A tale of corruption

Abstract

The multi-disciplinary team of Becker and colleagues elegantly present their findings addressing aspects of the impact on Fijian schoolgirls of exposure to Western television (Beckeret al, 2002, this issue). These findings support the notion that such exposure has generated disordered eating, underlying body dissatisfaction and intergenerational conflicts within the family that may, in part, be fuelling the process. Focusing on the expected escalation of such disordered eating in this population under these circumstances, their study was naturalistic in capitalising on the recent introduction of television to Fiji, with the first survey of these schoolgirls taking place within 1 month of its advent. The second survey was 3 years later in 1998. The authors point out that the traditional Fijian culture has ‘supported robust appetites and body shapes'.