The Consequences of Weightism, Part I
As a clinician who sees a wide range of clients from children to adults, I often encounter a host of worries, anxieties, depression, and low self-esteem plaguing young and old. Often these doubts and worries stem from relentless social comparison. Recently, one of my tween-age clients expressed horror and shock at her friend being called “fat” in the middle of the lunchroom, in front of all her peers. This client expressed how worried she was of being called the same and admitted shame at not being the “skinny ideal” like some of her other peers. It saddened me to realize that this young girl would be facing a lifetime of these worries and feelings of inadequacy as she would spend her years comparing herself to others, never feeling she measures up. Additionally, I worried she would become the victim of weightism.
Weightism, bias against overweight and obese people, is a relatively new form of discrimination emerging within the last few centuries. (Tomiyama, 2014). Weightism is considered as prominent as racism in this country and perhaps more widely accepted. Paradoxically, in America, over two-thirds of Americans over age 20 are classified as overweight and over one-third are obese, and obesity is now officially classified as a medical disease (Schvey, Puhl, & Brownell, 2011). Despite this, weightism is insidiously prevalent, affects everyone, and has shown to have detrimentally negative psychological and physical health impact.
Society’s Standard Throughout History
It is estimated that weightism has increased by 66% since 1995 and is driven by the perpetuation of negative stereotypes depicting people who are overweight as lazy, unintelligent, incompetent, and slovenly (Schvey et al., 2011). However, when we examine history, weightism is a relatively new bias formed only within the past few centuries. In Ancient Greece, for example, Hippocratic authors promoted exercise and the avoidance of excess, but also advised against being too thin. Plumpness was valued in America and Europe before 1900 and was seen to be protective against consumptive illness. For Moorish people in the Sahara, the embodiment of the female ideal was to be as fat as possible, as those who worked too hard and could not maintain their desired fatness and were perceived as weak and undesirable (Couch et al., 2016).
It wasn’t until the Late Victorian era when wealthy people began to regularly deny themselves food in the quest to achieve a body ideal. By the end of 19th century plump went entirely out of fashion, and excess body weight came to be seen as lack of will, or as sign of personal and moral inadequacy. Today, the notion of “thin ideal” and subsequent discrimination via weightism has become commonplace and can come from an array of sources including family, friends, peers, society, as well as through the media (Couch et al., 2016). My next post will address these influences and will explore the consequences of weightism in the home, school, workplace, and through the media.
References
Couch, D., Thomas, S. L., Lewis, S., Blood, R. W., Holland, K., & Komesaroff, P. (2016). Obese
people’s perceptions of the thin ideal. Social Science & Medicine, 148, 60–70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.11.034
Schvey, N. A., Puhl, R. M., & Brownell, K. D. (2011). The Impact of weight stigma on caloric
consumption. Obesity, 19(10), 1957–1962. https://doi.org/10.1038/oby.2011.204
Tomiyama, A. J. (2014). Weight stigma is stressful. A review of evidence for the Cyclic
Obesity/Weight-Based Stigma model. Appetite, 82, 8–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2014.06.108