From this article in the Harvard Gazette
The results were startling. In 1995, without television, girls in Fiji appeared to be free of the eating disorders common in the West. But by 1998, after just a few years of sexy soap operas and seductive commercials, 11.3 percent of adolescent girls reported they at least once had purged to lose weight.
To illustrate this rapid transformation of ideals, Becker quoted from the 1998 interviews. “I want their body,” said one girl of the Western shows she watched. “I want their size.”
By the glow of television, young girls in Fiji “got the idea they could resculpt their lives,” said Becker — but they also began to “think of themselves as poor and fat.”
The changing social environment also took its toll on mental health. In 2007, Becker started a school-based study within one wedge-shaped section of Viti Levu, Fiji’s main island. More than 520 girls filled out questionnaires, and 300 consented to interviews.
Becker found that disordered eating habits were “alive and well in Fiji,” with 45 percent of girls reporting they had purged in the last month. (In some cases, they got traditional herbal purgatives from their mothers.)
Ironically, the same girls sometimes used appetite stimulants, she found. They feared what in Fijian is called macake, a disorder that suppresses the appetite — inviting the thinness disparaged by traditional culture.
Becker’s study also revealed a dissonance between the reality of the girls’ lives (poor and agrarian) and their expectations (rich and cosmopolitan). Nearly 80 percent of the girls said they planned on professional careers. That included being an airline hostess. “They only want thin girls,” one respondent said.