Fat as Flawless or Fatal? Weight Stigma and its Effect on Perceptions of Fat, Health, and Eating Disorders.
Social Sciences
Sociology major undergraduate thesis
This study is designed to examine the stigma that people hold about fat and about fat bodies, both subconsciously and consciously. The study primarily asks: Do people make assumptions about health based on body size? The study is also designed to analyze knowledge that exists surrounding eating disorders as well as which other popular assumptions are made generally about obesity and specifically about people based on their body size. What consequences do these assumptions have for people who live in fat bodies? This study delves into these questions using a deep literature review and an analysis of responses to an anonymous survey.
The answers to these questions are important for our social world, especially considering the pervasive thin ideal as well as the lack of research that exists on positive body image and on the experiences of those who are discriminated against because of their size (Homan and Tylka 2018). Almost half of American children between first and third grade already want to be thinner and half of girls 9-10 years old are dieting (Weiss 2011). In the field of psychology and in society generally, body image issues and eating disorders can be (and are) so easily disguised as problems that occur only in individual worlds. This is why the field of sociology needs to invest in researching how these problems exist beyond the self.
