“I am not a skinny toothpick and proud of it”: Latina adolescents’ ethnic identity and responses to mainstream media images

•Latina girls viewed photographs of sexualized or non-sexualized White women.•Girls’ self-descriptions were used to measure ethnic identity.•Thirty percent of girls included their ethnicity as part of their self-descriptions.•Latina girls may use ethnic identity to resist some effects of White media images.

Using a quasi-experimental design, 118 Latina girls, ages 13–18, viewed five color photographs of White women. Girls viewed either images of sexualized women or images of non-sexualized women. After viewing the images, girls were asked to complete the sentence stem, “I am…” 20 times. Thirty percent of girls spontaneously described their ethnicity in one of their sentence completions. Spontaneous use of ethnicity was taken as an indicator of the salience of ethnic identity. Among girls who viewed sexualized, thin-ideal White media images, spontaneously using an ethnic descriptor was related to more positive descriptions of one's own body and appearance. Analyses supported the premise that ethnic identity may act as a protective factor, buffering Latina girls from the negative effects of viewing sexualized, thin-ideal White media images.