Obesity Stigma

             A recent article in the journal “Social Psychology Quarterly” addresses an important issue of stigma that many people may not fully appreciate. When we think about stigma we often think about the discrimination and prejudice that occurs against based on race, gender, or sexual orientation. This article by Markus Schafer discusses the adverse health effects of stigma based on body weight. Nobody would be surprised with the finding that obesity is associated with poor overall health. However, Shafer and colleagues found that obese people who experienced weight related discrimination had even worse health outcomes over time than obese people who did not experience such discrimination. The study was based on a ten year follow up study of 1500 Americans and found that obese people who experienced weight discrimination had the sharpest decline in health function over time.

              Obesity is a major challenge in contemporary North American society. Obesity is defined based on body mass index (BMI); BMI values of 26 – 29 are considered overweight and BMI values 30 and higher are considered obese. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that 34% of Americans are overweight and another 34% are obese. In Canada a recent large survey found that 36% of the population is overweight and another 23% is obese. Despite the alarmingly high prevalence of obesity, we are constantly bombarded with media images of people who are uniformly slim, attractive, and beautiful. One might think that with the rising rates of obesity in the US and Canada, that anti-fat prejudices would quickly decline, but this does not appear to be the case. Obesity discrimination is one of the last forms of discrimination that society appears to readily accept. Obese people are pre-judged as being lazy, weak-willed, lacking self-control, or having flawed character. In contrast, scientific evidence finds that the causes of obesity are much more complex and include genetic factors, body metabolism, culture, environment, and socioeconomic status, in addition to behavior.

            Shafer’s study shows that in addition to the adverse health effects of obesity, and the negative psychological effects of experiencing discrimination, obese people suffer a further toll on their health as a result of being discriminated against. So, why do people feel that it is acceptable to discriminate against others based on body weight? Perhaps some feel that fat people could decide to lose weight if only they “put their mind to it” (in other words, they are to blame for their own problems). While this kind of thinking seems intuitive on some levels, it is pretty clear that many many obese people have repeatedly tried and failed to lose weight. Many others have successfully lost weight and are unable to maintain their weight loss. Discrimination against any group of people is fundamentally unfair and causes harm to those who experience the discimination and well as causing harm to the society that condones the violation of the rights of any group of people. Hopefully, increasing awareness of the complex causes of obesity and awareness of the negative impacts on those disciminated against will help reduce this unfortunate social stigma.

            Here is a link to the article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110303065211.htm

            Thanks!