People may think weight stigma only manifests as rude comments, is harmless or can even do some good.
At worst, it means overt discrimination, for example if somebody isn’t hired for a job because of their weight. But the reality is that weight stigma is often insidious, and pervasively entrenched into our society and environment. Based on data from nearly a thousand people, we show that weight stigma doesn’t have to be malicious or targeted directly at a person to cause harm.
Fat microaggressions
Recurrent and commonplace discriminatory acts that demean members of stigmatized groups are called microaggressions. The impacts of microaggressions have been described as “death by a thousand cuts,” referring to how seemingly minor incidents, when repeated cumulatively, contribute to real harm.
With combined input from reports of lived experiences, expert testimony and large studies with diverse samples, we identified four main types of fat microaggressions.
Indirect microaggressions are the type most experienced by fat people – they invade every aspect of daily life and remind them that it is not viewed as OK to be fat.
(Shutterstock)
Direct microaggressions are the ones that most people might think of: rude remarks, being laughed at or publicly shamed on social media, being excluded from activities with friends or family, or having people make assumptions about them, for example, that they couldn’t possibly be in a loving relationship with a conventionally attractive partner.
The built environment can also be a source of direct microaggressions, such as at sporting events, theatres or restaurants where the seats are not wide or sturdy enough.
Indirect microaggressions are slights not targeted directly at an individual, but whose effects are still felt. Think fat jokes, unintelligent, gross, and/or unattractive fat characters on TV and in movies (like “Fat Monica” from Friends or Gwyneth Paltrow’s character in Shallow Hal), and thin friends complaining they “feel fat” in front of a larger person and commenting on how much they hate their bodies….
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