athletes necessarily have abs), but rather abs can have ornamental use and appeal as well. In his description of prototypical ideal males, another participant illustrates this conflict:

Michael Phelps, and I guess Ryan Reynolds? They're physically fit, but one's athletically fit and the other one is cosmetically fit. Ryan Reynolds is cosmetically fit, while Michael Phelps is atheltically fit. [But] then they're both... objectively handsome? [But Ryan Reynolds is] a movie actor, and he does modeling and stuff, so he is maintaining an image. He's maintaining his body to do these shoots and things, so he only needs to look that way to do the shoot. But athletically fit that's long-lasting muscle, versus muscles that movie stars would put on before a superhero movie.

This participant is trying to describe them in terms of instrumentality and ornamentality,

but becomes unsure once he realizes that athleticism results in ornamental qualities,

and aestheticism functions as instrumental in certain contexts. By the end, he

rationalized this distinction by asserting that aesthetic fitness is only fleeting, and

158 therefore of lesser value, just as ornamentality is less masculine than instrumentality.

His dissonance reflects the increasing objectification of male bodies, and concomitant emphasis on ornamentality, in American culture; these forces have been argued to be the reasons for the increases in male body dissatisfaction in the U.S. in recent decades

(Grogan, 1998; Leit et al., 2002; Pope et al., 2000). While Americans can theorize male body features as objects of desire (as evidenced by their high eigenvalue ratio), they have yet to fully integrate it into their cultural understandings of what male bodies are for

(as evidenced by their low PROFIT on this dimension). 2 Sociologist Ashley Mears’ ethnographic𝑟𝑟 work on American and English fashion modeling industries further illustrates this point. In her work, she found that male models are paid about half as much as female models for the same campaigns, and are generally not seen as serious aesthetic laborers:

Agents devalue them. Clients mock them. And the market—as a conjunction of culture, social ties, and institutionalized conventions— generally punishes them. Male models know all of this, and for the most part they accept their lower pay and undermined potential, adhering to discourses that draw on traditional tropes of masculinity. The “boys” redefine their “worthlessness” as a privilege and a perk, and in the end they too devalue their own labor to resist a feminized role (Mears, 2011, p. 254).

Male models themselves view their labor as “doing nothing” (p. 257). Serious male modeling is not in the purview of “real men,” because it forces upon them an objectifying, feminizing gaze in conflict with a hegemonic masculinity that is active and dominating. In fact, Mears (2011) also notes that “[a]dvertisers are more likely to hire athletes and actors for men’s fashion campaigns, since recognizably talented men make for more suitable icons than just plain beautiful ones” (p. 263). Yet, as the above discussion of the differences between Michael Phelps’ and Ryan Reynolds’ musculature

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indicates, aesthetic labor is devalued regardless of whether the model is considered

skilled (as in an actor) or not (as in a model). This underscores why the increase in

value of the male body as an aesthetic object is confusing, in that it requires men to

reevaluate long-held notions about masculinity and the purpose of male bodies.

7.3.1.2. Ornamentality

Of the traits thought to be purely ornamental, defined jaws, clear skin, tallness, grooming, style, and tan skin were thought to be highly desirable, and v-line jaw, facial hair, long legs, and light skin were desirable. Eye smile, big eyes, high nose, paldeungsin, chest hair, and big head were met with more ambivalence. Finally, double eyelid, short legs, shortness, and pimples were undesirable or very undesirable. Often, these traits were not considered part of the body per se, but rather were more like accessories. This was especially true of the facial characteristics, as Americans tend to think of the head as separate from the body proper (Richardson & Locks, 2014).

It is interesting that the “tall, dark, and handsome” trope played out in the consensus analysis, even though that direct phrase was only mentioned by one participant. When asked to describe the features associated with handsomeness, she only spoke of the jawline being sharp or defined. Defined jaw was the highest rated ornamental trait. With tallness and tan skin also being highly rated, it is clear that “tall, dark, and handsome” is still a popular model of desirability for Americans.

7.3.1.3. “Healthy” Bigness

Another pattern in the dimension of desirability the emphasis on bigness.

Muscularity, strength, tallness, broad shoulders, big hands, and long legs are all considered desirable or very desirable. Likewise, shortness, short legs, small muscle,

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small eyes, and small bodies were all regarded as undesirable. This is because body

size is linked in the American imaginary to masculinity. In the social worlds of American

men, bigger is often considered to be better (Rivers, 2004). For example, men are

generally taller and more muscular than women. Therefore, bigness serves to

emphasize that fact that one is masculine (Pope et al., 2000). Bigness further enables

men to dominate other men, emphasizing their status as not only male, but alpha male

(e.g., Taylor, 2015, 2017).

Several participants saw the aggressive, dominating personality type as

inseparable from the ideal male’s body type. Describing the ideal male body, one

woman said,

Definitely muscle, and sense of power in their stance, take control attitude...the way he presents himself is very confident, the way he walks, like, he owns a room.

Another woman said,

Like it's very obvious that their body means a lot to them, so they will go to the gym six days a week, seven days a week, a couple hours each time. They just have a desire to have larger muscles to have that aggressive body type.

Finally, one man said,

I know this is about physical traits, but I do know that they just have that command of someone who can just take charge at a moment's notice and make everything run smoothly.

These quotes underscore the fact that, among Americans, bigness affords men the ability and the authority to dominate women and smaller men. In American society, where individuality, leadership, and activity are highly valued (and gendered masculine), it becomes clear why male bigness is desirable among Americans.

Finding bigness to be an axis of desirability while demonstrating that fatness (a

161 kind of bigness) is undesirable would seem contradictory. Context, however, puts this in perspective. Gilman (2004) points out that throughout the history of the Western world, even in populations and time periods that have valued fat, there was a circumference at which it became too much. In other words, too much fat has always been devalued in men, but the point at which one is considered to have too much fat shifts over time and space. Greenhalgh (2015) argues that American culture has adopted a “healthist” mindset, such that in this particular time and place peoples’ evaluation of “too fat” refers

(figuratively) to “any fat.” In fact, one participant described healthy bodies as those for which one does “not [have] much excess fat, if at all…nothing jiggles when you move.”

That said, if the fat serves an instrumental purpose it can be acceptable. As one male participant noted,

They do have like the, uh, build like they're—I'm not gonna say thick—but they're big build. Because with a football player you have to be big, thick bui-, for a like quarterback and all that… you know, the defense part, or else you're gonna let everyone through and you're just gonna be pushed down on your feet.

And another male said,

I'm 5'9”. I'm stout and I'm wide, which can be considered physically fit if in the correct things…like, uh, the weight competitions- like bodybuilding competitions a body type like mine, or Thor, [or] Gregor the Mountain.

