tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/fat-activism-6517/articlesFat activism – The Conversation2023-07-17T20:03:13Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2096822023-07-17T20:03:13Z2023-07-17T20:03:13ZLizzo proudly calls herself a ‘fat’ woman. Are we allowed to as well?<p>Lizzo has arrived in Australia for the world tour of her latest album, Special. </p>
<p>If you don’t know Lizzo yet, she shot to fame in 2019 with the release of her third studio album Cuz I Love You. The re-release of sleeper hit <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P00HMxdsVZI">Truth Hurts</a> launched Lizzo to number one on the charts and made her a household name. The catchy lyrics still have people around the world singing, “I just took a DNA test, turns out I’m 100% that bitch”. </p>
<p>Leveraging the popularity of TikTok dances in the wake of COVID-19 lockdowns, Lizzo’s social media accounts pushed heavy on <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@jaedengomezz/video/7089557135012515118?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1&q=jaeden%20gomez&t=1655883231056">choreography composed by TikToker @jaedengomezz</a> to promote the newly released track <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXXxciRUMzE">About Damn Time</a>. </p>
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<p>About Damn Time ultimately <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/lizzo-about-damn-time-hits-number-one-billboard-hot-100-1235117548/">topped the charts</a> globally and won Lizzo the Grammy for Record of the Year.</p>
<p>The message of her music and the image she projects through <a href="https://www.instagram.com/lizzobeeating/?hl=en">social media</a> promote self-love and self-empowerment, while explicitly celebrating her size. </p>
<p>Since her rise to stardom, Lizzo has faced <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/01/entertainment/lizzo-fat-shaming/index.html">constant negative criticism</a> for representing her body in such a way. She has responded by <a href="https://people.com/music/lizzo-women-changing-the-world-people-cover-story/">saying</a>, “I’m a body icon, and I’m embracing that more and more every day”. </p>
<p>In examining Lizzo’s career, we can identify a crucial recognfiguration of a “<a href="https://people.com/music/lizzo-women-changing-the-world-people-cover-story/">funny, fat friend</a>” trope to the embodiment of a Black, fat superstar.</p>
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<h2>Thick and juicy</h2>
<p>Those familiar with Lizzo may have heard her using the term “fat” to describe her body. She also uses descriptors such as big, thick and juicy. The word fat stands out among these descriptors since we typically employ it as a pejorative, a term intended to bring shame to the person on the other end of it. </p>
<p>So, why the term fat? And should you now be using it to describe bigger bodies like Lizzo’s?</p>
<p>Lizzo’s reclamation of the word is rooted in a queer-feminist led and disability-related activist movement: fat activism. </p>
<p>The fat activist movement emerged in the United States in the 1970s, and includes early figures such as <a href="https://fatlibarchive.org/fat-liberation-manifesto-1973/">Judy Freespirit and Aldebaran</a>. It exposed the oppressive structures contributing to the marginalisation and stigmatisation of fat people. <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814776315/the-fat-studies-reader/">Fat studies</a> has since emerged as an interdisciplinary field that documents and theorises the work of fat activists.</p>
<p>Fat activists seek to destabilise harmful assumptions of morality and willpower (or a lack thereof), as well as the punitive, shame-based “health” messages that exist around bigger bodies. They do so to push the conversation in new directions and to break down long-existing negative frameworks that inform our understanding of, and feelings towards, fatness. </p>
<p>The (re)positioning of the BMI scale as an antiquated and fraught system to determine “obesity” is one example. The rise of the <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/health-every-size/#">Health at Every Size movement</a> is another.</p>
<p>In adopting fat as a lead subject descriptor and as a term to self-identify, activists and scholars have argued it is a biological term and thus neutral – it’s stating a fact. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/no-justifications-excuses-or-box-ticking-the-art-of-a-successful-celebrity-apology-185366">No justifications, excuses or box-ticking: the art of a successful celebrity apology</a>
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<p>Lizzo has joined a procession of voices in calling out the cooption of fat-positive language by the <a href="https://www.glamour.com/story/lizzo-body-positivity-movement-tiktok">body positivity movement</a>. For years fat activists have been drawing attention to the assimilationist nature of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-body-positivity-movement-risks-turning-toxic-189913">body positivity and its toxic and exclusionary mechanisms</a>. Critics demonstrate <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-47432-4_5">how body positivity centres white, “mid-size” women</a>, who simply demand a seat at the table of acceptance, while amplifying a toxic positivity towards their bodies. </p>
<p>Such an approach has encouraged diet companies and major apparel brands to embrace size inclusive language, so that <a href="https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong/">fat discrimination and oppression is, in turn, rendered invisible</a> in surrounding discourse.</p>
<p>A recent turn towards <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jul/23/the-rise-of-the-body-neutrality-movement-if-youre-fat-you-dont-have-to-hate-yourself">body neutrality</a>, which neither promotes a positive nor negative spin on body size, has grown in popularity. </p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/29/health/body-neutrality-wellness/index.html?utm_term=link&utm_content=2023-05-29T23%3A31%3A06&utm_source=twCNN&utm_medium=social">Lizzo encourages it</a>, saying, “I don’t need your positivity or your negativity. I don’t need your comments at all. How about that?” </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-body-positivity-movement-risks-turning-toxic-189913">Why the body positivity movement risks turning toxic</a>
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<h2>Fatness in society and culture</h2>
<p>It should not, however, suggest all larger-sized people now prefer to be described as fat. There are many people who avoid the term given it’s continuing use in shaming others, including themselves. </p>
<p>We have the added complication that fatness, in many ways, is in the eye of the beholder: conceptions of fatness tend to be individually, socially and culturally shaped. It’s a sliding scale made even more complex by factors such as gender. </p>
<p>For instance, the language existing around fat men is typically less vitriolic than what fat women experience, <a href="https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/health/a39602330/big-guy-essay/">for example, phrases like “big guy” or “big man”</a>. </p>
<p>When discussing Lizzo, it is vital we acknowledge her identity as a Black, fat woman. </p>
<p>Sabrina Strings in her book <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479886753/fearing-the-black-body/">Fearing the Black Body</a> traces the racist legacies of fat-phobia and its emergence with the rise of global slave trades during the Enlightenment Era. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21604851.2021.1907112">Academics</a> have also worked to situate Lizzo’s message of self-love and the consistent sexualising of her own body against a history in Western (white) society of treating Black, fat bodies as spectacle: paraded, made abject and shamed. </p>
<p>Lizzo’s embodiment as a self-loving and self-empowered Black, fat woman offers a radical response to such histories.</p>
