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In this study I hypothesize a larger penalty of obesity on teacher-assessed academic performance for white girls in English, where femininity is privileged, than in math, where stereotypical femininity is perceived to be a detriment. This pattern of associations would be expected if obesity largely influences academic performance through social pathways such as discrimination and stigma. In the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (~age 9) and the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997 (~age 18), I find obesity to be associated with a penalty on academic performance among white girls in English but not in math, while no association is found in either subject for white boys or for black students net of controls. Findings suggest that the relationship between obesity and academic performance may result largely from how educational institutions interact with bodies of different sizes, rather than primarily via constraints on physical health.

Both conventional public beliefs and existing academic research on colorism presuppose that variation in skin color predicts social outcomes among minorities but is inconsequential among whites. The authors draw on social psychological research on stereotyping to suggest that in quick, low-information decisions such as an arrest, the opposite may be true. Contrary to findings for longer-term socioeconomic outcomes, the authors find that black men's probability of arrest remains constant across the spectrum of skin color, while white men's probability of arrest decreases continuously with lighter skin. Beyond posing an exception to the modern conception of colorism, these results have implications for efforts to ameliorate the epidemic of incarceration among black men, as well as for understanding how elements of visible phenotype may serve as a unique category of predictors in models of social inequality.

Objectives: Rates of childhood obesity and parental incarceration have been increasing in the United States since the 1970s. We examined whether parental incarceration was associated with child overweight at age 9 and whether that association differed by which parent was incarcerated. Methods: We ran cross-sectional logistic regression models predicting the likelihood of a child being overweight, conditional on whether the child’s mother, father, or both parents had ever been incarcerated. Our sample included non-Hispanic black (n = 1638) and non-Hispanic white (n = 504) children who were surveyed at age 9 in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a stratified random sample of new and mostly unmarried parents in US cities with populations >200 000. Children were born between 1998 and 2000. Results: Controlling for race, sex, parental socioeconomic status, maternal obesity, parental impulsivity, and child temperament, the odds of being overweight were significantly lower if a child’s mother was the only parent ever incarcerated (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 0.43; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.22-0.83) or if both parents were ever incarcerated (aOR = 0.58; 95% CI, 0.38-0.87) compared with children whose parents were never incarcerated. Having a father who had ever been incarcerated had a comparatively meager and nonsignificant effect on the odds of a child being overweight (aOR = 0.81; 95% CI, 0.64-1.01). Conclusions: Our findings contribute to an emerging body of research suggesting that the consequences of parental incarceration for young children’s physical health may differ by whether a child’s mother or father has ever been incarcerated. Caution is warranted in generalizing the negative behavioral and mental health effects of parental incarceration to child physical health conditions, particularly for young children whose mothers have a history of incarceration.