Therefore, bigness is only valued insofar as which features make one “big” are also considered to be “healthy” in American culture. Bigness is only okay, only desirable, within instrumental contexts, especially athletics. But even in terms of muscularity, the idea of “bigger is better” has an upper limit. As with fatness, most

Americans agree that there was such a thing as too big, even in features considered

“healthy.” However, the upper limits to these generally well-regarded features are ill-

162 defined, and are instead acknowledged through vague or unrealistic comparisons:

Not, like, overly toned or overly muscled.

Tall but not ridiculously tall.

You don't have a massive head, and you…have, like, the correct size torso to leg ratio, and your arms aren't ridiculously long or short.

[Women] don't want someone who's big and buff and looks like he'll destroy them. Like not like the Hulk.

In other words, messages about ideal male bodies may be confusing for people who receive and interpret them. American discourse says that men should be tall, and men should be muscular, hence their ratings as very desirable in consensus analysis.

But at what point is one’s height considered to be ridiculous? When is one “overly” muscled? These are obviously highly desirable traits, and they are features for which men can be derided if they fail to conform. Men are told not to be fat, and not to be too thin. They are told to be prominent, dominant, and commanding. They need to be muscular and lean, but are also told in unclear terms not to be too muscular.

For example, it has been decades since The Hulk was portrayed by a bodybuilder, yet male bodybuilders, much like underweight women (who are not necessarily anorexic), are often objects of derision, stigma, and outright aggression

(Monaghan, 2014b). In other words, bodybuilders are significantly less massive than

The Hulk, but they still experience stigma. While this aggression may be due in part to their projection of hypermasculinity, bodybuilders can often project a sense of extreme

(feminine) vanity, since their muscularity goes beyond what would typically be considered instrumental. As this kind of muscle is not only ornamental, but generally only achieved through the use of anabolic steroids (Cafri et al., 2005; Eisenberg, Wall, &

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Neumark-Sztainer, 2012; Hildebrandt & Alfano, 2012; Pope, Kanayama, & Hudson,

2012), it becomes a target of both sexist and healthist discourse in American culture.

The takeaway point, however, is that the general cultural model values “healthy”

bigness and instrumentality in men. While fatness and shortness are definitely

undesirable, and thinness is met with more ambivalence, they are much less desirable

than muscularity. And while there is recognition among Americans of an upward limit to

the desirability of musculature, the limit is not well-defined in comparison to thinness and fatness as undesirable. Except for the Hulk, all of the public figures elicited who represent the opposite of the ideal male body were either too fat (John Goodman, Chris

Farley, Dwight Schrute, The Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy, Jonah Hill, “senior frat guy with a beer gut”), too short (Danny DeVito, Kevin Hart), or too thin (Michael Cera). What this says is that the upper limit to muscularity is recognized, but not fleshed out or particularly salient in American’s minds.

7.3.2. The South Korean Cultural Model of Desirability

Based on the South Korean cultural answer key, very desirable features include tallness, grooming, long legs, broad shoulders, abs, paldeungsin, muscularity, clear skin, muscle tone/definition, style, high nose, low body fat and small head. Features like strength, big hands, athleticism, small muscle, v-line jaw, big eyes, eye smile, and double eyelid are considered desirable. South Koreans were more ambivalent about big bodies, light skin, defined jaws, tan skin, and facial hair. Skinniness, small eyes, big heads, small bodies, chest hair are undesirable, and pimples, shortness, fatness, and short legs are very undesirable.

MDS and Cluster analysis suggest that Koreans understood the remaining items

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based on whether they were desirable masculine, feminine, or unisex features.

Although Korean participants may have drawn upon culturally recognized gender

categories, labeling ideal male features as feminine is questionable. Considering the

rigid gender roles Korean society places on men and women, it makes little sense that

both would label feminine the features that they themselves had originally

acknowledged as ideal for men. Koreans categorizing terms by gender was more likely

a byproduct of collusion. Collusion is a concept from linguistic anthropology that refers

to the ways in which meaning in an interaction is co-constructed. Particularly, “the

collusion claim recognizes the powers of conversationalists to use local circumstances

to shape their knowledge into mutually perceptible and reflexively consequential

chunks” (McDermott & Tylbor, 1983, p. 280). In other words, participants were aware of how Americans would describe the phenomena they were trying to convey, and used that knowledge to communicate their ideas to me in a way that they thought I would understand.

Considering how South Koreans, historically and at present, have conceived

masculinity puts this argument in clearer perspective. Throughout Korean history, the

longest lasting hegemonic masculinity was embodied in the Confucian scholar-official.

Known as seonbi, scholar-officials advised the king and comprised the upper class of

Korean society. During this period, men were the external providers, and women were

the internal caretakers. It was considered base for men to be involved in the more

mundane aspects of the world; even touching money was considered by some to be

unmasculine. Working on the body was relatively unimportant; working on gaining

wisdom was imperative (S. Jung, 2011). In fact, upper class Confucian scholar-officials

165 were often even discouraged from playing sports (Chang, 2002). Louie (2012) describes a similar phenomenon in China (which shares the political-scholastic influence of

Confucianism), known as wen-wu 文武 (literary-martial). Under this paradigm, physical prowess (wu 武) was important, but education and wisdom (wen 文) always took precedence.

Following Korea’s annexation and independence from Japan, and the subsequent Korean War, the newly formed South Korea was ruled by a military dictatorship that encouraged the cultivation of the body over the cultivation of the mind.

Through compulsory military service, male bodies were disciplined and aggression was valorized. Patriarchal attitudes toward women continued to exist, but the dynamic became more of a defender than a strict provider. S. Jung (2011) refers to this hegemonic masculinity as “violent” masculinity. Even though it was sanctioned by the military dictatorship, the wen-wu framework saw that the heavily wu “violent” masculinity never fully caught on in the popular imaginary.

Then, in the late 1990s the IMF crisis occurred, in which many South Koreans lost their jobs. With men unable to provide for women, and economically empowered women no longer trusting men to defend them, S. Jung (2011) argues that these women took the opportunity to construct a “soft” masculinity that was responsive to their needs and preferences. This “soft” masculinity is marked by a caring attitude and a strong attention to physical appearance (S. Jung, 2011; Maliangkay, 2013). Further,

South Korean men are some of the world’s biggest consumers of cosmetics, cosmetic surgery, and fashion; yet, instead of being considered feminine, the ability to show off one’s largesse is considered to be inherently masculine (Lim, 2008). In contrast to

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Belize and Jamaica, where fit male bodies are seen as attractive but frivolous, and more

robust male bodies are viewed as gentle and caring providers (Anderson-Fye et al.,

2017), the “soft” masculinity currently in vogue in South Korea may effectively signal the

best of both worlds.