<p>Her self-described <a href="https://www.allure.com/story/lizzo-reacts-to-body-and-health-shaming">“brand” is Black girl liberation</a>. She places her Black identity before fatness. <a href="https://www.vibe.com/news/entertainment/lizzo-music-white-people-1234700926/">She says</a>,</p>
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<p>I am a Black woman, I am making music from my Black experience, for me to heal myself.</p>
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<h2>So should we say ‘fat’?</h2>
<p>If an individual like Lizzo self-identifies as fat, an invitation emerges for us to also pick up and use the term to describe her body. </p>
<p>Doing so, it feels like we, too, might participate in a process of fat liberation and size acceptance. But in celebrating Lizzo’s fatness, we must not ignore the racist systems that continue to shape our beliefs on fatness, determining what is and what is not an acceptable body size and shape.</p>
<p>The presence of Lizzo in our lives serves to remind us that while we grapple with politics of fatness – who is fat and who we can describe as fat – we cannot remove racism and anti-Blackness from the conversation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209682/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan (Jonno) Graffam is a dramaturg and director in the area of fat and queer performance. Recent credits include Full Cream (2023) and Cake Daddy (2018/19). He is completing a PhD in Theatre at Monash University with a project titled “Fat Dramaturgies: Queer strategies and methodologies in staging fat performance”, where he looks at examples of radical body size politics (embodied fatness) onstage. He specialises in the field of contemporary dramaturgy and popular performance. Jonno is a Tutor in Theatre at the Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, The University of Melbourne.</span></em></p>Since her rise to stardom, Lizzo has faced constant negative criticism about her body. She has responded by saying ‘I’m a body icon, and I’m embracing that more and more every day’.Jonathan Graffam, PhD Candidate in Theatre, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1952872022-12-13T19:52:51Z2022-12-13T19:52:51ZWhat Taylor Swift’s ‘Anti-Hero’ controversy can tell us about fatphobia in feminist politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499101/original/file-20221205-26-y57tja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3600%2C2457&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Taylor Swift was accused of fatphobia over her 'Anti-Hero' music video.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Taylor Swift recently <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/taylor-swift-should-not-remove-fatphobic-scene-anti-hero-video-rcna54617">removed a scene</a> from her music video, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1kbLwvqugk"><em>Anti-Hero</em></a>, after several <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/gvzx94/fat-positive-activists-explain-what-its-really-like-to-be-fat">fat positivity activists</a> across social media accused the <a href="https://twitter.com/fatfabfeminist/status/1583523413221867520">scene of being fatphobic</a>. </p>
<p>In the scene, Swift’s two selves, the real her and her “anti-hero” character, are in a bathroom. As Swift’s real self stands on a weighting scale, her anti-hero persona peers downward and the word “FAT” appears on the scale. Swift’s face appears disgusted. The scene earned <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-63414044">considerable backlash online</a>. </p>
<p>In response to the video, fat positive therapist <a href="https://twitter.com/theshirarose/status/1583500955818942470?s=20&t=c8ETpLI4xoWvF_vCOR4R0g">Shira Rosenbluth</a> posted on Twitter:</p>
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<p>Taylor Swift’s music video, where she looks down at the scale where it says “fat,” is a shitty way to describe her body image struggles. Fat people don’t need to have it reiterated yet again that it’s everyone’s worst nightmare to look like us.</p>
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<h2>White celebrity feminism</h2>
<p>As white feminist scholars committed to anti-racist and decolonial practices who work on divisions within feminist politics as they appear in art practices, this is far from an isolated incident of one artist. It reveals divisions about fat positivity within <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.ca/books/White-Feminism/Koa-Beck/9781982134426">white feminism</a>. </p>
<p>White feminism is not just an identity, it is a structure. As women’s studies scholar <a href="https://www.boldtypebooks.com/titles/kyla-schuller/the-trouble-with-white-women/9781645036883/">Kyla Schuller</a> writes, it “attracts people of all sexes, races, sexualities and class backgrounds, though straight white middle-class women have been its primary architects.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499109/original/file-20221205-21-rmkq69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Taylor Swift wearing white on a weighting scale in a bathroom. Her alter-ego looks down at the scale." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499109/original/file-20221205-21-rmkq69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499109/original/file-20221205-21-rmkq69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499109/original/file-20221205-21-rmkq69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499109/original/file-20221205-21-rmkq69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499109/original/file-20221205-21-rmkq69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499109/original/file-20221205-21-rmkq69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499109/original/file-20221205-21-rmkq69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Scene from Taylor Swift’s music video ‘Anti-Hero’. The video was edited to remove the word ‘fat’ after Swift was accused of fatphobia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1kbLwvqugk">(YouTube/Taylor Swift)</a></span>
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<p>Fat activists have worked to take <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/197420/fat-so-by-marilyn-wann/9780898159950">power away from the term “fat”</a> and use it as a neutral descriptor. Swift does not believe she is fat, but is illustrating internalized fatphobic messages. According to Swift, fame and public scrutiny of her body was <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/taylor-swift-miss-americana-disordered-eating-body-image">a major contributor to her eating disorder</a>.</p>
<p>Some have raised concerns that Swift’s removal of the scene from the video <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/taylor-swift-anti-hero-video-fat-controversy-1234619554/">watered down</a> her feminist message. But how does removing the term “fat” water down a specifically feminist message unless fat is seen to be a feminist issue? </p>
<p>This suggests that fat becomes a feminist issue only in the context of the harms of eating disorders from a white woman’s perspective, within market-friendly celebrity feminism. </p>
<p>Fat activists are criticizing Swift’s video and response for reproducing a depoliticized and individualistic strain of feminism that <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-neoliberalism-colonised-feminism-and-what-you-can-do-about-it-94856">ignores the racial, colonial, ableist and socioeconomic problems</a> behind issues such as eating disorders.</p>
<p>Swift has been able to deflect criticism with the support of fans and media writers who have jumped to her defence to protect her image. </p>
<h2>Erasure of others’ experiences</h2>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/Stoppp_looking/status/1585481003820515330?s=20&t=fnbDCVDMktV5VWSOIRbrhA">Online responses</a> to fat activist critique is telling. Swift’s defenders dismiss and demonize fat activists, aligning them with stereotypes of <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780739114872/The-Embodiment-of-Disobedience-Fat-Black-Womens-Unruly-Political-Bodies">fat women as unruly</a>. </p>
