Fighting for a (wide enough) seat at the table: weight stigma in law and policy

Abstract

Few jurisdictions provide legal protection against discrimination on the basis of weight despite evidence of pervasive inequalities faced by fat individuals in employment, healthcare, education and other domains. Yet, in the last two decades, advocacy efforts in several countries aimed to remedy this situation have been largely unsuccessful. We present a cross-national conceptual analysis of three significant anti-discrimination developments regarding weight in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Iceland, respectively, to highlight how the creation, implementation, and enforcement of legal and policy mechanisms that prohibit weight discrimination ironically suffer Fighting for a (wide enough) seat at the table: Weight stigma in law and policy under the very burden of deeply rooted structural stigmas against fatness and fat bodies that such efforts seek to counter. However, drawing on research around policy change in response to other social movements, we conclude that we may be at a time where broad-ranging policy change could become a reality.

Signaling sizeism: An assessment of body size‐based threat and safety cues

“…A possible reason these cues are not present is because many people and organizations do not consider body size to be an aspect of diversity. Indeed, weight is not identified as a facet of diversity by the American Psychological Association (2021), and weight discrimination is largely legal in the United States (Meadows et al., 2020) Therefore, when aiming to cue diversity and inclusion, many may ignore body size as an identity category (leading to a dearth of diversity philosophy or identity‐safe information cues). We encourage legal and professional organizations to attend to body size as an aspect of diversity.…”

“…In particular, cues pertaining to other people in the environment – homogenous others and general diversity – may be less malleable. In some contexts, the diversity of individuals can be intervened upon; For example, diverse hiring in the workplace (though such mechanisms are unlikely to encompass identities such as fatness; e.g., Meadows et al., 2020) or diverse representation in media can be increased with intent. Public spaces, however, may be less fit for intervention aiming to increase the diversity of individuals, though increasing feelings of belonging in a public space through the use of safety cues may increase the use of that space by those with stigmatized identities (and vice versa, such that increased use of public space by stigmatized individuals may increase feelings of safety in that space; see Trawalter et al., 2021).…”

“…Negative attitudes toward fatness are associated with mental and physical harm to fat people (e.g., social isolation, depression, low self‐esteem; Rubino et al., 2020). Indeed, stigma is a fundamental cause of health disparities between social groups; Stigma predicts health inequalities among a variety of disadvantaged groups and across numerous physical and mental health outcomes (Hatzenbuehler et al., 2013; Matsick et al., 2020; Meadows et al., 2020).…”

“…There has been substantial scholarly attention to various kinds of stigmas and their consequences, including sizeism (i.e., fat stigma). Indeed, a robust literature demonstrates that fat stigma is real and pervasive (see Rubino et al., 2020 for review), and that there are resultant negative health outcomes for those who are targeted by sizeism (e.g., Hunger et al., 2015; Meadows et al., 2020). We thus claim that body size serves as a social category, like gender or race, to which distinct identities exist and are differently marked and valued (see also van Amsterdam, 2013).…”

Policies to address weight discrimination and bullying: Perspectives of adults engaged in weight management from six nations

“…Public support is a key catalyst for policy change and motivating policy makers to champion legislative issues. The structural nature of weight stigma and discrimination underscores the importance of societal beliefs and attitudes in preceding legal change (16). To date, relatively few studies have assessed public support for polices to prohibit weight discrimination and bullying.…”