In many ways, “soft” masculinity is a neoliberal re-imagining of seonbi masculinity

(in which contact with money is not considered unmasculine), because success in

South Korea is still often conceptualized in the context of one’s scholastic

achievements. In other words, the cultural model of success in South Korea is

understood as studying hard in high school, entering a top university, and getting

employed at a major financial conglomerate (Cho, 2015; Choi, 2005; Ho, 2012). Even the college entrance exams parallel Imperial China/Joseon Korea’s civil service examinations (Louie, 2014). The ways in which men present themselves, then, has profound historical-cultural meaning, and is indicative of their economic, and therefore scholastic, achievement. Those who do not attend college typically end up in low paying manual labor jobs (Choi, 2005). As a result, class differences are evident in male bodies: upper class (or, at least, upwardly mobile) bodies in keeping with “soft” masculinity present as thin and highly manicured; lower class bodies retain the bigger, unkempt “violent” masculine body ideal.

I argue, then, that these bodily features should not be understood on a spectrum

from masculine to feminine, but rather on a spectrum of differently valued masculinities.

Although “masculine” and “feminine” were efficient terms to use in translating

understandings of male body ideals across Korean culture and language, they fail to

capture effectively the nuances of the ways in which gender and body image intersect.

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While there are many desirable features that may be shared with women, these features are part and parcel of contemporary Korea’s hegemonic masculinity.

Unlike Americans, South Koreans neither implicitly nor explicitly endorsed any kind of instrumentality/ornamentality framework. Likewise, there was no dualistic separation between the head and body, as there was for the Americans. Rather, the head and face are incorporated into South Koreans’ body schema. In other words, unlike Americans for whom the head and body are generally considered separate but can be conceived together, South Koreans consider the face to be an integral and equal part of their body image (S. Y. Kim, Seo, & Baek, 2014). Rather, South Koreans organized body image characteristics based on desirable and undesirable “images” or

“concepts.” One participant aptly translated these differences using the analogous terms

“Alpha,” “Beta,” and “Navy Seal,” providing a much more satisfying framework.

7.3.2.1. Betas

Negatively regarded features included short legs, fat, shortness, pimples, chest hair, small bodies, big heads, small eyes, and thinness. South Koreans were also ambivalent about facial hair, tan skin, and defined jaws. These traits were also clustered together into undesirable traits. Many of these traits (fat, shortness, short legs, pimples, big heads, small eyes) are associated with what was described as a “bad-looking

guy”—anyeodwae (안여돼). As was previously mentioned, anyeodwae is a contraction of the words angyeong (안경; glasses), yeodeureum (여드름; pimples), and dwaeji

(돼지; pig), and refers to someone who is fat, wears glasses, and has acne. According to Tudor (2014), anyeodwae is a rather cruel way of describing someone as having the

168 opposite of the ideal face and body. One woman used the concept of jagi gwanli (자기 관리) to explain why these men are undesirable:

That means, like, you know, they don’t care about their body at all. They’re just disorganized, and they don’t- that doesn’t mean they have to exercise, but they don’t care that they’re getting fat. They don’t care if they gain weight…I just basically think if someone is fat, they are disorganized. They don’t care about their body.

Chest hair is also regarded negatively among Koreans, largely because of its atypicality among Korean men. According to one Korean woman,

Many Asian guys do not have too much body hair. People do not like body hair, and I even know some guys, when they wear shorts, they shave. But then there’s a different reaction, and some girls are like, “What? Like, guys shave? I hate that.” …But like for arms people know that guys have hair, and that’s, you know, that’s normal…And for Korean guys it’s hard to have chest hair so I think it’s because it’s not typical girls don’t have positive reactions if guys have chest hair.

In other words, there are places in which Korean men are allowed to have hair, and places where they are not allowed to have hair. These rules are understood based on the physiology of the typical Korean. Because it would be strange for a Korean man to have chest hair, its rarity is considered to be negative. It draws attention to difference in a culture that values homogeneity. Unlike in the U.S., where men are encouraged to be “prominent” and to “take up space” in order to dominate others, sticking out invites ridicule from other Koreans. As one Korean man notes,

Koreans really care about [what people think], so they should not show off…but you also cannot be the worst. Worst or best. So they usually wear how it looks good…but not be, like, unique than others.

Being the “worst” or the “best” makes one stick out among Koreans. At the same time, there is attention paid to homogeneity—homogeneity is safety. This is, of course, a heuristic and not a rule. For example, Koreans are encouraged to be the best at

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school, as academic achievement is often indicative of future success in life (Cho, 2015;

Kang & Abelmann, 2011). Likewise, the rising prevalence of obesity among South

Koreans has not shifted the ideal body to one of more mass in concert with the

statistical average. In other words, evaluations of homogeneity in South Korean culture

have more to do with what is normative rather than what is normal.

It was interesting that thinness was not more highly rated, since Korean boys

have been found to endorse thinness much more than American boys and slightly less

than American girls (J. Jung et al., 2009). Considering that women consistently score

higher than men on the Drive for Thinness scale, even among participants matched for

eating disorders (Stanford & Lemberg, 2014), the scores reported may not fully

explicate South Korean men’s feelings about thinness. What may explain these

discrepant data is that, when South Koreans considered thinness and skinniness to be

different, they did not agree on which one was positive and which one was negative.

Further, the upper limit of what makes one thin/skinny in Korea may be lower than it is

in the U.S. Finally, wanting to approach thinness is different from wanting to be thin, in

much the same way that American women may be driven to mimic model-thinness

without necessarily endorsing the anorexic-thinness that it would actually require to achieve.

Traits that were met with more ambivalence include facial hair, tan skin, and defined jaws. Among Koreans, facial hair was regarded similarly to chest hair, in that it is often difficult for Korean men to grow facial hair; however, some women accepted that men could grow facial hair legitimately as part of a “concept,” for example, as a model. Others, however, considered facial hair to be dirty and repulsive:

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I prefer a guy who has clear skin. If his skin is dirty or has a lot of pimples, then I don’t want to be his date. And [for] facial hair is the same reason, because if he has a lot of beard and mustache, then when I eat pasta with him…the pasta [gets] put in his mustache and I hate that. It’s disgusting.

Further, tan skin is generally undesirable due to its connotation with lower-status manual, outdoor labor, versus this higher status office labor; yet, there has been an emerging trend toward appreciating darker-skinned celebrities’ images in Korean culture. Similarly, South Koreans may be more ambivalent toward defined jaws because there are some successful male K-Pop idols who have them. This ambivalence may reflect shifting values of certain male features in response to images of successful people who have them.