<p>As feminist scholar <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549420985852">Alison Phipps</a> argues, white feminism is an identity deeply invested in victimization, suffering and injury. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1584963631271538688"}"></div></p>
<p>Swift’s silence and her angry defenders reveal a complicity in reproducing <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479886753/fearing-the-black-body/">white supremacist fatphobia</a>. </p>
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<span class="caption">The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Penguin Random House)</span></span>
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<p>The rhetoric erases the fatphobia experienced by <a href="https://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity/lizzo-kanye-west-body-shaming/">Black women</a> and other racialized people. As author <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/565139/the-body-is-not-an-apology-second-edition-by-sonya-renee-taylor/">Sonya Renee Taylor writes</a>, “From LGBTQIA bodies, to fat bodies, to women’s bodies, we live under systems that force us to judge, devalue, and discriminate against the bodies of others.”</p>
<p>White feminism upholds the idea that <a href="https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/andi-zeisler/we-were-feminists-once/9781610397735/">feminism is about individual empowerment</a>, letting artists off the hook of answering for the injustices reiterated in their art. Moments like this come up <a href="https://theconversation.com/mask-or-no-mask-stop-using-fat-people-in-political-cartoons-176631">regularly in feminist politics</a> and rejecting a fat activist critique is a missed opportunity for coalition. It reinforces the power of white feminism to gatekeep. </p>
<h2>Feminism and eating disorders</h2>
<p>This division between feminism and fat activism often revolves around conceptualizing the harms of eating disorders. <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520240544/unbearable-weight">Feminists have argued that eating disorders do not exist in a social or cultural vaccuum</a>, but this argument has stopped short at fat acceptance. Fat positivity requires grappling with how our culture is obsessed with thinness, and how it reviles fatness as a way of enforcing and <a href="https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814728758.003.0007">maintaining bodily hierarchies</a>.</p>
<p>Swift’s video echoes many <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJOQOVAoQ9g">other white feminist artists who work out their bad body feelings in public as a way of processing harms of a negative body image</a>. </p>
<p>A running theme in Swift’s work is to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2021.1976586">mock media misogyny</a>. Since distancing herself from authentic country storytelling, she has moved to a pop persona that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2019.1630160">relishes in her “zany” flaws</a> and talks about the “real person” underneath the persona to remain relatable. Here, fatphobia is a personal flaw rather than a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95935-7_6">systemic social issue</a>. </p>
<p>White feminist responses to fat activist critique reveal the limits of fat positivity in feminism. Women’s studies professor <a href="https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/jfs/vol1/iss1/13/">Talia Welsh articulates how mainstream feminism is of two minds</a>:</p>
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<p>[The feminist] ability to reject the demonization of fat in one context and to accept fat’s negative status in another is based in the idea that one view of fat (the bad one) arises from sexism and that the other (the good one) arises from a concern about health. It is wrong to equate a woman’s value with her looks, but it is acceptable to encourage that same woman to lose weight if it would augment her health. </p>
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<p>Swift’s permission to express fatphobia in terms of it being detrimental to her health upholds her victim status, thereby centring a thin woman’s pain in discussing fatphobia. </p>
<p>The message received is: feeling positive about one’s body is good, but that good has limits, it is only for those with thin bodies. </p>
<p>Swift has no doubt been the target of beauty culture’s critique, but that culture cannot be divorced from its <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479886753/fearing-the-black-body/">capitalist, colonial and white supremacist roots</a>. In identifying fatphobia as primarily about women’s looks, Swift and others obscure the <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/670607/belly-of-the-beast-by-dashaun-harrison/">structural and material oppression experienced by fat people</a></p>
<p>These divisions in feminism will continue so long as white feminism claims fatphobia as its issue to both define and individually resist.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195287/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>By only discussing fatphobia in the context of eating disorders, Taylor Swift illustrates how deeply individualized and depoliticized white feminism is.Kristin Rodier, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Athabasca UniversityHeather McLean, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies and Human Geography, Athabasca UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1242662019-10-14T19:10:14Z2019-10-14T19:10:14ZChanging the terminology to ‘people with obesity’ won’t reduce stigma against fat people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296333/original/file-20191010-188829-id9jni.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fat activists argue fat is the most appropriate word to describe their bodies.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/495455731?src=Ag02sVFBVeVECWFBPwwLTg-1-79&size=huge_jpg">Yulia Grigoryeva/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The British Psychological Society is <a href="https://www.news.com.au/world/breaking-news/obesity-not-a-choice-says-new-report/news-story/20aa6fd1464578c1907f77e0d1ecf405">calling for changes</a> for how we talk about fatness, suggesting we should no longer use the phrase “obese people”, but instead, “people with obesity” or “people living with obesity”. </p>
<p>These changes are being proposed to recognise that fatness is not about personal choice and that fat shaming and fat stigma are harmful. </p>
<p>But this suggested language change is based on the idea obesity is a disease to be cured and fat people are not a natural part of the world. This serves to reinforce stigma, rather than prevent it. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/discrimination-against-fat-people-is-so-endemic-most-of-us-dont-even-realise-its-happening-94862">Discrimination against fat people is so endemic, most of us don’t even realise it’s happening</a>
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<h2>How does stigma and shame affect fat people?</h2>
<p>Fat stigma can harm people’s physical health, mental health, and relationships. </p>
<p>Independent of body mass index (BMI), fat stigma increases <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103113002047">blood pressure</a>, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.20789">inflammation</a>, and <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-30548-004">levels of cortisol</a> in the body, due to the activation of the fight or flight response. </p>
<p>Fat stigma reduces <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2006.208">self-esteem</a> and increases <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.105">depression</a>.
