OK

• People may think weight stigma only manifests as rude comments, is harmless or can even do some good.
• But the reality is that weight stigma is often insidious, and pervasively entrenched into our society and environment.

Fat microaggressions

• The impacts of microaggressions have been described as “death by a thousand cuts,” referring to how seemingly minor incidents, when repeated cumulatively, contribute to real harm.
• With combined input from reports of lived experiences, expert testimony and large studies with diverse samples, we identified four main types of fat microaggressions.

• Think fat jokes, unintelligent, gross, and/or unattractive fat characters on TV and in movies (like “Fat Monica” from Friends or Gwyneth Paltrow’s character in Shallow Hal), and thin friends complaining they “feel fat” in front of a larger person and commenting on how much they hate their bodies.
• Our data confirm that indirect microaggressions are the type most experienced by fat people — they invade every aspect of daily life and remind fat people that they are not viewed as OK.

Clothing exclusion

• One type of direct microaggression that emerged as its own category in our analysis was clothing exclusion.
• It is also common to see clothing in stores with claims that “one size fits all,” that really don’t.
• Fat activists have also long recognized that clothing exclusion acts as a proxy for other societal forms of erasure, in that the more standard options fail you, the more you are likely facing other forms of everyday oppressions.

Benevolent weightism

• You would be hard-pressed to find a fat person who has not tried multiple weight-loss methods, only to end up unsuccessful and feeling worse about themselves than ever.
• Indeed, the most likely outcome of weight-loss attempts is weight regain, and usually, weight rebound above your initial starting point.
• Studies that show otherwise are often methodologically flawed and frequently misleading in their headline messaging.

Why fat microaggressions matter

• Across four studies, we established the prominence of fat microaggressions in the lives of fat people and linked experiencing fat microaggressions to poorer mental health, such as greater stress, anxiety and depression, and worse self-esteem.
• Fat microaggressions were even associated with discrimination-related trauma symptoms, including feeling on edge or constantly on guard, fearing embarrassment or feeling isolated from others.

How you can help

• Greater awareness and recognition of fat microaggressions is an important first step to confronting them.
• If you really are concerned about health, do not tell fat people they need fixing; these microaggressions make people’s health worse, not better.
• Challenging anti-fat attitudes when they manifest in these other ways is key to a more inclusive and less harmful world.

Angela Meadows has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Megan Lindloff and Rachel Calogero do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.