Acculturation and social class as related to Hispanic-American women' s perception of clothing/appearance products

Abstract

A study of the association between Hispanic-American women's perception of the appropriateness

of clothing and appearance styles of the Mexican (root) and Anglo-American (host) cultures was conducted. The influence of social class and acculturation were researched in relation to the

perception of• Mexican, Hispanic-American and Anglo-American appearance styles for three settings.

(business, dressy and casual). Despite being members of the same social class, significant differences were found as to the perceptions of appropriateness of some of the appearance styles

between the Hispanic- American and Anglo-American subjects. The level of acculturation of the

Hispanic-American subjects was a greater influence on their perceptions than was social class.

·new culture (Rogers and Shoemaker 1971) Mendoza and Martinez (1981 ) indicated that, during the acculturation process of Hispanics, clothing customs tend to be among those adopted more rapidly than some other value based traits. These indicators of the new culture play an important role in acculturation. Furthermore, the adoption of symbols is not viewed as a finite phenomenon, but a s a process directly related to contact with the dominant culture (Rogers and Shoemaker 1971) and one which is

increasingly shown in third and fourth generations (Gans 1979).