Creator resource: Unpacking fatphobia, weight discrimination, and their deadly repercussions

Weight discrimination (a.k.a. fatphobia or weight stigma) is the unjust experience of being treated unfairly because of one’s body size and/or how much a person weighs. Teasing or bullying someone for their weight is just one aspect of weight discrimination, which also includes receiving worse healthcare, being less likely to be hired for jobs, and being subjected to harmful media stereotypes. These experiences harm people’s physical and mental health and raise their risk for early death. While weight discrimination is worse for people with larger bodies, it can be experienced at any body size, and pervasive weight stigma is tied to increased eating disorders for people of all body sizes.

💡 When you talk about weight discrimination, make sure to emphasize that this is a major societal problem that is perpetuated by systemic failures, and can’t solely be understood in terms of mean comments made by a few individuals.

Experiencing weight discrimination harms people’s physical and mental health, reduces their engagement in healthy activities, like exercising, and ironically increases the likelihood that they will gain weight.

💡 Make sure that the people around you understand that being treated poorly because of your weight doesn’t have any health benefits and instead worsens people’s health and wellbeing.

Thousands of studies have established links between higher body weight and worse physical and mental health. However, few of those studies have accounted for the fact that discrimination contributes to those relationships by increasing stress and decreasing the quality of healthcare people receive. New research investigating this question has estimated that more than a quarter of the relationship between higher body weight and health is caused by discrimination.

💡 Acknowledge that there are relationships between weight and health, but that we need more research to understand the full picture.

There is no one universal definition for health. Each person will have their own definition of what ‘healthy’ looks like, and it is worth asking yourself what it means to you. One vision of health is a state that allows people to live as long as possible, doing the activities that they love. If we are using that definition, it is impossible to tell how ‘healthy’ someone is just from looking at them. People of diverse body sizes can be living their vision of health, which may or may not include attempts to lose weight. Despite this, people with larger bodies are stereotyped as inherently lazy people who lack the discipline and willpower to take their health seriously. Being stereotyped this way often leads to internalized shame that results in health consequences that get that person further away from their vision of health.

💡 Remind people that healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and that you shouldn’t make assumptions about a person based on their weight.

• The shamed & blamed: People with larger bodies lack willpower and are shaped the way they are because of gluttonous behavior and no desire to better themselves.
• Before-body & after-body: Images or content that show people before and after weight loss and imply or state openly that their true inner self has been ‘revealed’ through the process of weight loss.
• The deviant: People with larger bodies are out-of-control, loud, unconventional rule breakers, and don’t care who they offend.
• The disgraced citizen: People with larger bodies are individually failing to stop national trends of rising body weight, contributing to a public health crisis.
• The victim: People with larger bodies have some form of underlying trauma that contributes to them avoiding behaviors like exercise and eating ‘right.’
• The unworthy partner: People with larger bodies are less desirable as a romantic partner, and if they are in a partnership, they must be offering something exceptional and/or there is something ‘wrong’ with the partner with the smaller body.
• The body as a spectacle: Displaying people with larger bodies as a ‘spectacle’ to look at, in a ‘freak show’ type way, to demonstrate how their body is inferior and deserving of poor treatment.
• The body in redemption: People with larger bodies transforming how ‘worthy’ they are of happiness, health, and respect through weight-loss journeys.
• The bad mother and failed child: Mothers with larger bodies are poor role-models for their children, and their bodies are unsuited for pregnancy and need to be intervened upon. And if the mother has a smaller body and her child has a larger body, it is because of a parenting failure.

These tropes frequently intersect with racist and misogynistic stereotypes. For example, members of the Black community are often portrayed as eating ‘bad’ foods and in need of expert advice (often from white experts) on how to change the way they eat.

The way our bodies look affects the way we are treated and the resources we can access. Because of this, people may choose to lose weight to avoid stigma and discrimination. However, they may also be doing so to achieve their own vision of health. People may also lose weight unintentionally, or because of underlying health conditions. Seeing others lose weight may bring up feelings of betrayal in people who see weight loss as a decision to abandon a political fight. Those feelings of betrayal may bring up confusion and anger for others, who may find it hateful to hold someone back from achieving their own vision of health. Encourage your community to non-judgmentally reflect on the complexity of how our weight and health are politicized and the need to respect people of all body sizes, regardless of whether they choose to lose weight.

Weight-loss is a $90 billion dollar industry that benefits from people’s insecurities about their weight. On the flip side, companies (like General Mills) profit off of movements working to fight weight discrimination by running ads that imply that eating their products pushes back on “food shaming.” Encourage your community to recognize the harm created by companies and campaigns that continue to profit off weight-related insecurities.