Highly Stigmatized, Hardly Recognized

Growing up living several 100 miles away from the rest of my family for years, I can recall the scents permeating the houses of my relatives when I came to visit. I can remember the smell of traditional Cambodian food stinking up the house as my baby cousins chased each other until they fell to the ground and karaoke music blasting through the windows, loud enough for me to know which house was my family’s when I was a block away. But more importantly, I can vividly remember the horror on my aunts’ faces as they commented on the amount of weight that I had gained since the last time I visited them.

From a young age, fat people are made to feel ashamed of their bodies. And unlike most other highly stigmatized conditions, such as depression, where the manifestations are capable of being concealed or are, by natural means, invisible, people who are fat have to physically exhibit their fatness, often leading to greater criticism and stereotyping.

Obesity as a Medical Disease

The American Medical Association (AMA) declared obesity, the medical term for having a BMI of at least 30, a disease in 2013. Well-intentioned at first, the goal of the AMA’s proclamation was to categorize obesity as a medical condition in order to bring about more attention to the issue and to induce more insurers to help with costs for treatment of the disease. However, obesity, and fatness in general, have only received more negative appraisal ever since, with councilmembers from the Food and Drug Administration even stating that making obesity a disease could worsen the stigma around being overweight and result in some patients constantly being nagged about their weight, even if they were already healthy or had lost enough weight to better their health.

In comparison to patients who suffer from other diseases, such as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, obese people aren’t sent get-well-soon cards, given flowers, or kept in people’s prayers.

Instead, they are ridiculed. They are stereotyped as lazy and sloppy, often seen as unattractive and lacking willpower. Health Education Research, an academic journal published by Oxford University Press, conducted a study in 2000 that examined whether altering children’s assumptions about the controllability of obesity would reduce their negative outlooks toward fat people. The investigation found that while children’s presumptions about the controllability of obesity are capable of being changed, reducing their negative stereotyping of obese people is not as easy.

People often believe that being fat or obese is simply a matter of self-control, which is what distinguishes stereotyping of fatness and obesity from the stereotyping of other diseases and physical features. Different physical attributes, such as height and race, and illnesses, like allergies, are all incapable of being altered by the individual. On the other hand, many people perceive fatness as a direct result of the individual’s choices, resulting in it becoming looked down upon.

However, it is a misconception that fatness is directly related to a person’s decisions. According to the World Health Organization, being fat is reflective of various and many circumstances from the moment children are conceived, born, and raised. Such circumstances include environmental, cultural, lifestyle, and nutritional factors as well as genetics, age, gender, other medical issues, and so on. Nearly every aspect of life is capable of having an impact on whether or not a person is fat. And while stereotypical factors, such as a high caloric intake combined with a low amount of exercise, do play a role in fatness, it cannot be forgotten that there is a list of other factors that can explain why a person may be a certain size—not just mere laziness and overeating.

Obesity in Eastern Asian Countries

America devotes a substantial amount of time and anxiety toward the topic of fatness, whether it be legitimate or imaginary. Throughout our lives, we have been exposed to a plethora of facts and statistics on obesity and ways to prevent and treat the disease. We have seen countless advertisements on social media and even the subway, featuring the latest diet teas or trending workout programs promising to make us feel slimmer and hypothetically healthier and happier in order to benefit companies who are looking to make money from people’s insecurities. We have been taught that being even slightly fat is unideal and ugly, while simultaneously learning that the word itself is shaded with such a negative connotation that it can be used as an insult. And in many countries today, particularly in eastern Asia, being fat is even considered a sin and the difference between being unattractive and beautiful.

Being slim, as opposed to being fat, in eastern Asian countries is a social norm and means of acceptance, and in some instances, it may even be recognized as an obsession. For example, in recent years, there have been various viral challenges in China pertaining to determining whether or not one is skinny enough to be approved by society. Such a fad includes the “belly button challenge,” which requires one to stretch their right arm across their back so that it goes around the waist and reaches the navel in the front.

Despite the fact that this challenge is largely dependent on one’s flexibility and arm length, many Chinese people still choose to believe that a woman who is unable to accomplish the task must be fat and should lose weight. It is misinterpretation and infatuation like this that perpetuates the negative outlook on fat people, extending the definition of “fat” to the point where people who simply aren’t emaciated are associated with the matter. In fact, Cambridge University Press published an article on a study done in February that focused on determining the impact that exposure to images of thin people had on women’s body image. As predicted, the results concluded that the women who were exposed to pictures of skinny people had lower weight satisfaction and higher self-objectification as a result.

