Look up Sizeism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Prejudice or discrimination based on size
Sizeism or size discrimination is unjust or prejudicial treatment directed at people based on their size.
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Sizeism or size discrimination is unjust or prejudicial treatment directed at people based on their size.
This type of discrimination can take a number of forms, ranging from refusing to hire someone because they are considered to be too short or too tall, to treating overweight and underweight individuals with disdain.
There are not currently any specific anti-discrimination laws to prohibit sizeism, despite the issue being extremely prevalent. [1] Sizeist stereotypes (such as "overweight people are lazy" or "underweight people starve themselves") are often ingrained in modern society.[ citation needed ]
In the US, the list of anti-discrimination acts does not explicitly include sizeism as an offense (though "any other factor unrelated to merit" is included). [2]
The EOCC website states: [3]
Height and weight requirements tend to disproportionately limit the employment opportunities of some protected groups and unless the employer can demonstrate how the need is related to the job, it may be viewed as illegal under federal law. A number of states and localities have laws specifically prohibiting discrimination on the basis of height and weight unless based on actual job requirements. Therefore, unless job-related, inquiries about height and weight should be avoided.
Therefore, size discrimination in the workplace can be illegal under federal law if it is not a job requirement. [3]
Sizeism can be based on height, weight or both, and so is often related to height and weight-based discrimination but is not synonymous with either. Depending on where in the world one is and how one lives their life, people may have a tendency to be especially tall, slender, short, or plump, and many societies have internalized attitudes about size. Another manifestation of body variance is muscle mass and skeletal size, often with associations of degree of compliance to one's born sex, but do not necessarily affect gender to deviate from sex. As a general rule, sizeist attitudes imply that someone believes that their size is superior to that of other people and treat people of other sizes negatively. Examples of sizeist discrimination might include a person being fired from a job for being overweight or exceptionally short though their work was unaffected. Sizeism often takes the form of a number of stereotypes about people of particular heights and weights. Sizeist attitudes can also take the form of expressions of physical disgust when confronted with people of differing sizes and can even manifest into specific phobias such as cacomorphobia (the fear of fat people), or a fear of tall or short people.
Sizeism is aligned with the social construction of the ideal or "normal" body shape and size and how that shapes our environment. In the U.S. we can observe many public facilities shaped by this "normative" body, including: telephone booths, drinking fountains, bleachers, bathroom outlets (sinks, toilets, stalls), chairs, tables, turnstiles, elevators, staircases, vending machines, and doorways. Design assumptions are drawn about the size and shape of the users (height, weight, proportionate length of arms and legs, width of hips and shoulders). [4]
Body-shaming, more specifically weight-shaming of men and women, is a widely known characteristic of sizeism, shown in the form of prejudice and discrimination can include both skinny shaming [5] and fat shaming. [6]
Based on data analysis done on a survey of over 3,000 Americans, weight and height discrimination, a form of sizeism, was ranked just behind gender, age, and race as a highly experienced factor of discrimination. Among female respondents, weight and height discrimination exceeds race-based discrimination as the third most prevalent form of experienced discrimination. This discrimination was experienced in multiple settings, including from employers, interactions within the health-care field, in educational atmospheres, as well as within personal and familial relationships. [7]
Greater prevalence was found to exist within those respondents who were self-reported as female, with 10% of female respondents reporting having experienced weight and height discrimination, compared to 5% of male respondents . For younger women, these numbers illustrated still an increase: 14.1% of women with a reported age range of 35–44 years old expressed experiencing weight and height based discrimination, and women who identified between 45 and 54 years of age were nearly five times more likely to have experienced weight and height based discrimination than their 65–74 year old counterparts. The study also found that African-American women were more likely to experience weight and height discrimination, with 23.9% of respondents having reported an incident. [7]
The women most affected are those who identify as belonging to the highest weight category. Those women reported as moderately obese, or those with a body mass index of 30–35, were found to be three times more likely than their male counterparts of a similar weight to experience weight based discrimination. [7]
