User:Rac150/Social stigma of obesity

Language & Identity
Preference regarding language varies widely amongst overweight individuals, though there is some consensus on generally unaccepted terms.

Person first language is not ubiquitous among fat acceptance movements, and in fact people view it as an “inherent adverse judgment.” Those who promote person-first language, i.e. using terminology such as a person with obesity, seem to have done so without consultation in fat activist groups. Critics of person-first language cite problems with the desire to separate a person from that characteristic, as separating it implies that there is something wrong with being overweight, which contributes to further stigma. Furthermore, person-first language contributes to the medicalization of obesity, as the language is commonly used when referring to disease.

The term "fat" appears to result in more stigma and judgement from the broader community. Various studies of overweight people seeking weight loss as well as a semantics study of varied terminology used to describe an overweight individual conclude that using the word fat elicits a negative reaction from people already critical of obesity. Regarding other terms, "obesity" was found in one study to be equally as undesirable as "fat" when considering language preferences of overweight individuals.

Yet, "fat" is the preferred term within the fat acceptance movement. Fat activists have reclaimed the term as a neutral descriptor in order to work against the stigma typically associated with the term. In fact, many fat activists will censor the word "obesity" when tweeting or citing it as "ob*sity" due to its pathologizing nature. The word "obesity" directly stems from the latin word "obesus" which means "that has eaten itself fat." Fat activists will also use this latin definition to show stigma in the word "obese" itself, as it places blame on the individual for their state.

Fat activist Aubrey Gordon argues that "disavowing the term fat reinforces its negative meanings." Although studies have not been conducted among fat activists on preferred terminology, books such as What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat, Happy Fat, Things No One Tells Fat Girls, and ''Fat! So?'' all have the word Fat in the title in a non-derogatory sense. Likewise, The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) was founded in 1969, with the descriptor of the community being "fat."

Race Intersection
With higher representation of black people being categorized as overweight by the BMI, the social stigma of obesity disproportionately affects black people. More than 80% of African American women are categorized as overweight using the Body Mass Index. Yet, the BMI was created based on a group of European men and cutoffs have been altered in the US in a non-scientifically verified way, with no distinguishing between appropriate cutoffs for different races.

Sociologist Sabrina Strings writes, in her book Fearing the Black Body, about the historical ways in which black people were categorized as fat and thus inferior. In 1751, Denis Diderot published the Encyclopédie, which was the first publications to claim that black people were "fond of gluttony." In 1853, French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau claimed, about black people, that their "gluttonous nature to be one of their more base characteristics." In 1910, Charles Davenport founded the Eugenic Record Office, and he claimed that "obesity was a vile condition to be avoided. It was, moreover, racially inherited." Eugenics sentiment toward black people regarding their size was prevalent.

Body standards differ between black and white communities, but whiteness, and therefore thinness, is seen as the cultural norm. Scholar Elizabeth Hughes discusses this in ""I'm Supposed to be Thick:" Managing Body Anxieties Among Black American Women," citing the norm of a "thick" body type, in other words curvier bodies, in the black community.

Black bodies are already stigmatized, which can result in violence when interacting with the social stigma of obesity. In a 2017 article published in the African American Review, one author cited the killing of Eric Garner as an example of this, as some excuses for using excessive force on Garner were his size, as he was an overweight man. The article explains how ableism, fatphobia, and racism interact to form a "double bind" in which violence is excused because fatness is already causing inherent injury, but necessary because the size of a large black person is a threat.

A paper published by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine titled “Intersectionality: An Understudied Framework for Addressing Weight Stigma” focused on highlighting the intersectionality between weight stigma and health-related coping responses across several non-white women and men racial groups. The findings of this publication demonstrated that there were no significant differences in weight stigma as a function of race or gender, having an overall equal representation across all racial groups analyzed. Nonetheless, results additionally demonstrated that different racial groups had differing ways of internalizing and coping with weight and health-related stigmas, which as a result heightened health risks. Results revealed that white women and men reported higher weight bias internalization in comparison to black women and men. Additionally, Hispanic women demonstrated to cope with weight stigma via disordered eating patterns more than black and white women. The results of this research article highlighted the importance of needing to increase research and policy attention to addressing weight and health-related stigma as an issue regarding prevention and treatment for obesity in order to consequently decrease weight-driven inequalities in communities and differing groups, primarily focused on race and gender.