It <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953611005284">isolates fat people</a>, making them <a href="https://journals.lww.com/advancesinnursingscience/fulltext/2004/10000/obesity,_stigma,_and_civilized_oppression.6.aspx">less likely to engage</a> with the world. It also impacts on fat people’s relationships with <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2915811/">family</a>, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2006.208">colleagues</a>, and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795361500074X">friends</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296337/original/file-20191010-188807-uk3y1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296337/original/file-20191010-188807-uk3y1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296337/original/file-20191010-188807-uk3y1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296337/original/file-20191010-188807-uk3y1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296337/original/file-20191010-188807-uk3y1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296337/original/file-20191010-188807-uk3y1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296337/original/file-20191010-188807-uk3y1e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fat stigma erodes self-esteem and isolates people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/1271086432?src=L0ZpON5eE85MUZ4dGwCk4g-1-4&size=huge_jpg">Motortion Films/Shutterstock</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>People <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/659309">around the world</a>, and of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25658623?dopt=Abstract">all</a> <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20106576?dopt=Abstract">ages</a>, hold negative attitudes about fatness and fat people. In a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1471015314000476">study in the United States</a>, for example, more than one-third of the participants reported:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>one of the worst things that could happen to a person would be for [them] to become obese. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>How terminology reinforces stigma</h2>
<p>While many people are uncomfortable with the term fat, <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-big-fat-fight-the-case-for-fat-activism-7743">fat activists</a> prefer the term. They see it as both as an act of rebellion – to adopt a word that has been wielded against them – but also because they argue it’s the most appropriate word to describe their bodies. </p>
<p>To be overweight implies there is a natural weight to be; that within human diversity, we should all be the same proportion of height and weight. </p>
<p>Obesity is a medical term that has pathologised the fat body. The British Psychological Society’s acknowledgement that rather than saying “obese people”, we should call them “people with obesity” reinforces that obesity is a disease; a chronic illness people suffer from. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-does-fat-discrimination-look-like-10247">What does fat discrimination look like?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The British Psychological Society’s desire to shift to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25642702">person-first language</a> is understandable. Person-first, or people-first, language is an attempt to not define people primarily by their disease, or disability, or other deviating factor. </p>
<p>Person-first language recognises people as individuals with rights to dignity and care, and puts the person, rather than their “condition”, first. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3519148/">But others have argued</a> person-first language attempts to erase, deny, or ignore the aspect of the person that isn’t “normal”, and reinforces that there is something shameful or dehumanising about their disability or disease. </p>
<p>They promote <a href="https://www.thinkinclusive.us/why-person-first-language-doesnt-always-put-the-person-first/">identity-first language</a>, which allows people to take pride in who they are, rather than separating a person from that aspect of themself. </p>
<p>The problem with person-first language, <a href="https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/magazine/the-problem-with-person-first-language/">they argue</a>, is that those identities are stigmatised. But without the stigma, there would be no concern with calling someone a disabled person, for instance, rather than a person with disabilities. </p>
<h2>So what should we do?</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296336/original/file-20191010-188802-1pnu5ri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296336/original/file-20191010-188802-1pnu5ri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296336/original/file-20191010-188802-1pnu5ri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296336/original/file-20191010-188802-1pnu5ri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296336/original/file-20191010-188802-1pnu5ri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296336/original/file-20191010-188802-1pnu5ri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296336/original/file-20191010-188802-1pnu5ri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ask people what they want to be called.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cheerful-plus-size-women-enjoying-beach-1234278547?src=Ag02sVFBVeVECWFBPwwLTg-1-25">Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The best approach, especially for health-care professionals, is to ask people what they prefer their designation to be. </p>
<p>And for the rest of us, to acknowledge that what an individual wants to be called or how they want to talk about their experiences is up to them, not us. If a fat person wants to call themselves fat, it is not up to non-fat people to correct them. </p>
<p>Shifting the language we use to talk about fatness and fat people can reduce fat stigma. But continuing to frame fatness as a disease is not a helpful contribution. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/study-finds-obesity-stigma-erodes-will-to-exercise-socialise-3583">Study finds obesity stigma erodes will to exercise, socialise</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124266/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cat Pausé does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The British Psychological Society is calling for a language change, from ‘obese people’ to ‘people living with obesity’. But using the word obesity can reinforce rather than prevent stigma.Cat Pausé, Senior Lecturer in Human Development, Massey UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/804712017-07-11T03:34:27Z2017-07-11T03:34:27ZHow Australia’s discrimination laws and public health campaigns perpetuate fat stigma<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177562/original/file-20170710-5928-tx3py3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fat stigma harms the health and wellbeing of fat people.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.stockybodies.com/Relationship/Friends/SB_IB_friend-6.jpg.php">Stocky Bodies</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In her recent book tour promoting Hunger, author and academic Roxane Gay has been unflinchingly honest with audiences about the impacts of having a fat body, and has drawn the public’s attention to a long-running conversation about fatphobia and <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-big-fat-fight-the-case-for-fat-activism-7743">fat activism</a>. </p>
<p>Fat women experience fat stigma through many avenues in their lives, and perhaps the most dangerous is the impact fat stigma has on their experiences with <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25130353">health care</a>. Fat women delay engaging with health care, and are often faced with anti-fat attitudes <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5201160/">by their providers</a>.</p>
<p>The internet is <a href="https://fathealth.wordpress.com/">awash</a> with <a href="http://www.revelist.com/real-talk/fat-shaming-doctor-visit/6545">stories</a> from fat people about their experiences of receiving substandard care from those in the healthcare profession. </p>
<h2>Fat stigma and shaming is widespread</h2>
<p>Discrimination against fat people, almost across the world, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4678937/">is legal</a>. Physical size is not a protected class, whereas gender, disability, or religious affiliation often are in Western cultures.</p>
<p>People can – <a href="http://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1095&context=cl_pubs">and are</a> – fired for being fat, lose promotions for being fat, and denied housing for being fat.</p>
<p>The structural discrimination against fat people makes it particularly difficult for them to navigate the world and live full lives. This, in combination with fat stigma perpetuated through micro-aggressions, prejudice, and everyday sizeism, means fat people face an array of social, cultural, economic and political challenges. </p>
<h2>The facts of fat stigma</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5201160/">Fat stigma</a> is a powerful factor in the physical and mental health of fat individuals. </p>
