Yale University (2008, March 28). Weight Bias Is As Prevalent As Racial Discrimination, Study Suggests. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 20, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/03/080327172129.htm
This study, which came from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obestiy, looked into seeing if discrimination against people who were over-weight was just as common as racial discrimination. They used a sample of around 3,000 adults who were varied in ages from 25 to 74 years old. This sample of people observed instances in their own lives that they ended up viewing as examples of weight discrimination. After the conductors of this study collected this data about people's experiences of weight discrimination, they looked to see how similiar this data was compared to other people's experiences of discrimination that had to do with race and gender.
There were a couple of things that they found in their results that I thought were fascinating. First, they found that discrimination against people who were over-weight was just as common as racial discrimination. I think that this is true, because a lot of us hear many examples when people feel that they were discriminated against based on being over-weight. One of these examples, for instance, is like when a thin person and an over-weight person go up against each other for the same job in which the thin person ends up getting the job despite being the one less qualified for that job. There still obviously is racial discrimination going on today, but it isn't quite as bad as it was in the past. There was an interesting comment after this study had been conducted regarding weight discrimination by one of the authors of this study who said that weight discrimination is still considered to be socially acceptable. One of real world example that possibly shows this was when the United Airlines put in a rule to make people who were considered to be over-weight to buy two seats on their planes as well as for them to wait for the next flight if there were no more empty seats. With weight discrimination being socially acceptable, I think that some people view that weight is a controllable thing and that some people choose to be over-weight based on bad nutrition and lack of exercise. Even though at times, it isn't true especially with some people being over-weight based on their genes. Also, they were able to find in this study that women were more likely than men to experience weight discrimination for being over-weight. I think that this finding can definitely be attributed to the idea of men having a stronger prejudice towards over-weight people that we learned from in the studies in class.
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This is a great, although sad, study. It's great that people realized there was real discrimination present against over-wieght people that exists in the world today. It's sad that it has become more of a discrimination problem than racial discrimination. With society's view on "healthy living" today and America's obesity problem in general I believe we will see this type of discrimination become even more prevalent. I wonder if there could be a way, like with the study on lowering children's prejudice against refugees, that as a society we could cut down the amount of discrimination in this area?
ReplyDeleteEvery time I start a new job I work as hard as I possibly can, even if I see that the expectations really aren't that high. I feel like I have to do this in order to establish myself as a good employee, like I have to work twice as hard as everybody else just to get passed the initial stereotype that over-weight people are lazy. I sometimes wonder though, if this is a necessity on my part or if I do because I'm assuming I know what other people are thinking about me. Stereotype threat? I do know this, as hard as it is for me to admit, when I see an extremely obese individual, I stereotype immediately. I'm aware of it now, I don't know that I've always been, and it disgusts me. Even though I myself struggle with weight, and have since I was 8, I automatically associate the traits lazy, dirty, compulsive, and frivolous with almost all obese people I come into contact with for the first time. Thankfully, I think recognizing how we stereotype people is the first step to changing or dropping any stereotype in particular.
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