Pakistan's 'burger babes' worry more about calories

Young Pakistani English-speaking women at elite institutes, who munch on high-calorie snacks and are often referred to as the 'burger babes' worry more about their weight than their contemporaries enrolled in Urdu-medium educational institutions.

Young women from well-to-do families are also not happy with their figures and hail Western women as perfect models, says a new study published in the British Journal of Psychology.

The study, which focusses on how Pakistani and Australian women perceive their bodies, has revealed interesting differences between Pakistani girls who are enrolled in English and Urdu-medium institutions. "Within the Pakistani sample, females from the English-medium institutions expressed greater weight concern than did the Urdu-medium females, indicating the possible role of cultural values in shaping the body image attitudes of young females," Nargis Mahmud, who teaches psychology at Australia's University of Wollongong, wrote in her paper.

"Body shape and unhealthy eating attitudes, which were once thought to be wholly confined to Western women, have emerged among non-Western populations. The attitudes towards body shape and weight prevailing in the West seem to be non-existent or uncommon in other cultures until such culture s begin to adopt the values of Western cultures," Mahmud wrote.

The sample for the study consisted of Caucasian-Australian and Pakistani first year university students aged between 17 and 22. The Pakistani sample was subdivided into two groups -- Urdu-medium and English-medium, representing the middle and upper social classes, respectively.

In traditional non-Western societies, a relatively fat body is regarded as a sign of health and a symbol of prosperity. "The comparative study of the body image of Australian and Pakistani young females has thus indicated that with increasing globalisation, there is among the educated a modern culture that touches all countries and which is beginning to override old traditions and place a more powerful emphasis on physical appearance," the study said.

"In view of increasing globalisation, it is difficult to predict the extent of the future influence of Western culture on these Eastern cultures and their life-styles."

The results revealed that though all the groups identified a similar body shape as the "ideal", the Australian females expressed significantly higher levels of body dissatisfaction on all measures of body image than the Pakistani females.

The results also revealed that the traditional standards of beauty among young Pakistani females of upper socio-economic groups are being replaced by what is attractive in Western terms.