7.3.2.3. Alphas and Navy Seals

“Alphas” and “Navy Seals” are the positively regarded “concepts” related to male body image among South Koreans. In many ways, these categories reflect the wen-wu paradigm previously discussed: Alphas more closely resemble the wen and “soft”

masculinities, while Navy Seals more closely resemble the wu and “violent”

masculinities. They are both “dominant” types, and considered masculine in their own

rights, but they achieve their dominance in different ways. Further, these appeal to

different groups of people. As one Korean woman noted,

Some people really like some of these characteristics…So like it’s some mix of characteristics some people like and characteristics another group like[s], so depending on who you ask they will pick these as ideal characteristics.

In other words, many of the traits that are used to describe the ideal male body are

considered good by some people, and bad by others. This is true for the traits of double

eyelids, thinness, muscularity, and light skin—these traits are largely where the Navy

Seals and Alphas separate.

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The Alpha-concept is associated with wen, soft features, and a so-called new, modern, cosmopolitan masculinity popularized after the 1997 IMF crisis (Maliangkay,

2013). Westerners would likely consider them to be “feminine.” The kkonminam is embodied in what Aihwa Ong (1999) would refer to as the “oxymoron[ic] Confucian merchant” (145)—basically a neoliberal parallel of the noble scholar-official. In other words, the softer masculinity of the kkonminam reflects his location in the upper classes

(Maliangkay, 2013). His status is read through his “small muscle,” to show that he has the time to work out, but doesn’t have to. He is manicured, showing that he can afford luxuries such as cosmetics and fashion. In status-conscious Korea, his dominance lies in his purchasing power, cultivated through his academic and subsequent financial success (Lim, 2008). He is an example of what can be attained, and that which men should strive to emulate for power, employment, and partners (Maliangkay, 2013).

As the data shows, South Koreans strongly agreed about what features were necessary for one to be a kkonminam. These features included clear skin, paldeungsin, long legs, low body fat, grooming, high nose, small head, style, tallness, eye smile, light skin, small muscle, v-line jaw, big eyes, broad shoulders, double eyelids, and abs. Less important were things like muscle tone, muscularity, and athleticism. All participants agreed that the kkonminam do not have chest hair or short legs, and almost all agreed that they could not be fat, short, or have facial hair or big heads. The ability to interpret small body as “short” could explain why it was rated so low. Other non-kkonminam features were pimples, small eyes, tan skin, defined jaws, and big bodies.

The participants agreed that neither masculinity nor skinniness were strongly part of the kkonminam aesthetic, which seems to contradict other work that refers to them as

172 slender and feminized (Maliangkay, 2013). However, the concept of “small muscle” can be used to better explain the body type desired by South Koreans. Small muscle is lean but toned; big muscles are undesirable, but so too is emaciation derided. Because the most salient features of the kkonminam are ornamental, features that could be more instrumental or that just fail to live up to the ornamental standards put forth are better placed in the Navy Seal- or Beta- concepts, respectively.

The Navy Seal-concept is associated with the features that were not part of the kkonminam aesthetic, but still considered to be highly desirable by South Koreans.

Navy Seal-types are related to wu, violence, and the so-called “traditional” masculinity popularized during the military dictatorship. They are big-bodied, strong, muscular, and what Westerners would deem to be “masculine.” Valued for their instrumentality, they epitomize the idea of being able to dominate others through their body, especially in protecting their partners. While not undesirable, they may constitute a less-popular set of body ideals among South Koreans. As Maliangkay (2010) notes, these “brutish” body types have become less popular due to the higher number of men attending university since the military dictatorship. During the dictatorship, media glorified the soldiers, gangsters, and policemen. Without going to college, only these jobs, or other manual- labor type positions were open to many men, thus the “worn-knuckled” trope was well- understood. As the shift to the “Alpha” has been fairly recent and rapid, remnants of the

Navy Seal-concept continue to be important to many people. In fact, many of these traits are also reflected in “beast” concepts, although these men are nonetheless expected to pay strong attention to their grooming as well (Epstein & Joo, 2012). Men who utilize the “beast” concept are expected to be muscular, but not too muscular (i.e.,

173 bigger muscle than “small muscle,” but still not quite American-style muscle).

Athleticism is more important for the “beast” concept than it is for the kkonminam.

However, facial hair is still unacceptable, and they still need to be stylish. In other words, Koreans may endorse two largely overlapping but variable “concepts” as ideal, but they are judged predominantly by their ornamentality.

7.3.3. Cross-cultural Differences in the Dimension of Desirability

According to residual agreement analysis, Americans agreed that defined jaws, chest hair, tan skin, facial hair, athleticism, and strength were much more desirable than

South Koreans did. South Koreans, on the other hand, agreed that small heads, small muscle, paldeungsin, high noses, and double eyelids were more desirable to them than they were to Americans. This reflects differences in opinions of what is desirable and what is not across cultural groups.

Even those that residual agreement finds to be rated largely the same can have different meanings across cultural groups. While both Americans and South Koreans rated muscularity as similarly desirable, what is less evident from those data is what muscularity means. For example, muscularity is considered to be a very desirable, but not dominant, feature for Korean males, while it seems to be practically imperative for

American men. While muscularity reflects a less dominant masculinity among Koreans, it is a highly important trait for Americans. What this suggests is that, while there will be similarities and differences between what people find to be desirable, an uncritical acceptance of similarities obscures important cultural reasonings about pressures to adopt those images. In other words, without paying close attention to emic understandings of even similarly rated terms, researchers can easily come to unsound

174 conclusions. As Lester (2004) notes, “the appearance of similar clusters of behaviors in different contexts need not necessarily imply a similar phenomenology” (612), and these data make that abundantly clear.

While it appears true that Koreans utilized desirability to perform the pilesort,

PROFIT suggests that Americans did not. The lack of a relationship between

Americans’ desirability ratings and their MDS does not negate the validity of the dimension; rather, it merely means that desirability was not strongly utilized in the pilesort. Further, the fact that subsets of pilesorts were employed in rating task weakens the power of the analysis. Finally, the considerable consensus values otherwise indicate strong cultural models of desirability among Americans and South Koreans regardless of whether they employed them in the pilesort.

The discrepancy in the salience of desirability to Americans and Koreans may be indicative of differences in the relative importance of instrumentality and ornamentality to each cultural group. While assessments of instrumentality were not prevalent in my data on Koreans, who rather focused on ornamental aspects, instrumentality dominated in my data on Americans. Unlike Americans who clearly delineated instrumental and ornamental features, Koreans only appeared to endorse features based on their ornamentality.