<p>Independent of body mass index (BMI), fat stigma increases <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550611434400">blood pressure</a>, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.20789/full">inflammation</a>, and <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.20959/full">levels of cortisol</a>. It also decreases executive <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550611434400">function</a>. Fat stigma is strongly correlated to higher circulating levels of <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.20789/full">C-reactive protein</a>. </p>
<p>There are also negative psychological effects. Experiencing fat stigma lowers body image <a href="http://womenshealthbulletin.com/24973.fulltext?page=article&article_id=31127">satisfaction</a>, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.20561/full">self-esteem and self-efficacy</a>, and feelings of <a href="http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/psych_facpub/1112/">belonging</a>. It contributes to <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.20561/full">depression</a> and <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/133/4/557/">suicidal ideation</a> in young people. Fat stigma can also demotivate fat people to <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1359105313520338">engage in exercise</a>, especially in public. </p>
<p>In short, fat stigma is a substantial social determinant to health. Yet many public health campaigns promote fat stigma as a tool in fighting the “war on obesity”.</p>
<h2>The failure of anti-obesity campaigns and their promotion of fat-shaming</h2>
<p>There are many examples of public health campaigns using fat stigma as a method of combating obesity. </p>
<p>In Australia, the <a href="http://bodypolitics.de/de/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Heft_5_04_-Forth_Fat-and-Fattening_End-1.pdf">Grabbable Gut</a> campaign by LiveLighter <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-does-the-yuck-factor-achieve-in-anti-obesity-campaigns-8451">features</a> both print and TV ads that focus on grabbable guts and the visceral fat lurking inside them. It is supported by the Heart Foundation, the Cancer Council, and Western Australian Department of Health.</p>
<p>The tagline “<a href="https://livelighter.com.au/The-Facts/Am-I-at-Risk">Had a grabbable gutful?</a>” encourages viewers to grab their own guts and consider what dangers may be lurking beneath. It is intended to disgust the viewer, and shock them. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://livelighter.com.au/About/">its website</a>, LiveLighter’s goal is to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… encourage Australian adults to lead healthier lifestyles - to make changes to what they eat and drink, and to be more active. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, <a href="http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2009.159491?prevSearch=%5BContrib%3A+rebecca+puhl%5D&searchHistoryKey=&">research</a> shows that promoting fat <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09581591003797129?src=recsys">stigma</a> produces the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21944718">opposite behaviours</a>. </p>
<p>These campaigns embrace fat stigma as a tool to advance their anti-fat agenda. Yet they lack evidence that fat-shaming and discrimination will effectively combat obesity. In fact, population BMIs are not decreasing, even after <a href="https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-11-136">decades of fat-shaming campaigns</a>. Despite this, organisations continue to rely on fat stigma approaches.</p>
<h2>Acknowledging the impacts of fat stigma in policy and public health campaigns</h2>
<p>Health officials, and public health campaigns, should acknowledge the role that fat stigma plays in the health and well-being of fat individuals, and reject the use of stigma engagement in their campaigns. </p>
<p>Combating this should be a priority for improving overall population health. Campaigns should be run to educate the general public, as well as health-care providers, on the nature of fat stigma and the various harms it causes. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, no such public health campaigns for fat stigma exist. While <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002822305003226">evidence</a> demonstrates the <a href="http://search.proquest.com/openview/1bf16213b85f507e223613f1ad2e0306/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=38864">effectiveness</a> of improving the health of fat people independent of weight loss, public health campaigns seem unable to separate themselves from framing fat as the enemy. </p>
<p>A starting point for Australia is to tackle gaps in our legislation to ensure that physical size is a protected category from discrimination. Policy and practice should work to reduce fat stigma, rather than reducing the sizes of people’s bodies. </p>
<p>In the interim, stories from fat people about fatness should be central to the ways that we understand fatness. Fat people often experience what writer Lindy West calls a “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0151YQTCM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">disorienting limbo between being too visible and invisible</a>”; they exist in the world both as hyper-visible bodies publicly judged, assessed, and rejected, and as invisible figures who are rarely allowed a voice. As Roxane Gay <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jul/03/roxane-gay-lindy-west-if-i-was-conventionally-hot-i-would-be-president">pointed out</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Do you see how much I had to write to get you to even notice me? And that’s because I’m fat. I know that. That’s how much work I’ve had to put in to get a fraction of the attention that a conventionally attractive thin person is going to get.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While promoting the voices of fat people, we must also recognise that fat people are not a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21604851.2014.889487">homogeneous group</a>. Fat people of colour have <a href="http://www.theblackjoymixtape.com/">different experiences</a> than fat people with white privilege. <a href="http://www.rolereboot.org/life/details/2016-05-sexism-fat-easier-fat-man-fat-woman/">Fat men</a> (both cisgender and transgender) experience their fatness, and subsequent fat stigma and discrimination, differently from fat women. Fat people with <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4316927?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">able bodies</a> have different experiences from fat people with disabilities. </p>
<p>Regardless of what else, and who else, they may be, fat people of all sizes deserve the same rights and dignity as non-fat people. Shifting how public health approaches fatness, and providing legal protection for physical size under the law, are necessary to remove the structural barriers to fat people living full and meaningful lives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80471/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cat Pausé does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Evidence shows fat-shaming health campaigns have little effect on promoting healthy lifestyles and weight loss among fat people.Cat Pausé, Senior Lecturer in Human Development, Massey UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/631082016-09-21T20:27:20Z2016-09-21T20:27:20ZExplainer: what is fat studies?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133721/original/image-20160811-9203-yx81uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fat studies is challenging the way that fat human bodies are portrayed and treated.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fat studies is an academic area of research and scholarship. It’s not about fat as a dietary substance, but rather about <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fat-Shortcuts-Deborah-Lupton/dp/041552444X">fat human bodies</a>. Fat studies is <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ufts20/current">an interdisciplinary field</a>, combining perspectives and research methods from the humanities and social sciences. It builds on the tradition of gender studies and queer studies, focusing attention on the social, cultural, historical and political aspects of the ways in which fatness as a phenomenon and fat people are portrayed and treated. </p>
<p>In the late 20th century, concern began to be expressed in medical and public health circles about an apparent “obesity epidemic” in western countries, including Australia. The media reported warnings from doctors and health promoters that an increasing proportion of people in these countries could be categorised as “overweight” or “obese” using the body mass index (BMI) measurement. This was viewed as a public health crisis, as it was calculated that people in these categories would suffer from higher rates of illness and disease, and die prematurely. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bodies-Health-Media-Jayne-Raisborough/dp/1137288868">News reports</a> referred to the “ticking time bomb” of obesity, and the subsequent need to wage “a war on fat”. These reports and other media portrayals of fat people, like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0818297/">The Biggest Loser</a> reality TV series, frequently portrayed them as not only unhealthy, but also ignorant, lazy, gluttonous, ugly and a drain on health budgets. </p>
