Posts Tagged ‘weight discrimination’

A new study published today in Obesity tells us that one in five adults are carrying a heavy burden – internal weight bias. Rebecca Puhl will be presenting these results at ObesityWeek on Wednesday. In their research, Puhl and colleagues studied internalized weight bias in a total of 3,504 U.S. adults. While 20% of the […]

Budgets are tight. England’s National Health Service (NHS) faces a funding gap that threatens patient safety and the quality of care. What to do? Two clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in Hertfordshire have a plan. They’ll restrict care for smokers and people with obesity. Smokers will have to quit before they can have non-urgent surgery. People with […]

It’s ugly. People who need and choose to have gastric surgery for obesity face a triple bias. There’s the discrimination, bias, and even contempt that people experience just from living with obesity. But more troubling is bias from people making two kinds of false judgments about the surgery. The Label of a Cheat and a […]

On the subject of obesity, personal responsibility is a popular trope. We hear lots of messages that gently blame people with obesity. “You oughta do something about that” is a common form of unhelpful advice. But it doesn’t stop there. All too often, after a person is well down the road to wellness, harsh judgments […]

If you want perspective on the absurdity of fat-shaming trolls, consider this. Eddie Lacy, a successful NFL running back, can’t shake them. He tells ESPN: I could pull up my Twitter right now and there would be a fat comment in there somewhere. Like I could tweet, “Today is a beautiful day!” and someone would […]

“I refuse to let my daugher be taught by a fat teacher.” So says an opinion writer for the Daily Mail in a recent opinion article that she’s milking for all the attention she can get. In an odd expression of codependence, she tries to justify her heinous views by saying that fat activists have […]

How Everyday Language Casually Stigmatises Obesity – And What to Do About It Obesity is a highly stigmatised condition. Those with obesity are frequently subject to prejudice and ridicule at home, school, work, and even from health care professionals. Every day, they face social rejection and are deemed lazy, unattractive, unmotivated and unhappy. Alarmingly, many obese […]

Fashion has long been a safe harbor for fat shaming – both subtle and explicit. Headlines from New York Fashion Week might make you think this harsh reality is fading fast. But a broader view would say not so fast. French culture prizes both style and cuisine, and according to Gabrielle Deydier, that puts a […]

We live in a polarized age of brittle ideologies. Is the connection between obesity and health merely a product of ideology? A new paper in Critical Public Health argues for that view. And the authors propose “an end to seeing obesity as a significant health issue.” Right now, we need more respect for diverse views on difficult […]

“At the end of the day, what we’d like to see is fewer obese people in the Medicare population about which we have to have these conversations.” Those striking words came Aloysius Cuyjet, MD, MPH. They came after he chaired more than five hours of evidence review at Medicare’s advisory committee on evidence and coverage […]