Applying the etic categories to these data also permits illustrative analysis. In this case, the categories of instrumentality and ornamentality can be used to show how

Americans and South Koreans conceptualize ideal male bodies differently as well. As was already noted, Americans tend to emphasize instrumental traits in male bodies, and they may see ornamental traits as less consequential. American male bodies are

175 desirable for their abilities to do things, especially to physically dominate others.

On the other hand, desirable male traits among Koreans are split by the concept with which they are associated. Whereas among Americans, ornamentality and instrumentality are integrated in the dominant male body image, Korean body images are categorized along those lines: Navy Seal-Concepts are desirable for their instrumentality, and Alphas are desirable for their ornamentality. The ability to reflect the

Alpha image, to emulate that aesthetic, is a result of their economic power; reflecting the Navy Seal-concept may result from having to engage in the kind of labor that that body type requires. In other words, class lines are distinguishable through the very bodies that have the privilege to be ornamental or the economic necessity to be instrumental.

7.4. Cultural Models of Control

The dimension of “Control” was derived from pilesorts performed by Americans, who often framed their piles with references to the degree of personal accountability on has in acquiring various bodily traits. Participants were asked to rate each body image feature on a scale of 0 (No control) to 3 (Full control) to indicate how much control men in their culture are said to have over various body image features.

Understanding cultural models of control are important because, as Greenhalgh

(2015) and others argue, harmful phenomena like fat stigma can result from expectation of personal control over body parts. It also indicates how mutable people perceive their bodies to be, which can be protective against body dissatisfaction. It also is important to understand what it actually means to control one’s body. For example, Anderson-Fye

(2004) found that Belizean schoolgirls believed that their bodies were God-given and

176 not subject to drastic change; instead of trying to shape their bodies themselves, they were socially permitted to use padding and accessories to come closer to the ideals to which they were expected to aspire. In other words, understanding how people across cultural groups understand the controllability of their bodies’ appearances has implications for the types of body image messages they internalize and the strategies they employ in their pursuit.

Cultural consensus analysis of the aggregate model suggested that there was a single model of control between Americans and South Koreans, with an eigenvalue ratio between the first and second factors of 7.820. However, the average cultural competence coefficient was low as compared to the other dimensions, at 0.650.

Further, a second factor of 2.198 explained the remaining variance, suggesting the presence of subcultures. The most informative component was the bivariate graph of the cultural competence coefficients versus the residual agreement coefficients (Figure

6.11). This shows a dense cluster of Americans and a few Koreans who were highly competent in the dimension of control, and a larger set of Koreans only who were distributed along the positive axes. This suggested that Americans would have a very strong model of control, while Koreans typically would not. I will argue that the eigenvalue ratio only appears to support the “one-culture” hypothesis because the agreement between all of the Americans and certain Koreans was strong enough to counteract the lack of agreement among the other Koreans.

7.4.1. The American Cultural Model of Control

Indeed, Americans had the highest average cultural competence of 0.873 in the dimension of control, with an eigenvalue ratio of 29.971. This indicates high agreement

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between Americans on the degree to which features of the body can be controlled. All

Americans agreed that men had full control of their grooming, and that style, athleticism,

muscularity, muscle tone, strength, fatness, abs, and low body fat were all features over

which men had a high degree of control. Likewise, all Americans agreed that men had

absolutely no control over the size of their heads, their legs, their height proportions, or

the size of their hands, and only one participant considered tallness (but not shortness)

and leg shortness (but not leg “longness”) to be slightly controllable. One person also

considered high noses and big eyes to be controllable, but they were not the norm.

Except for those terms that had to do with grooming (stylish, facial hair, clear skin, and pimples), the majority of highly controllable body image terms were regarded as instrumental/bodily traits by Americans. Franzoi (1995) describes this phenomenon as male bodies being conceptualized as “bodies-as-process” rather than “bodies-as- object.” In other words, male bodies are inherently mutable, and there to be worked on.

Considering research that has suggested that at least 60% of American men practice body depilation (Boroughs, Cafri, & Thompson, 2005) and the amount of control men are said to have over grooming, it was interesting that so little control was attributed to chest hair. However, people approach this question differently, with some seeing it as asking “can you do something about it once you have it” and others seeing it as “can you control whether you can grow it at all.” It may be that participants in this study interpreted it as the latter, thus the low attributed control.

Skin tone also reflects cultural differentiation between basic bodies and adorned bodies. While skin tans are said to be moderately controllable, light skin is considered to have almost not controllability. While one could argue that one can control whether one

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has light skin by avoiding exposure to the sun (as Koreans do), this does not seem

salient to Americans. Rather, light skin is a reflection of what one’s body is genetically,

while skin tans reflect what one can do to one’s body. Further, this study’s location in

the American Southeast, with its recent (and continued) history of racial segregation,

may have led participants to interpret “light skin” as a racial quality rather than an

adaptive one, whereas tanning is understood as a reversible increase in skin melanin

which most (but not necessarily all) white people can attain.

One interesting finding was that Americans generally considered thinness and

“small muscle” to be less controllable than fatness and muscularity. Often, psychological research indicates that men experience bidirectional body dissatisfaction, such that they can be too fat or too thin. While this may be true, these data indicate that fatness and thinness are not equal in this cultural framework. Indeed, Tiggemann et al. (2008) found

that men were more concerned with fatness than thinness. Perhaps because of the

association of muscularity with athleticism, and a general acquiescence to the concept

of tiers of athletic prowess (e.g., not everyone can become a professional football

player), Americans are more accepting of the idea that some men are naturally going to

be thinner than others. Further, men often hear stories about other men who, try as they

might, are genetically incapable of gaining muscle past a certain point. Or, no matter

how much they eat, they cannot gain weight. While they may be derided as weaker and

less masculine (Greenhalgh, 2015; Taylor, 2015), there is a point at which society will

generally accept that a thinner man had made a valiant effort.

However, fatness is not granted the same leeway. Often, the same participants

who categorized thinness as uncontrollable categorized fatness as unhealthy, as a

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“physical deficiency,” as a “negative thing that can be helped,” or as just “bad.” While thin men may be less valued because they are smaller, fat men are less valued because they not only are perceived as unhealthy, but because they are the very cause of their ill health. When asked to describe the opposite of the ideal male body, one participant answered,

Okay, so there would be two scales of that as far as being really really skinny and being really unhealthy. Well, I guess both are unhealthy, but those aren’t really based- mostly based on physical- There are other ways that you can be unhealthy that other people don’t care about like cholesterol, which isn’t obvious, compared to what people notice is when someone is really small or really big compared to everyone else around them.