<p>The “<a href="http://charlottecooper.net/publishing/digital/headless-fatties-01-07/">headless fatty</a>” image was commonly used in news coverage, showing the body of a fat person with the head cropped off. While news producers may argue that the person’s head was removed to preserve their anonymity, activists have argued that this convention works to further dehumanise fat people. </p>
<h2>Fat acceptance</h2>
<p>Public health campaigns used by governments to encourage people to lose weight have frequently employed messages and images that portray body fat, and fat people themselves, as <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-does-the-yuck-factor-achieve-in-anti-obesity-campaigns-8451">disgusting</a> and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leah-berkenwald/shame-and-blame-facing-th_1_b_1223659.html">shameful</a>. It has often seemed that rather than “waging a war on fat”, such campaigns are directly attacking fat people.</p>
<p>In response to these portrayals and the increasing stigmatisation of, <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-does-fat-discrimination-look-like-10247">and discrimination against</a>, people who were deemed to be too large, activists have called for <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/thefeed/story/fat-pride-growing-movement-people-looking-fat-acceptance">fat acceptance</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_Positive_Movement">body positive</a> initiatives.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133725/original/image-20160811-18014-4p7ynq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133725/original/image-20160811-18014-4p7ynq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133725/original/image-20160811-18014-4p7ynq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133725/original/image-20160811-18014-4p7ynq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133725/original/image-20160811-18014-4p7ynq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133725/original/image-20160811-18014-4p7ynq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133725/original/image-20160811-18014-4p7ynq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133725/original/image-20160811-18014-4p7ynq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some fat studies academics combine activism with their research to empower those who do not fit the thin mould.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These challenge simplistic assumptions that thin people are healthy, virtuous and responsible citizens, whereas fat people are diseased, morally culpable and unable to control their appetites. Activists have taken up the term “fat”, instead of medicalised terms like “overweight” and “obese”, because of their connotations of unhealthiness and disease. </p>
<p>The use of the term “fat studies” to describe an academic field is a reflection of this preference. There are strong intersections between fat activism as a political movement, and the academic field of fat studies. Some university researchers contributing to fat studies scholarship combine activism with their research. </p>
<p>Another term that is sometimes used by university researchers is “<a href="http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9780230304239_9">critical weight studies</a>”. This incorporates critical research into all sizes of human bodies, including the extreme thinness of those people living with restricted eating disorders such as anorexia, or the highly muscular bodies of athletes.</p>
<h2>Contradictions in the ‘war on fat’</h2>
<p>Fat studies scholars are interested in a number of key questions. How is fatness defined and portrayed, and how has that changed over time? How does it differ between geographical locations, between social groups and cultures?</p>
<p>What is it like to be a fat person in a fat-shaming world? What kinds of social and economic discrimination do fat people experience, and how can it be alleviated? What are the political and ideological underpinnings of the “obesity crisis” and the “war on fat”? </p>
<p>Some researchers have engaged in detailed analysis of the medical and epidemiological literature on obesity, drawing attention to discrepancies and contradictions in definitions of obesity, and calculations about its health effects. </p>
<p>For example, in his book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10569953-the-end-of-the-obesity-epidemic">The End of the Obesity Epidemic</a> (2010), University of Queensland researcher Michael Gard argues that the “crisis” has not happened according to dire predictions, and that life expectancies are increasing in the Western world. Others have called attention to the “<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18114259-the-obesity-paradox">obesity paradox</a>”: fat people with certain chronic diseases are sometimes healthier than thin people with the same conditions.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133740/original/image-20160811-28149-ex6r8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133740/original/image-20160811-28149-ex6r8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133740/original/image-20160811-28149-ex6r8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133740/original/image-20160811-28149-ex6r8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133740/original/image-20160811-28149-ex6r8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133740/original/image-20160811-28149-ex6r8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133740/original/image-20160811-28149-ex6r8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133740/original/image-20160811-28149-ex6r8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The media’s stigmatisation of fatness has lead to negative eating habits in young people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<h2>The future of fat studies</h2>
<p>The fervid news coverage of the “obesity epidemic” has died down somewhat over the past few years. <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02640414.2015.1093650">Experts in medicine and public health</a> are recognising the complexity of body weight and its association with illness and premature mortality. </p>
<p>However, discrimination against fat people continues. Fat children and young people <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/05/03/obesity.bullying/">are particular targets</a>, facing bullying, shaming and social exclusion. Young people who are not medically identified as fat are also beginning to hold <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01596306.2012.696500">disturbingly negative views of their bodies</a>. The incidence of eating disorders, disordered eating and body image problems <a href="http://www.nedc.com.au/eating-disorders-in-australia">has significantly risen in Australia</a> over the past three decades. </p>
<p>Future research in fat studies is needed to identify, critique and challenge the ways in which fat people are portrayed and treated, highlighting the unintended consequences of anti-obesity, school-based education and public health campaigns.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63108/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deborah Lupton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What is it like to be a fat person in a fat-shaming world? What are the political and ideological underpinnings of the ‘obesity crisis’? Fat studies is an emerging academic field that asks such questions.Deborah Lupton, Centenary Research Professor, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/226002014-01-30T14:26:33Z2014-01-30T14:26:33ZObesity by any other name would still be fat<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40196/original/dxhy8x58-1391078380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Obesity shouldn't be about comfort zones.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Oklanika</span></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40196/original/dxhy8x58-1391078380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40196/original/dxhy8x58-1391078380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40196/original/dxhy8x58-1391078380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40196/original/dxhy8x58-1391078380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40196/original/dxhy8x58-1391078380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40196/original/dxhy8x58-1391078380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40196/original/dxhy8x58-1391078380.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Obesity isn’t about comfort zones.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Oklanika</span></span>
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<p>What is obesity? Is it a disease, an illness, a risk factor, or a condition? And semantics aside, does this really matter?</p>
<p>In 2013, the American Medical Association <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/19/american-medical-association-obesity-disease_n_3465619.html">declared that</a> obesity was “a disease”. This was welcomed by many as a chance to reduce obesity stigma and encourage fat acceptance. Yet this month, researchers concluded that obese participants <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/01/24/0956797613516981.abstract">in their study</a> placed less importance on health-focused dieting and showed less concern about their weight when obesity was called a disease. They also chose higher calorie foods.</p>
