The existing psychological literature on African American women's body image has tended to purport that this population is protected from body dissatisfaction and negative self-appraisals due to cultural acceptance of larger body sizes and a lessened preoccupation with the thin ideal. Though a thin ideal may not be central, there is ample sociocultural and historical support for the idea that skin tone and color, hair length and texture, and facial features represent appearance characteristics that are salient to the body image of Black women. When these characteristics are considered, a very different picture of Black women's body image begins to appear.