In other words, while he recognized that both thinness and fatness may be

“unhealthy,” his immediate thought process associated fatness with ill health and considered thinness to be a separate criterion. Most other American participants only considered fatness when asked about non-ideal male bodies, generally describing these men as “slobs” or “not caring about their appearance,” both of which indicate judgments about the control that these men should have, but fail or refuse to exert over their bodies. As Bordo (1999) notes, among Western men the hard male body indexes cool male rationality. Fat is feminizing because to be fat is to be soft, both figuratively and literally. Soft men are perceived to be emotional and to lack discipline. In describing men who represent the opposite of the ideal male body, one male described,

Dwight Schrute from The Office… he doesn’t, like, he’s larger, like, he’s not, like, visibly in shape. But yes that goes along with his attitude as well, but, um, yeah mainly the fact that whatever you look at it’s not obvious that he works out or is eating right or something along those lines

Another male participant said,

Chris Farley…well, obviously he’s dead now. He died due to drug use and

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complications with his body weight, so he was overly [gestures to his own body]. Like, he actually had like- he didn’t have any real muscle, he was just flabby in places. It looked like there was a sense of him not caring.

Therefore, while thinness and fatness may represent two avenues of body

dissatisfaction, the fat body is often the more salient due to its perceived disregard for

its own well-being. While thin men may be considered less masculine than muscular men, fat men are not only feminized, but considered to be complicit in their own destruction. While Americans may consider there to be valid (if not devaluing) reasons for a man to be skinny, there is absolutely no reason that a man should be fat. This not only contrasts with obesity research that questions the amount of control people actually have over their fat, but opens the door to the intense fat stigma currently in vogue in

American discourse (Greenhalgh, 2015). So, while both thinness and fatness may be

factors that contribute to men’s body dissatisfaction, fatness is seen as more

controllable and may carry more social stigma as a result.

7.4.2. The South Korean Cultural Model of Control

Among Koreans, I argue that there is not a coherent cultural model of control.

Although cultural consensus analysis indicated the presence of a single culture, the

eigenvalue of 3.221 only barely made the cut. Rather, the strength of the agreement

between the six Koreans who strongly agreed with one another on this dimension

elevated the eigenvalue ratio statistically but not meaningfully. Because the dimension

of control is so strong among Americans and appears to be weak, if not nonexistent,

among Koreans (in fact, at least one participant found the question to be highly

confusing), the strong cluster may reflect acculturation to American ideals about control.

Because consensus analysis more heavily weights the answers of those

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participants who agree more with one another, the data are much harder to interpret. At

a glance, however, what is interesting is the fact that no traits are considered to be

completely uncontrollable. On an individual level, yes, but compared to Americans who,

as a group, considered eight features to be completely uncontrollable the difference is

meaningful.

According to E.-S. Kim (2009), Koreans have only recently begun to understand

their bodies as changeable expressions of one’s subjectivity rather than a natural,

immutable object handed down from one’s parents. Further, K. B. Kim (2014) showed

through qualitative interviews that Korean women believe that with enough time, money,

and effort (which they recognize most Koreans be unable to afford), celebrities’ bodies

are realistic goals. The prevalence of cosmetic surgery—even seemingly extreme ones

like double jaw surgery to change defined jaws to the more desirable V-line—could

account for why many features considered by Americans to be immutable (small heads,

small eyes, paldeungsin, double eyelids, and big heads) are considered by Koreans to

be at least slightly controllable. As Schwekendiek et al. (2013) point out, some Koreans

even consider height to be controllable, as evidenced by parents providing their children

traditional medicines and growth hormone injections intended to increase their stature.

While Koreans in general seem not to have a consistent model of what is and is not controllable, they do endorse somewhat related concepts that may have made it easier for some to internalize American understandings of men’s control over bodily features. One of these is welbing (웰빙; lit. well-being), which Koreans use to refer to making healthy choices in diet and exercise. It has been in use since the late 1980s, after the 1988 Summer Olympics led to a renewed interest in physical activity among

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the general population (Chang, 2002; Dax, 2015), although a Google Images search

would suggest that it seems to have more to do with diet and harmony with nature.

Jagi gwanli (자기 관리; self-maintenance, self-care) is an ethnopsychological

concept that may have facilitated Koreans’ uptake of the American model of control as

well. As was previously mentioned, one Korean woman described men with undesirable

features, such as fatness, as lacking jagi gwanli. She explained that people who lack

jagi gwanli are disorganized and don’t care about the fact that they are, or are

becoming, fat. This point was echoed by another Korean woman, who said,

I don’t like a fat guy, because if guy is fat it[’s] like he doesn’t like sports and doesn’t care about himself. I like a guy who like[s] sports so he can play with me (emphasis added).

Jagi gwanli, in the general sense, seems to encompass notions of personal development in terms of appearance, exercise, healthy eating, preparing for the future, time management, work-life balance, productivity, diligence, and motivation. Future research will explore the concept of jagi gwanli among Koreans, and its connection with aesthetic, economic, and potentially even moral, evaluations of Korean male bodies.

Interestingly, however, both participants who referenced self-care had low competence coefficients in the dimension of control (0.16 and 0.45). This indicates that jagi gwanli may differ meaningfully from control to the general Korean population. However, it may also be a particularly significant ethnopsychological avenue over which South Koreans may more readily adopt Americans’ understandings of bodily control. The ways that

South Koreans understand jagi gwanli, and its apparent differentiation from Americans’ understandings of “control,” will be important to consider in future studies of body image, fat stigma, and eating disorders among South Koreans.

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7.4.3. Cross-cultural Differences in the Dimension of Control

The major difference between Americans and South Koreans in their ratings of the dimension of control is in whether or not there is cultural agreement about which parts of the body are controllable, and which are not. While Americans were highly consistent in their ratings, South Koreans evidenced little concordance in theirs. For example, the controllability of several features was un- or minimally contested among

Americans, while South Koreans contested every feature, sometimes widely. This is reflected in the vast discrepancy between the eigenvalue ratios: for the Americans, it was their highest; for the South Koreans, it barely reached the threshold for the one- culture hypothesis to be supported. Further, for the South Koreans, it may have only reached that threshold because a small subset of them answered the same way that

Americans did. As a result, it can be said that Americans have a strong model of control, while South Koreans do not. In fact, Americans define the model of control in this context.