Despite substantial research documenting weight discrimination and its negative impact on the lives of those targeted, [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] under the US Constitution and federal law, it is legal to discriminate on the basis of weight. With the exception of the state of Michigan and several localities (i.e., San Francisco and Santa Cruz in California; Washington, DC; Urbana, Illinois; Binghamton, New York; and Madison, Wisconsin) that have passed legislation explicitly prohibiting weight-based discrimination, Americans have no viable means for seeking legal recourse in the face of weight discrimination, and existing US civil rights laws prohibit discrimination only on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. [16] Some individuals have attempted to file discrimination lawsuits under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), but plaintiffs must prove that their weight is a disability or perceived to be a disability according to ADA definitions, which is not the case for many people. [17] [18] Thus, few cases have been successful under this law and most of these successes have occurred since 2009, after Congress passed the ADA Amendments Act, which expanded the definitions of disability to include "severe obesity" (but not moderate obesity, overweight or underweight) as an impairment. For example, in 2012, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) successfully settled 2 cases for employees who were terminated from their jobs because their employers regarded them to be disabled based on their obesity and their severe obesity was now a covered disability under the new amendment. Despite these few recent successes, not all weight discrimination occurs in the context of disability or perceived disability, and legal remedies that can directly address weight discrimination as a legitimate social injustice remain absent. [17]
Body mass index (BMI) is a value derived from the mass (weight) and height of a person. The BMI is defined as the body mass divided by the square of the body height, and is expressed in units of kg/m2, resulting from mass in kilograms and height in metres.
The fat acceptance movement is a social movement which seeks to eliminate the social stigma of obesity from social attitudes by pointing out the obstacles which are faced by fat people to those who are less fat. Areas of contention include the aesthetic, legal, and medical approaches to fat people.
Obesity is a medical condition, sometimes considered a disease, in which excess body fat has accumulated to such an extent that it negatively affects health. People are classified as obese when their body mass index (BMI)—a person's weight divided by the square of the person's height—is over 30 kg/m2; the range 25–30 kg/m2 is defined as overweight. Some East Asian countries use lower values to calculate obesity. Obesity is a major cause of disability and is correlated with various diseases and conditions, particularly cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, obstructive sleep apnea, certain types of cancer, and osteoarthritis.
Body image is a person's thoughts, feelings and perception of the aesthetics or sexual attractiveness of their own body. The concept of body image is used in a number of disciplines, including neuroscience, psychology, medicine, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, philosophy, cultural and feminist studies; the media also often uses the term. Across these disciplines, there is no single consensus definition, but broadly speaking body image consists of the ways people view themselves; their memories, experiences, assumptions, and comparisons about their own appearances; and their overall attitudes towards their own respective heights, shapes, and weights—all of which are shaped by prevalent social and cultural ideals.
Human body weight is a person's mass or weight.
Bariatrics is the branch of medicine that deals with the causes, prevention, and treatment of obesity.
An underweight person is a person whose body weight is considered too low to be healthy. A person who is underweight is malnourished.
Health at Every Size (HAES) is an approach to public health that seeks to downplay weight loss as a health goal, and reduce stigma towards people who are overweight or obese. Proponents argue that traditional interventions focused on weight loss, such as dieting, do not reliably produce positive health outcomes, and that health is a result of lifestyle behaviors that can be performed independently of body weight. However, many criticize the approach and argue that weight loss should sometimes be an explicit goal of healthcare interventions, because of the negative health outcomes associated with obesity.
Fat feminism, often associated with "body-positivity", is a social movement that incorporates feminist themes of equality, social justice, and cultural analysis based on the weight of a woman or a non-binary feminine person. This branch of feminism intersects misogyny and sexism with anti-fat bias. Fat feminists advocate body-positive acceptance for all bodies, regardless of their weight, as well as eliminating biases experienced directly or indirectly by fat people. Fat feminists originated during third-wave feminism and is aligned with the fat acceptance movement. A significant portion of body positivity in the third-wave focused on embracing and reclaiming femininity, such as wearing makeup and high heels, even though the second-wave fought against these things. Contemporary western fat feminism works to dismantle oppressive power structures which disproportionately affect fat, queer, non-white, disabled, and other non-hegemonic bodies. It covers a wide range of topics such as diet culture, fat-phobia, representation in media, ableism, and employment discrimination.
