Aside from internal or sociocultural factors, external components of one’s environment such as family, peer relationships, and the media influence body dissatisfaction and disordered eating in Asian American communities.

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In Asian American families, relatives are the biggest external influences on Asian American women’s body dissatisfaction and rate of disordered eating. Many family environments in the Asian diaspora are based on gender role expectations, establishing different standards for male and female children in the household (Wong, Keum, Caffarel, et al, 2017, pp. 297-298). For women, these gender expectations are based on appearance and beauty, creating an ideal where a woman’s success is based on the way they look and appear. While women receive remarks from many family members, negative comments from mothers and positive parental comments are the biggest predictors of body dissatisfaction and disordered eating (Chng and Fassnacht, 2015, p. 97). Familial pressure from parents also increases an Asian American woman’s level of perfectionism, and higher levels of perfectionism correlate to higher levels of body dissatisfaction (Frederick, Kelly, Latner, Sandhu, and Tsong, 2016, pp. 120-121). Much of this pressure also comes from elders who may believe that their relative’s success in the United States comes from adhering to their cultural values and standards (Wong, Keum, Caffarel, et al, 2017, pp. 303-305). When faced with the pressure to adhere to the values of their older family members, Asian American women may feel inadequate and turn to unhealthy means of obtaining those standards. Appeasing family members can cost an Asian American woman her mental and physical well-being due to the expectation of appearing perfect at every moment. The familial pressure which leads to perfectionism can be greatly damaging for Asian American women by increasing their body dissatisfaction and rate of disordered eating.

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Peers can highly influence the body image of Asian American women. In the United States, an Asian American woman’s peers can serve as the gateway of American culture, especially if they are not first or second-generation immigrants (Frederick, Kelly, Latner, Sandhu, and Tsong, 2016, pp. 113-114). While close friendships protect an individual’s self-body image, other peer relationships can still have a damaging impact and put pressure on one’s relationship with their body. In school, racial teasing, bullying based on race, is a strong predictor of depression, low self-esteem, and eating problems in South Asian American teens (Iyer and Haslam, 2003, p. 143). Viewing social media pictures of peers contributes to lower body dissatisfaction, even with peer media literacy (Tamplin, McLean, and Paxton, 2018, pp. 34-35). When Asian American female students are teased for their ethnic features, they internalize that the aspects of their body that make them “look ethnic” are the problem. Surrounded by images of their peers on social media, those same students may internalize that their appearance must look like their peers to be perceived as beautiful. Analyzing romantic relationships shows how peers who could be romantic partners influence self-objectification ideology in Asian American women. Asian American women who are attracted to male partners are far more likely to engage in disordered eating and may feel more aware of their bodies when catcalled or insulted by men. At the same time, some Asian American women desire catcalls from men to validate their beauty (Wong, Keum, Caffarel, et al, 2017, pp. 303-305). Wanting catcalls drives Asian American women to self-objectify and to perceive their bodies as needing outside validation, diminishing body satisfaction. Peers, whether they are classmates or romantic partners, externally influence Asian American women to feel that their bodies are abnormal.

The third external factor that influences the body images of Asian American women is the media. There is a lack of Asian American representation in mainstream American media. Though Asian Americans make up over five percent of the population in the U.S., they are only represented 2.4% of the time in the media. Most of the women depicted had light or medium skin tones, and their features were smaller than the average Asian American woman (Boepple and Thompson, 2018, pp. 270-272). For some, these representations perpetuated unobtainable body types, making individuals feel less satisfied with their appearances (Wong, Keum, Caffarel, et al, 2017, pp. 303-305). When Asian American women do not view themselves or their bodies reflected in the media, they may feel like their bodies do not deserve space in the mainstream, causing emotional distress. Other representations of Asian American women in film and television used stereotypes, characterizing them as “dragon ladies” who were hypersexual, submissive, passive, and thin (Wong, Keum, Caffarel, et al, 2017, pp. 297-298). When exposed to messages with those stereotypes, Asian American women can internalize these stereotypes through racial self-objectification. By viewing themselves through the racialized lens, Asian American women internalize that to be accepted in the United States, they must look and act in that fashion. The media’s influence on body satisfaction and disordered eating in female Asian American communities stems from the lack of positive representations, ones that are not built upon stereotypes.