<p>Being obese is miserable. Obese people feel depressed, have low self-esteem and are aware that the world views them as lazy, ignorant and low achievers. Such stigma can also exacerbate their unhappiness and may lead to overeating, causing weight gain – and so the spiral continues. </p>
<p>Obesity is a stigmatised condition because like HIV and lung cancer, <a href="https://theconversation.com/blame-overshadows-ugly-truth-of-obesity-and-chronic-disease-20282">it is seen as</a> controllable and self inflicted; if people had safe sex they wouldn’t get HIV, if they didn’t smoke they wouldn’t get lung cancer and if they would only eat less and do more then they wouldn’t be obese. Stigma is always bad, will never help, and <a href="http://www.nice.org.uk/newsroom/pressreleases/NewDraftGuidanceLifestyleWeightManagementServices.jsp">we should remove it</a>.</p>
<p>So then obesity becomes a disease. And with this, like childhood leukaemia and brain tumours, obesity can generate only sympathy, compassion, a sense of the inevitable and that there was nothing that could have been done differently. The stigma is gone and obese people can feel happier in the world.</p>
<p>But this gives us an odd choice in tackling obesity: stigma and blame? Or disease and powerlessness?</p>
<p>Health and illness have two very distinct stages and I think the answer to this question depends entirely on whether we are considering treatment or prevention.</p>
<p>For those who are already obese, a disease model provides comfort and safety and tells the world it is not their fault. And although it may also make them feel that there is little they can do about their weight, given the evidence that this is indeed very likely to be true, they can live in a world <a href="https://theconversation.com/fat-activists-on-the-offensive-in-war-on-obesity-18024">of fat acceptance</a> and be resigned to their fate.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://theconversation.com/time-to-face-hard-truths-when-it-comes-to-obese-children-15323">what about their children</a>? And the future generations of those who are not yet fat? What do they need? Stigma may make fat people feel unhappy, but it may stop thin people becoming fat. Seeing obesity as controllable may make fat people feel to blame but it might also help others take control. And seeing weight as the responsibility of the individual may make the obese feel responsible, but growing up in a world where taking responsibility for your weight is the norm, may help young people eat responsibly.</p>
<p>Words are<a href="http://lifehacker.com/5993267/the-psychology-of-language-why-are-some-words-more-persuasive-than-others">powerful things</a> and can change the way we think and behave. And for obesity we have to chose the word that reflects not what we think obesity is, but one that makes people do what we want them to do. </p>
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<p>Treating obesity through behaviour change is really hard and mostly unsuccessful, which is why bariatric surgery <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19726018">is seen as</a> a more effective treatment. Perhaps it is time to turn our attention away from treatment and towards prevention and hope that we have more success. So then this controllable and preventable “condition” (and not disease) can be controlled and prevented for the future. And although this may generate some unwanted stigma in the present, our futures can become a healthier and thinner place to live.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22600/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
What is obesity? Is it a disease, an illness, a risk factor, or a condition? And semantics aside, does this really matter? In 2013, the American Medical Association declared that obesity was “a disease…Jane Ogden, Professor of Health Psychology, University of SurreyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/180242013-09-16T05:37:38Z2013-09-16T05:37:38ZFat activists on the offensive in war on obesity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31260/original/wjvxw9c5-1378996026.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C113%2C598%2C381&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Poster girl Beth Ditto.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Taylor</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Obesity is commonly regarded as one of the most significant threats to health in the developed world. It is strongly linked with cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and impaired mobility. <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/reducing-obesity-and-improving-diet">Governments</a> and <a href="http://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/sites/default/files/action-on-obesity.pdf">respected professional bodies</a> have issued reports <a href="http://www.aomrc.org.uk/projects/obesity-steering-group.html">and warnings</a> on the issue and the World Health Organisation has suggested that <a href="http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/">2.8m adults</a> die each year as a result of being overweight or obese. </p>
<p>The dominant medical opinion is that obesity is unhealthy. In the US, where the proportion of adults who are extremely obese (at least 45.4kg overweight) <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/16/us-usa-obesity-idUSBRE97F0QI20130816">has risen to 6.3%</a> from 1.4% in the late 1970s, it was recently <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/23011804">classified as a disease</a>. </p>
<p>It’s <a href="http://theweek.com/article/index/249256/is-obesity-americas-most-influential-export">a global problem</a>, with Mexico recently taking over as the world’s fattest country.</p>
<p>But as the “war on obesity” rages to prevent, manage and treat the condition, there’s another side in the fight: self-proclaimed fat activists. </p>
<h2>Fighting their corner…</h2>
<p>Despite the dominant medical view, a large number of people are fighting back. People who broadly identify as “fat activists” (“fat” is preferred to “obesity” as the latter makes the concept inherently medical, which activists believe it shouldn’t be) are challenging commonly held views on obesity, downplaying health concerns and arguing the fact that people come in all shapes and sizes should be celebrated.</p>
<p>Fat activists have diverse beliefs. Dr Charlotte Cooper, a psychotherapist and fat activist, <a href="http://obesitytimebomb.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-basics-what-is-fat-activist.html">describes the differences</a> between clans in her blog - for example over the definition of fat activism or how to create social change and fight oppression. </p>
<p>But there are common themes: fat activists tend to argue for size-acceptance, and claim that the emphasis on obesity as an indicator of health is misguided. They also question the health benefits of weight loss and suggest that long-term weight loss isn’t possible for the majority of obese or overweight people. </p>
<p>Movements such as <a href="http://www.haescommunity.org/">Health at Every Size</a> have developed followings who believe that weight loss shouldn’t be the aim but instead a focus on promoting healthy behaviour, intuitive eating and size acceptance to bring about better health outcomes. </p>
<p>Some fat activists suggest the war on obesity is actually being driven by the hugely profitable weight-loss industry rather than good science, and therefore promote the idea that overweight or obese people shouldn’t try to lose weight.</p>
<h2>Scientific doubts</h2>
<p>Some would like to dismiss this as conspiracy theory but it is important to not accept the dominant obesity discourse uncritically: if fat activists have good evidence for their position, this should be assessed and taken seriously. </p>
<p>The problem is that there is seemingly some scientific support for both sides of the argument: some papers suggest obesity <a href="http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=486350">increases health risks</a>, whereas others suggest it <a href="http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=486350">may be beneficial</a>. There is obviously a need for more, well-designed research into the effects of obesity - but the bulk of current research and medical opinion points towards obesity being bad for your health. </p>
<h2>Obesity stigma</h2>
<p>The reasons why obesity is associated with poor health aren’t necessarily simple. The war on obesity, coupled with possible misconceptions about the causes of obesity, has led to significant levels of obesity stigma. This may include perceptions that obese people are <a>lazy, non-compliant, and lacking in self-discipline</a>. Not to mention issues around gender and what is perceived as beautiful in the mainstream and what isn’t, which is a strong thread that runs through female fat activism.</p>
<p>This sort of stigma may result in disadvantages in various areas of life, including education, employment and health-care. Apart from being unjustified, these sorts of stigmas may just be plain harmful. While some people may argue that weight stigma is a good way to prevent obesity and to promote health, evidence suggests that the opposite is true. Stigma has been shown to have <a href="http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.2009.159491">a negative impact on health</a>. Stigmatising and discriminating against obese people will not generally make them healthy - or thin. </p>
<h2>Fat activism - harmful potential</h2>