These data may also reflect differences of opinion about the mutability of physical appearance and the permissibility of cosmetic surgery. While Americans often pathologize the desire to change the physical body (Pitts-Taylor, 2007), South Koreans tend to view cosmetic surgery and physical enhancement as a normal part of life

(Schwekendiek et al., 2013). Further, they may share with Chinese men the idea that changing the silhouette through clothing legitimately satisfies some body image strictures (Watt & Ricciardelli, 2012). In other words, using clothing and accessories to achieve the culturally prescribed “right shape” may be more important than having the

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“right” naked body per se, as has also been recorded among Belizean women

(Anderson-Fye, 2004). Because adornment is eminently manageable (if often only moderately effective at creating the illusion), it makes sense that South Koreans would argue for the controllability of the same features that Americans would argue are immutable.

7.5. Implications

One of the primary goals of this research was to examine the utility of the methods of cognitive anthropology for understanding the similarities and differences in male body images across cultures. Too often is it assumed that body images, and the psychologies that underlie them, will be static (or at least minimally different) across cultural groups, as evidenced by the operationalization of “culture” as a nominal variable in most studies. These data show that male body images between Americans and

South Koreans not only differ in the degrees of salience attributed to various bodily features; they also differ in the very ways they understand and value bodies and body images, and are therefore not directly comparable like a nominal variable would suggest. Having scientifically reliable and emically valid data about how culture impacts the ways in which bodies are evaluated is indispensable in examining these differences.

This study also shows how people in different cultures answer the same set of questions in divergent but internally reliable ways, so long as that concept exists within that cultural group. On the dimensions of importance and desirability, residual agreement analysis demonstrated that Americans and South Koreans provided much different answers to the same questions. In neither case did Americans and South

Koreans overlap in their residual agreement, but there was strong agreement within

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these cultural groups. Both groups reliably answered the survey, but not all survey items

were salient in the same ways across cultures. Without ethnographically informed validity checks, it is possible to misinterpret quantitative consistency as qualitative homogeneity.

These data, therefore, have implications not only for identification purposes, but also treatment and prevention strategies. Because the pressures under which South

Korean men operate differ from American men, the types of outreach and therapeutic paradigms used for American men may not be as applicable to South Koreans. For example, because ornamentality is valued over instrumentality in South Korean men,

therapy that assumes instrumentality as the “natural” framework under which men

operate may be met not only with indifference, but resistance. Rather, a deep

understanding of how South Koreans conceptualize male body image serves to inform

better policy, research, education, prevention, identification, and treatment. Because of

rapid social change in South Korea, including the continuing shifts in gender roles (Y.

Kim, 2012, 2013a; Qian & Sayer, 2016), as well as the cultural emphasis on ornamentality, South Korean men may be highly vulnerable to body image and eating disorders without having effective means for their combat.

These data also serve as a metric against which body image change over time

can be observed. While these participants endorsed distinct body images, there was

evidence in the control dimension of acculturation to an American understanding of

bodily mutability. Because of the rising popularity of South Korean popular culture

around the world (known as Hallyu, or the Korean Wave)—and especially in developing countries in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East—body images may be shifting to

186

reflect explicitly Korean body ideals (Kaul, 2017; Maliangkay & Song, 2015; Watt &

Ricciardelli, 2012). It is therefore important to understand how people around the world engage with and potentially internalize this new source of body ideals in order to anticipate the health implications of their adoption. Similar methods can be employed to evaluate body images across cultural groups to more effectively understand, prevent, and treat the rising tide of body image and eating disorders around the world.

This also raises interesting questions that result from the potential differential

value of male ornamentality across cultural groups. In other words, the fact that

Americans devalue ornamentality for instrumentality while South Koreans appear to do

the opposite opens the door to many possible projects. First, we can ask whether

ornamentality always suggests objectification, to what degree ornamentality/ objectification is emasculating or feminizing across cultures, and/or to what degree these phenomena are devaluing. Second, we can investigate whether the higher attention that people pay to South Korean men’s ornamentality indicates a higher

cultural predisposition toward the development of body image and eating disorders.

Third, it gives us the opportunity to test Mears’ (2011) theory of men’s display value:

“the more a body is objectified for display, the greater women’s relative market value.

Similarly, the less recognized talent or skill is involved in the body work, the greater

men’s wage penalty relative to women” (p. 264). Studying the intersections of gender,

culture, and body image in South Korea take these fields in exciting new directions.

7.6. Conclusion

In conclusion, this study utilized cultural domain analysis to explore the

similarities and differences between American and South Korean ideal male body

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images. Based on qualitative data and top-down analysis, South Korean men have been said to endorse a “feminized” male body ideal marked by pretty features and thin frames, in contrast to the highly muscled American male ideal. Responding to calls by other anthropologists to take Culture more seriously in the cross-cultural study of body image, my data show not only that there are differences in the shapes of bodies desired, but in the ways bodies and body image are understood across cultural groups.

In other words, Americans value the muscular ideal for its instrumentality and its projection of physical dominance. South Koreans tend to value the “softer” male ideal embodied largely in the kkonminam for its ornamentality and its projection of economic dominance.

With its emic validity and scientific replicability, cultural domain analysis is an effective set of methods for studying cultural differences in body ideals. These methods can be used by researchers in other fields, like cultural psychology and epidemiology, to ensure the validity of their findings. Further, insofar as cultural competence (Romney et al., 1986) and cultural consonance (Dressler, 2005) have been demonstrated to be related to physical and mental health outcomes, researchers can extend these methods to explore how knowing the model(s) of ideal body, as well as being able to approximate it individually, independently and simultaneously affect the endorsement of disordered eating behaviors.

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APPENDIX A PHASE I INTERVIEW SCHEDULE Phase I: Free Lists Case #______Date: ______Sex: ______Ethnicity: ______Age: ______Number of Years in U.S.: ______

Please list for me all of the words or phrases that you can think of that people use to describe the “ideal male body.” (For Koreans, add: Words or phrases can be in English or Korean)

11 21 1. . .

12 22 2. . .

13 23 3. . .

14 24 4. . .

15 25 5. . .

16 26 6. . .

17 27 7. . .

18 28 8. . .

19 29 9. . .

10.

207 20 30 . .

Did you have someone in mind when you were free-listing? [ ] Yes [ ] No If so, please let me know who who you were thinking of. ______What characteristics does he have that represent the ideal male body? ______

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______

What about someone who represents the opposite of the ideal male body? ______What characteristics does he have that represent the opposite of the ideal male body? ______Other Notes: ______

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APPENDIX B PHASE II INTERVIEW SCHEDULE Phase II: Pile Sorting Case #: ______(Yes/No)__ Date: ______Sex: ______Ethnicity: ______Age: ______Number of Years in U.S.: ______Please organize these cards however you think is best. The only rule is that you have to make more than one pile.

