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by Dr. Pierre Wilhelm, business communication, Faculty of Business

Two of my Cuban colegas often spoke to me half-jokingly, half-reverently about Cuban women’s self-assuredness and strong self-esteem.  Lazaro, a professor of educational research at the Universidad del Golfo de California in Los Cabos, Mexico, and Roberto, a professor in computer studies at the Universidad de Cienfuegos in Cuba have vaunted Cuban women’s sense of pride about their beauty and their assertive personalities.  All three of us have collaborated on and off over the past several years in providing a certificate in distance education with Moodle, our universities’ common online course delivery system, in Spanish.  Our project took us from the campus of the Universidad de Cienfuegos, Cuba, to universities on the Mexican Baja Peninsula.  They assured me that these qualities make Cuban women stand out among all other Latin American women.  But, being married for many years to a very proud, very pretty, and outspoken Chilean lady, I knew better to bite my tongue rather than respond too quickly to such an assertion, lest my wife hear about it.  Someday , I promised them, I would investigate Cuban women’s body esteem. I would run a comparative media effects experiment with latina subjects from Cuba and another country.  That “day” consumed most of my sabbatical leave this year.

Women in most Latin American countries suffer from an enduring epidemic of poor body esteem and many researchers point to mass media and the images of unrealistically thin female models they broadcast to viewers as the culprit.  Mexican women, for example, especially those who live in large cosmopolitan areas, are bombarded daily with commercial messages insinuating that their appearance is inadequate.  Electronic and print media incite them to conform to unrealistic ideals of beauty by engaging in dieting, strenuous physical exercise, cosmetic surgery, and by purchasing countless cosmetic products and apparels.  A favored Nordic ideal depicts an impossibly tall, blond, blue-eyed woman in commercial ads that only remotely conform to some Mexicans of European origin.  As well, darker-skinned Latin-looking models with elongated figures appear in all manners of commercial broadcasting, on billboards, in newspapers and magazines.  In comparison, women in Cuba are only seldom exposed to sterotypical models of feminine beauty through music videos, soap operas, and movies imported from abroad.  Young Cuban women, especially those who grow up in small cities, have never read commercial print advertisement or viewed electronic ads targeting their sensibilities about their appearance in a detrimental way, except perhaps individuals who have read a fashion magazine brought along by a friend or family relative visiting from abroad. 

Now that most of the field work I accomplished during my sabbatical is over, I am thankful that Rector Juan B. Cogollos of the Universidad de Cienfuegos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Cienfuegos)  facilitated my collaboration with Cuban academics from his university’s social sciences, psychology, and gender studies department.  In particular, Doctora Marianela Morales helped recruit nearly eighty female participants for a media experiment. She and her colleagues also helped select participants for in-depth interviews regarding women’s socialization to beauty ideals and their body esteem in Cuba.  Cienfuegos is a lovely coastal city located four hours Southwest of Havana (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cienfuegos ).  It was founded in the early 1800’s by French settlers from Louisiana.  Its architecture, urban design, artist galleries, restaurants, and music clubs rival the charm and elegance of News Orleans  http://autenticacuba.com/cienfuegos/#axzz2UbwLnQAy.  Many foreign students, in fact, take advantage of the university’s language school and inexpensive, modern accommodations in private casas de huespedes, a type of bed and bedroom accommodation, to spend one or two semesters in Cienfuegos perfecting their Spanish.  This is a program that Dr. Cogollos is keen to provide our students of Spanish who wish to finish their degrees at AU with a complete language “immersion” program.  He also invited AU staff and academics to help set up Moodle-based distance education at his university as part of a similar language program exchange.

To complete this comparative study across the Yucatan Channel, concurrently, I was also fortunate that Señor Aldo Chavez, Director of Academic programs at Universidad Anahuac Cancun (http://www.anahuaccancun.edu.mx/) facilitated my work in Mexico in the large urban and tourist center of Cancun.  He engaged his academics from the psychology department, notably Maestra Judith Morffi  to assist me in recruiting participants for interviews.  Two student assistants helped set up and run experimental sessions on my behalf in exchange for course credits.  Likewise, communication students at Anahuac University under the direction of Maestro Humberto Tungui spent one semester producing professional-level movie “montages” for this study using scenes from a Hollywood film entitled Real Women Have Curves (2002).  This commercial movie depicts a young Chicano woman named Ana who faces many personal challenges as she completes high school in Los Angeles.  These communication students dubbed scenes from the HBO movie into a Spanish a version of the movie devoid of local slang or dialect that could have impeded Cuban viewers’ comprehension.  One montage demonstrated strong interpersonal support for Ana’s realistic beauty from her peers, family members, a professor, and a boyfriend.  The other movie segment demonstrated Ana’s mother’s condemnation of her daughter’s appearance.  Through verbal insults and physical abuse, Señora Carmen made it clear to Ana that she had to lose weight in order to possibly succeed in finding a husband or securing a successful job or college degree.  Movie drama heightened the possibility that viewers would engage in a strong “parasocial” association with Ana.  It also increased the possibility that viewers would evoke positive or negative thoughts and feelings derived from personal experience, potentially influencing their body esteem.

When will I be able to answer Lazaro's and Roberto’s assertion regarding the state of Cubanas’ self-esteem in comparison with other latinas’?  Doctora Marianela and Doctor Lazaro will help me analyze all the data and information we gathered in Mexico and Cuba for this research.  Nevertheless, initial results of this study indicate that my academic colegas’ initial remarks were well founded.

photo: communication students editing experimental movie segments at Universidad Anahuac Cancun