Obesity is common in the United States and is a major health issue associated with numerous diseases, specifically an increased risk of certain types of cancer, coronary artery disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, and cardiovascular disease, as well as significant increases in early mortality and economic costs.
Being overweight or fat is having more body fat than is optimally healthy. Being overweight is especially common where food supplies are plentiful and lifestyles are sedentary.
Obesity is a risk factor for many chronic physical and mental illnesses.
Obesity classification is a ranking of obesity, the medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it has an adverse effect on health. The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies obesity by body mass index (BMI). BMI is further evaluated in terms of fat distribution via the waist–hip ratio and total cardiovascular risk factors. In children, a healthy weight varies with age and sex, and obesity determination is in relation to a historical normal group.
Weight management refers to behaviors, techniques, and physiological processes that contribute to a person's ability to attain and maintain a healthy weight. Most weight management techniques encompass long-term lifestyle strategies that promote healthy eating and daily physical activity. Moreover, weight management involves developing meaningful ways to track weight over time and to identify ideal body weights for different individuals.
Social stigma of obesity is broadly defined as bias or discriminatory behaviors targeted at overweight and obese individuals because of their weight and a high body fat percentage. Such social stigmas can span one's entire life, as long as excess weight is present, starting from a young age and lasting into adulthood. Studies also indicate overweight and obese individuals experience higher levels of stigma compared to other people.
Body shaming is the action or inaction of subjecting someone to humiliation and criticism for their bodily features. The scope of body shaming is wide, and includes, although is not limited to fat-shaming, shaming for thinness, height-shaming, shaming of hairiness, of hair-color, body-shape, one's muscularity, shaming of penis size or breast size, shaming of looks, and in its broadest sense may even include shaming of tattoos and piercings or diseases that leave a physical mark such as psoriasis.
Obesity is defined as an abnormal accumulation of body fat, usually 20% or more over an individual's ideal body weight. This is often described as a body mass index (BMI) over 30. However, BMI does not account for whether the excess weight is fat or muscle, and is not a measure of body composition. For most people, however, BMI is an indication used worldwide to estimate nutritional status. Obesity is usually the result of consuming more calories than the body needs and not expending that energy by doing exercise. There are genetic causes and hormonal disorders that cause people to gain significant amounts of weight but this is rare. People in the obese category are much more likely to suffer from fertility problems than people of normal healthy weight.
Body positivity is a social movement focused on the acceptance of all bodies, regardless of size, shape, skin tone, gender, and physical abilities, while challenging present-day beauty standards as an undesirable social construct. Proponents focus on the appreciation of the functionality and health of the human body, instead of its physiological appearance.
The social stigma of obesity, can be defined as the systemic oppression of and discrimination against people who may be considered overweight, obese, or fat. Fatphobia exists in many forms and presents itself in both institutional and interpersonal circumstances. According to numerous academics, fatphobia or general anti-fat bias is common and pervasive. Fatphobia negatively impacts the attitudes and behaviours of individuals towards those considered to be overweight or obese. Employment, relationships, and medical care are some facets of daily living that are all known to be negatively impacted by fat-phobic rhetoric or anti-fat assumptions. Fatphobia is produced and spread in many ways, including through advertising and popular media such as television shows. According to a number of scholars, television shows in North America both underrepresent and misrepresent fat people which (re)produces fatphobic rhetoric
Being overweight or obese has influence on the sexuality of people in various different aspects. It can include negative aspects such as stigmatization which can be an obstacle for romantic developments, sexual dysfunction and an increased chance of risky sexual behavior. It can also have positive aspects in the form of fat fetishism.
