What's Wrong with Fat? by Saguy Abigail C

Author:Saguy, Abigail C. [Saguy, Abigail C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2012-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 5.2:

Expression of antifat prejudice, Experiment 3

Figure 5.3:

Expression of antifat prejudice, Experiment 5–7

Figure 5.4:

Expression of antifat prejudice, discrimination, and celebration of body size diversity, Experiment 1

Figure 5.5:

Expression of antifat prejudice, discrimination, and celebration of body size diversity, Experiment 2

Pushing attitudes toward greater tolerance proved more difficult. In Experiments 3 through 7, those respondents who read the fat rights article did not differ significantly from the control group in the extent to which they expressed antifat prejudice. In Experiment 1, compared to those who read articles framing fat as a public health crisis and issue of personal responsibility, those who read health at every size and fat rights articles expressed less fat prejudice and discrimination and more support for the idea that body size diversity should be celebrated. However, when in Experiment 2 we measured the effect of each frame separately and compared it to a control group, we found that only the fat rights articles—but not the health at every size frame—significantly reduced the expression of antifat prejudice, while significantly increasing support for body size diversity.18 Neither the health at every size nor the fat rights articles reduced approval of weight-based discrimination, compared to the control group.

Collectively, these results suggest that news reports on the “obesity epidemic” intensify antifat stigma but that it is more difficult—in a society so saturated with antifat messages—to lessen antifat prejudice or promote size diversity as a positive value. To the extent that news reports, including those on the Fat-OK study, still emphasize health risk associated with obesity and discuss personal responsibility, they may be too closely aligned with people’s preexisting negative attitudes toward fatness to shift ingrained antifat attitudes.

While the effect of reading one or two articles is arguably short lived, most Americans today are bombarded with a constant stream of narratives about body size, most of which frame fatness as a public health crisis brought on by bad personal behavior. While people are wringing their hands about growing “obesity rates” and the social ills driving and resulting from them, they are not considering the social consequences of this barrage of fat frames. The rest of this chapter broadens the discussion of the material consequences of specific fat frames. As we will see, the stakes, in terms of human suffering and public health, are huge.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.