Number of piles: ______

Pile 1: Why did you sort these cards into this pile? ______What would you call this group? ______

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Are there any cards that were hard for you to sort? ______Are there any cards that you thought were irrelevant? ______Pile 2: Why did you sort these cards into this pile? ______What would you call this group? ______Are there any cards that were hard for you to sort? ______Are there any cards that you thought were irrelevant? ______Pile 3: Why did you sort these cards into this pile? ______

211 ______What would you call this group? ______Are there any cards that were hard for you to sort? ______Are there any cards that you thought were irrelevant? ______Pile 4: Why did you sort these cards into this pile? ______What would you call this group? ______Are there any cards that were hard for you to sort? ______Are there any cards that you thought were irrelevant? ______

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______

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APPENDIX C PHASE III INTERVIEW SCHEDULE 1. How old are you? ______

2. How long have you lived in the U.S.? ______

3. How do you identify your gender? ( [ ] M / [ ] F / [ ] Other: ______)

4. How do you identify your cultural group? [ ] American [ ] Korean [ ] Other: ______

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I. Below is a list of traits of male bodies. In your culture, how much do people pay attention to each trait when thinking about the ideal male body? (Remember, this question is about what people in your culture tend to think, not what you personally think).

A lot A little Not much Not at all

Abs 복근/초콜릿/ M 라인 Athletic/In Shape 스포츠맨다운 Big Body 큰 몸 Big Eyes 큰 눈 Big Hands 큰 손 Big Head 큰 머리 Broad Shoulder 넓은 어깨 Chest Hair 가슴 털 Clear Skin 깨끗한 피부 Double Eyelid 쌍꺼풀 Eye Smile 눈웃음 Facial Hair 수염

Fat

살찐

215 Grooming

스타일리쉬한, Head as 1/8 of body length 팔등신 High, Sharp

Nose

높은 코

Light Skin

흰 피부 Long Legs 긴 다리 Low Body Fat

지방이 적은 Muscular 근육질의 Pimples 여드름 Short 작은 키 Short Legs 짧은 다리 Skinny/Thin 마른/야윈 Small Body 작은 몸 Small Eyes 작은 눈 Small Head 작은 머리 Small Muscle 잔근육 Strong 강한 Strong, Defined Jaw 강한 턱

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Style 최신 유행의 Tall 키가 큰 Tanned Skin 선탠 피부 Toned/Defined 근육이 있는 V Line Jaw V 라인 턱

II. Below is a list of traits of male bodies. In your culture, how desirable do people consider each of the following attributes to be in men? Very Very Desirable Desirable Undesirable Undesirable Abs 복근/초콜릿/ M 라인 Athletic/In Shape 스포츠맨다운 Big Body 큰 몸 Big Eyes 큰 눈 Big Hands 큰 손 Big Head 큰 머리 Broad Shoulder 넓은 어깨 Chest Hair 가슴 털 Clear Skin 깨끗한 피부 Double Eyelid 쌍꺼풀

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Eye Smile 눈웃음 Facial Hair 수염 Fat 살찐 Grooming

스타일리쉬한, Head as 1/8 of body length 팔등신 High, Sharp Nose 높은 코 Light Skin 흰 피부 Long Legs 긴 다리 Low Body Fat

지방이 적은 Muscular 근육질의 Pimples 여드름 Short 작은 키 Short Legs 짧은 다리 Skinny/Thin 마른/야윈 Small Body 작은 몸 Small Eyes 작은 눈 Small Head 작은 머리

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Small Muscle 잔근육 Strong 강한 Strong, Defined Jaw 강한 턱 Style 최신 유행의 Tall 키가 큰 Tanned Skin 선탠 피부 Toned/Defined 근육이 있는 V Line Jaw V 라인 턱

III. Below is a list of traits of male bodies. In your culture, how much control are men generally believed to have over the following traits? Full Control A Lot of Control A Little Control No Control

Abs 복근/초콜릿/ M 라인 Athletic/In Shape 스포츠맨다운 Big Body 큰 몸 Big Eyes 큰 눈 Big Hands 큰 손 Big Head 큰 머리

219

Broad Shoulder 넓은 어깨 Chest Hair 가슴 털 Clear Skin 깨끗한 피부 Double Eyelid 쌍꺼풀 Eye Smile 눈웃음 Facial Hair 수염 Fat 살찐 Grooming

스타일리쉬한, Head as 1/8 of body length 팔등신 High, Sharp Nose 높은 코 Light Skin 흰 피부 Long Legs 긴 다리 Low Body Fat

지방이 적은 Muscular 근육질의 Pimples 여드름 Short 작은 키 Short Legs 짧은 다리

220

Skinny/Thin 마른/야윈 Small Body 작은 몸 Small Eyes 작은 눈 Small Head 작은 머리 Small Muscle 잔근육 Strong 강한 Strong, Defined Jaw 강한 턱 Style 최신 유행의 Tall 키가 큰 Tanned Skin 선탠 피부 Toned/Defined 근육이 있는 V Line Jaw V 라인 턱

IV. Below is a list of traits of male bodies. How necessary are the following traits to being a kkonminam (꽃미남)? Completely Slightly Very Necessary Unnecessary Necessary Necessary Abs 복근/초콜릿/ M 라인 Athletic/In Shape 스포츠맨다운

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Big Body 큰 몸 Big Eyes 큰 눈 Big Hands 큰 손 Big Head 큰 머리 Broad Shoulder 넓은 어깨 Chest Hair 가슴 털 Clear Skin 깨끗한 피부 Double Eyelid 쌍꺼풀 Eye Smile 눈웃음 Facial Hair 수염 Fat 살찐 Grooming

스타일리쉬한, Head as 1/8 of body length 팔등신 High, Sharp Nose 높은 코 Light Skin 흰 피부 Long Legs 긴 다리 Low Body Fat

지방이 적은

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Muscular 근육질의 Pimples 여드름 Short 작은 키 Short Legs 짧은 다리 Skinny/Thin 마른/야윈 Small Body 작은 몸 Small Eyes 작은 눈 Small Head 작은 머리 Small Muscle 잔근육 Strong 강한 Strong, Defined Jaw 강한 턱 Style 최신 유행의 Tall 키가 큰 Tanned Skin 선탠 피부 Toned/Defined 근육이 있는 V Line Jaw V 라인 턱

5. In your culture, which of these pictures would people consider to be the closest body to the male ideal?

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6. In your culture, which of these pictures would people consider to be the closest body to the male ideal?

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

7. How much do you weigh? ______

8. What is your height? ______

9. Sexual Orientation? a. [ ] Heterosexual/Straight b. [ ] Bisexual c. [ ] Homosexual/Gay/Lesbian d. [ ] Asexual e. [ ] Other ______

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APPENDIX D IRB APPROVAL LETTERS See the following page.

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