<p>Fat activists have got some things right by trying to remove any negative connotations from obesity, but they also risk putting the blinders on an unhealthy condition that becomes normalised, accepted and untreated. A balance must be struck between allowing currently obese people to live lives unburdened by prejudice and stigma, and promoting the medically desirable aims of obesity treatment and especially prevention. </p>
<p>Unjustified weight-based discrimination and stigma is clearly wrong, but this doesn’t mean that it is right to view obesity positively. As a crude analogy, stigma associated with having cancer would clearly be wrong, but does that mean we should view cancer positively?</p>
<p>The smoking industry famously denied the health risks of smoking, despite masses of evidence and medical consensus. This is now regarded as a moral abomination. Now, despite much medical consensus on the harms of obesity, a group of people are downplaying the harms, promoting size-acceptance and discouraging obese people from attempting to lose weight. If it gathers sufficient pace, this movement could give rise to a generation who are unfortunately apathetic to the <a href="http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/index.html">fifth leading risk factor in global deaths</a>. Stigma is one thing but it’s misguided and wrong to prevent others having the chance of better health.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18024/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Greg Moorlock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Obesity is commonly regarded as one of the most significant threats to health in the developed world. It is strongly linked with cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and impaired mobility. Governments…Greg Moorlock, Research Fellow, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/163432013-07-24T20:11:41Z2013-07-24T20:11:41ZDiscrimination against fat people increases the likelihood of weight gain<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/27994/original/4gv69bn2-1374649200.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">New findings have emerged on the impact of weight discrimination on weight gain and loss.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">puuikibeach</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0070048">Research published in PLOS ONE</a> this morning has found that people who experience discrimination based on their weight are likely to gain more of it. Similarly, negative attitudes lead people who are obese to not lose weight, showing that discrimination has greater implications than poor mental health for fat people.</p>
<p>Living with a spoiled identity (often referred to as <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.56.091103.070137">stigma</a>) has a strong impact on the health and well-being of members of marginalised populations. </p>
<p>Research on stigma, and the resulting discrimination, has found negative effects on health in <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22401510">racial</a> minorities, members of the <a href="http://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/jscp.22.6.716.22932">gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans*, intersex, asexual, queer</a> community, and people with <a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2676360?uid=3739560&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102489265111">chronic illness</a>.</p>
<p>More recently, this research stream has turned to the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16259147">stigma</a> placed on fat people and the impact this may have on their health and well-being. With the increasing numbers of fat activists sharing their stories online, more academics are paying attention to the impact of anti-fat attitudes on the health and well-being of fat people. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ufts20/current#.Ue9xkI1geCk">Fat Studies researchers</a> are working to build a body of literature around fat stigma, hoping to illuminate the experiences of fat people living with discrimination and oppression. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.yaleruddcenter.org/resources/upload/docs/what/bias/WeightBiasStudy.pdf">Anti-fat attitudes</a> are found across cultures; across the lifespan; and across professions. It’s not surprisingly then that the <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/133/4/557/">evidence</a> suggests fat people experience discrimination and oppression, and that this has a negative impact on their identity, self-esteem, mental health and physical well-being.</p>
<h2>The study</h2>
<p>The PLOS ONE study by Angelina Sutin and Antonio Terracciano from the Florida State University College of Medicine explores the impact of weight discrimination on weight gain and loss in people over 50 years old in the United States.</p>
<p>The 6,000 subjects in the study had a mean age of 66 and were measured in 2006 and again in 2010. Subjects self-reported their height and weight.</p>
<p>Normal weight individuals who experienced weight discrimination were more likely to become obese by the follow-up than those who did not. </p>
<p>Obese people who experienced weight discrimination were much more likely to remain obese by the follow-up than those who did not. Other kinds of discrimination (based on sex, for instance, or race) didn’t have the same link with weight.</p>
<p>And the effect of this kind of discrimination was independent of factors such as age, education and ethnicity.</p>
<p>The authors propose several reasons why weight discrimination may lead to weight gain (or inhibit weight loss). They draw from previous research that has found that weight discrimination contributes to binge eating, lack of confidence around exercise, and decreased self-esteem.</p>
<h2>Some context</h2>
<p>In a 2012 study, researchers <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1038/oby.2007.521/full">Rebecca M. Puhl, Corinne A. Moss-Racusin, and Marlene B. Schwartz</a> concluded that fat people who internalise weight discrimination were more likely to engage in binge eating. </p>
<p>“Internalising” in this sense means that people integrate the negative attitudes of those around them into their identity. This usually leads to a decrease in self-worth and health-seeking behaviour.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, they also found that stigma and discrimination were not factors that motivated people to try to lose weight. I think we can make this simpler – shame is never good for anyone’s well-being.</p>
<p>People respond to stigma in one of four ways: withdrawal, covering, passing, or coming out. Some people with a spoiled identity simply withdraw from society; they engage with the outside world as little as possible. </p>
<p>Some are able to pass, to pretend to not be a member of a stigmatised group. Consider someone who doesn’t disclose her sexual orientation to her friends and co-workers or a light-skinned member of a racial minority who is mistaken as white by his peers. </p>
<p>Many people with spoiled identities engage in covering; an identity management technique characterised by acknowledging and openly accepting the shame of the stigma. Think of the fat person who regularly apologises for their size and openly states shame for their body. </p>
<p>The final identity management technique is coming out. Coming out means to embrace the spoiled identity by rejecting the ideas linked to it by the mainstream culture. </p>
<p>We most often seen this strategy in people who identify as gay or lesbian, but it applies to other stigmatised groups as well. I’ve written before that <a href="http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/soma.2012.0038">coming out as a fat</a> is a way to negotiate the experience of a hostile environment.</p>
<h2>Better ways</h2>
<p>I’m currently working on research that explores whether people who come out as fat (who claim and develop a fat identity) are better equipped to handle the stigma, discrimination, and oppression they experience.</p>
<p>Similarly, researchers from Monash University conducted a study that examined <a href="http://qhr.sagepub.com/content/21/12/1679.short">how people active in the Fatosphere</a> (an online community for fat activism) negotiate stigma and weight discrimination. They found that fat people who engaged with online communities were less likely to internalise weight discrimination, and more likely to engage in health-seeking behaviour.</p>
<p>Shaming fat people does not promote health or behaviours that leads to mental or physical well-being. What it does is create a culture of shame for people of all sizes. </p>
<p>Fat people are shamed for being fat. Non-fat people are shamed for engaging in behaviours that may lead to fatness. And this shame only reinforces weight anxiety in across the lifespan. Weight anxiety may be good for the weight-cycling industrial complex, but not for individual health and well-being. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/16343/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cat Pausé does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Research published in PLOS ONE this morning has found that people who experience discrimination based on their weight are likely to gain more of it. Similarly, negative attitudes lead people who are obese…Cat Pausé, Lecturer in the School of Arts, Development & Health Education, Massey UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.