AbstractPervasive stigma against fat people and evidence for its harmful health consequences highlight the need for a better understanding of people's first‐hand experiences of navigating the world with a stigmatized body size. Drawing on social identity threat theory, we conducted a mixed‐method study with a qualitative examination of threat and safety cues as experienced by people who self‐identify as overweight. In an online survey, 48 people who self‐identified as overweight responded to open‐ended prompts to describe how situational features of a setting signal weight‐based threat and safety to them. Using thematic analysis, we identified several themes that characterized threat and safety cues. Particularly notable were inverse themes, such asstructural exclusionversusstructural accommodationandhomogeneity of othersversusgeneral diversity, that highlighted how physical features of, and the people in, an environment positively or negatively impact fat people's psychological experience. Moreover, we conducted exploratory deductive coding using a recent taxonomy of safety cues developed by Kruk and Matsick (in press). Results highlighted how weight‐based stigma both parallels and diverges from other cues of identity safety (e.g., by gender or race/ethnicity). We suggest knowledge about situational cues can inform interventions to mitigate threat and promote safety among both fat people and other stigmatized groups.
The author examines the consequences of stigma strategies in vegan activism as it is experienced by fat vegan activists. The fat politics of veganism in online spaces is examined in data provided by a 2016 qualitative survey of fat-identified vegan activists. Results highlight the subjective experiences of fat vegans, illuminating the meaning of healthism, sizeism, and thin-privilege in vegan social justice spaces. Sizeism is a significant concern for fat vegan activists as respondents report only medium-level feelings of comfort and community, with one in four reporting having experienced fat discrimination in the movement. Most indicate that online vegan spaces feel safer than those offline, but most also perceive vegan online spaces as less inclusive than nonvegan ones. Most activists did not significantly modify their participation in response.
Sizeism has a negative impact on women and perpetuates fat shaming. Conventional therapeutic suggestions for addressing weight concerns focuses on self-discipline rather than on the larger social, cultural, or political contexts of weight stigma. Feminist scholars, therapists, and activists have encouraged social activism to promote psychological well-being and challenge systemic weight prejudice. Results of research on health prevention and promotion efforts have begun to shift thinking away from weight loss and toward deconstructing and changing anti-fat attitudes. We highlight some individual and community-based fat activists to illustrate how their strategies and ideas challenge sizeism in a variety of areas including: the rhetoric of fat; body positivity; photography/art; nutrition/exercise; and diversity/intersectionality. Fat activism has utility within a therapeutic context especially for those who have been recipients of sizeism. We strongly encourage therapists to work closely with clients on finding sources and types of fat activism that represent their unique identities which may be more difficult for those with marginalized identities.
This article presents the outcomes of interview with a group of Japanese men to unveil how bodyweight control was connected to their embodied culinary and eating practices. Aged 24 years to 56 years, participants were from Tokyo and Osaka. Eight of the men identified themselves as "slim-muscular" and one as "beefy." Nine of them have been called "chubby" and two have been requested to lose weight. Grounded in symbolic interactionism, biopedagogy, gender, and emotion are the three axes used to present the analysis. Participants produced their own version of biopedagogy largely relying on the vegetablization of cooking to cope with healthism and sizeism entrenched in Japanese society. Some cooking and eating practices were underpinned by a pathological relation with food, others represented embodied masculinized practices connected to a recreational viewpoint of food and cooking. Cooking and eating delicious food represented an embodied "happy male self" and the meaning of "what makes life worth living."
While most sociology students are well prepared to think critically about inequalities involving race, gender, social class, and sexuality, the topics of body weight and health present some challenges for classroom discussion. Primarily, this is due to the body's status in contemporary society as simultaneously malleable (able to be changed) and intractable (an indicator of moral worth). Such associations lead to cases of size discrimination—what is often called "sizeism"—with impacts similar to what is experienced around race and gender discrimination. To challenge students' taken-for-granted assumptions regarding weight and health, I detail two classroom techniques involving deconstructing the obesity "epidemic" and comparing the pro-ana community to bodybuilders for their similar use of extreme behaviors to achieve ideal bodies. In this way, students learn to critically assess something that has held a stigmatized position (fatness) as well as something that has held a valued position (thinness).
Size discrimination, also called sizeism, is a type of discrimination based on people's weight or height and often appears unnoticed in everyday life. The main purpose of this work is to present a business plan for a mobile application that aims to help address size discrimination, contributing to the social inclusion of those who have experienced it. This mobile application will allow personal experiences and unheard voices to be public and shared without temporal and spatial barriers. Furthermore, it gives an opportunity for professionals to learn and change their attitudes toward size discrimination by connecting with people's experiences. In order to better understand the impact of this project on society, it was made a research about weight and height discrimination, as both are included in size discrimination, its roots and major issues. Moreover, it was conducted a survey in which was obtained significant results for this project. Additionally, strategic analysis tools such as PEST Analysis, Five Porter's Forces and SWOT Analysis, were used in order to review this project's market and competitive context. The following steps were to develop the segmentation, target and positioning as well as the marketing mix of this project. Lastly, there are many private programs and government programs that support social causes and social entrepreneurship. Therefore, this business intends to request funds from them, with the purpose of that, a financial analysis was developed to find out how much would be requested. ; A discriminação por tamanho, também chamada de tamanhismo, é um tipo de discriminação com base no peso ou altura das pessoas e que muitas vezes passa despercebida na vida cotidiana. O principal objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar um plano de negócios para uma aplicação móvel que visa ajudar a combater a discriminação por tamanho, contribuindo para a inclusão social de quem a vivência. Esta aplicação móvel permitirá que experiências pessoais e vozes não ouvidas sejam públicas e partilhadas sem barreiras temporais e espaciais. Ademais, é uma oportunidade para os profissionais aprenderem e mudarem suas atitudes em relação à discriminação por tamanho, ao conectar-se com as experiências das pessoas que as partilham. Para melhor compreender o impacto deste projeto na sociedade, foi feita uma pesquisa sobre a discriminação por peso e altura, visto que ambas estão incluídas na discriminação por tamanho, como também suas raízes e principais questões. Além disso, foi realizado um levantamento através de um questionário online, no qual foram obtidos resultados significativos para este projeto. Além disso, ferramentas de análise estratégica, como Análise PEST, 5 Forças Competitivas de Porter e Análise SWOT, foram usadas para revisar o mercado deste projeto e o contexto competitivo. As etapas seguintes foram desenvolver a segmentação, o objetivo e o posicionamento, bem como o mix de marketing deste projeto. Por último, existem muitos programas privados e programas governamentais que apoiam causas sociais e o empreendedorismo social. Portanto, este negócio pretende solicitar recursos e fundos deles, para tal, foi desenvolvida uma análise financeira para saber quanto seria solicitado.
