Politics of Obesity: Society’s Dirty Secret - The Emotional, Psychological, Mental, and Self-Esteem Shame of being Overweight

Remember how the “Fat Kids” were taunted and teased in school?

Overweight and obese school-aged children are more likely to be the victims and perpetrators of bullying behaviors than their normal-weight peers. These tendencies may hinder the short- and long-term social and psychological development of overweight and obese youth.

Associations Between Overweight and Obesity With Bullying Behaviors in School-Aged Children

Have you ever gained weight and felt bad about yourself? Do you watch television or movies and think of an actor as “that fat person?”

Is being overweight distressing? If it is, is the distress due to negative appraisals by others, to the stresses of trying to fit norms of thinness by dieting, or to the health consequences of being overweight? If being overweight is stigmatizing, negative evaluations by others may be internalized as high levels of depression.

This perspective predicts that being overweight has a direct effect on depression, and that the effect is greater in social groups where being overweight is less common, especially among women, Whites, younger people, the well-educated, and the well-to-do. Alternatively, overweight may not be distressing per se. Instead, attempting to fit norms of appearance that equate thinness with attractiveness by dieting is distressing.

According to this perspective, the association between being overweight and depression is explained by dieting. Finally, this association may be due to the health consequences of being overweight.

Overweight persons are more likely to diet and to experience worse physical health, both of which are associated with depression. Combined, these explain the negative effects of being overweight on depression.

Overweight and Depression

Isn’t it common knowledge that “fat people” don’t go on dates?

There is a persistent preoccupation with obesity and sexuality, and reflect aspects of the pervasive social discrimination against obesity. These issues are placed in the context of the medical establishment's view of obesity as epidemic in the United States, and the answering claims for social justice from what is called the ‘ fat lobby’.

American Fat: Obesity and the Short Story

Isn’t it a fact that women, in general, have body image issues about themselves no matter how beautiful or thin they may be? Read stories about discrimination in the work place about promoting people that may be overweight?

Female undergraduates were randomly exposed to pictures from magazines containing either ultra-thin models, average-sized models, or no models. Results indicated that exposure to the thin-ideal produced depression, stress, guilt, shame, insecurity, and body dissatisfaction. Further, multiple regression analyses indicated that negative affect, body dissatisfaction, and subscription to the thin-ideal predicted bulimic symptoms.

Adverse effects of the media portrayed thin-ideal on women and linkages to bulimic symptomatology

Guess what? These “stories” are all, too real. They are all, too ignorant. We are all guilty, one way or another, of perpetuating this problem.

How many times have some of us, judged others by their weight without even knowing them?

Probably, more times, than we think.

I would rather be friends with somebody who is good on the inside than what “society” deems people should look like.

A reasonable deduction is that people just put too much pressure on themselves and actually “think” they are not as “good” as others if they may be overweight or obese.

Well, guess what, that is a falsehood. That is a myth to be debunked.

The psychological, emotional, and mental affects of overweight and obesity are just as damaging to people as the medical effects.

It’s time that we, as people, as groups, as human beings, and as a nation, realize that everybody should be judged as to who they are; not whom we wish them to be.

© Iowa Avenue