Another challenge that has gone viral in China is the “A4 waist challenge.” Similar to the belly button challenge, women, and sometimes men, attempt to completely hide their waists behind a vertically-held A4 piece of paper, which is roughly the size of a sheet of American letter paper. Though some are successful, the challenge sets a frightening standard for waist size. According to The New York Times, tripling the width of the paper to approximately 25 inches so that it measures the average circumference of women’s waists in China still leaves the waist to be 10 inches smaller than that of an average American woman. In spite of the ludicrous expectation of an A4 waist, people have only continued to maintain the popularity of the fad, with even People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, dubbing it as a “fitness challenge.”

Much of the fascination with being skinny in China comes from a socially constructed notion that being thinner is more attractive. This concept derives from a long history that dates back to King Ling of Chu, the emperor of the Zhou dynasty from 540 to 529 B.C. During his rule, many women participated in waist-cinching and eventually starved to death in an attempt to appeal to King Ling because of his predilection for small waists. And while the desire to be skinny in China is not solely because of a king’s fixation on female bodies from over two millennia ago, the impact that King Ling left continues today.

In a country where “Have you eaten yet?” is used as an everyday greeting, it may seem striking that there has been a rise in eating disorders for the past decade in that very region. However, that is just the case with China. A group of medical professors and university counselors conducted a survey in 2013 to establish the prevalence of eating disorders among female university students in Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei province. The study revealed that the illness, which has been stereotyped to only occur in white female teenagers, was almost as widespread as it was in western countries.

Despite the levels of eating disorders surging across China, the recognition, diagnosis, and treatment of the illness continue to lag behind. When asked about whether or not there are sufficient services for those with eating disorders, Li Xueni, director of the Eating Disorder Center's inpatient unit at Peking University Sixth Hospital, responded, “Are there enough treatment centers? Of course not.” And according to The Los Angeles Times, the hospital opened the nation’s first closed ward dedicated solely to eating disorders just seven years ago. Because they don’t have the necessary resources, it is hard to institute another facility at the hospital, leaving the ward to be the only one of its kind in China.

Before the 1990s, eating disorders were seldom studied or even spoken of in the east Asian region. However, with modernization and the increasing infatuation over being slim, people are willing to undertake self-destructive approaches in order to lose weight. For many Asians, the incentive for obsessive weight loss is more often inspired by the high standards held by society than it is by the desire for a healthier lifestyle. In fact, many Asians feel constantly obligated to lose more weight when they are already within their healthy weight range. For instance, in South Korea it is not rare to find people who may skip meals or do extreme dieting in order to reach a certain weight. Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted an online study in 2014 and found that 45.1 percent of teenage girls and 23.1 percent of boys tried dieting, with some 18.8 percent of girls even purchasing weight-loss medication and laxatives.

Though many Koreans are naturally thin due to a healthy lifestyle, consisting of mainly low calorie and nutritionally dense foods combined with regular exercise, that does not prevent them from wanting to be even skinnier. Especially with the rising popularity of Korean pop in both South Korea and western countries, many Korean natives are often inspired by their favorite idols, who are almost always slim. However, many Korean idols have been able to achieve their current bodies through unhealthy methods, and some are even several pounds underweight consequently.

Korean boy group BIGBANG’s T.O.P is well-known for the outcome of his dramatic weight loss through extreme dieting. Prior to his debut with his group, T.O.P weighed just over 90 kilograms. But after auditioning for YG Entertainment, YG’s founder, Yang Hyun-suk, told him that he weighed too much to be an idol. However, Yang promised T.O.P that he could debut if he lost weight, which motivated him to lose 22 kilograms (approximately 44 pounds) in just 40 days by drinking water and eating only unsweetened jelly.

Though T.O.P only extreme dieted once, many other Korean celebrities will constantly go in and out of the process. Jimin, a member of the boy group BTS, is quoted as viewing himself as ugly because he is “fat.” When Jimin appeared on JTBC’s TV program Please Take Care of My Refrigerator, he said that "I came to think that I want to become handsome while looking at the mirror during 'Blood Sweat & Tears' practice." He then revealed, "So then I went on a diet; eating only one meal a day for 10 days." No matter how intense his dieting was, however, he always continued with it, motivated by his desire to become handsome. In BTS’s WINGS Concept Book, Jimin also disclosed that he often passed out during dance rehearsals as a result of his severe dieting.

Strict beauty standards in Asia have become so serious that beyond extreme dieting, blatant work discrimination exists in some places. Many Asian employers demand their employees to meet a certain beauty criteria, which almost always calls for the worker to be within a certain weight range. For instance, China Southern Airlines, which is one of China’s leading carriers, requires that women who are looking to work as a flight attendant must have straight legs and fit within a restricted weight-to-height ratio.

Obesity in America

In spite of the immense pressure placed on beauty in Asia with weight being especially emphasized, western countries have been much more accepting of fat people in recent years. Ashley Graham made history in 2016 when she became the first plus-sized model to be featured on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Vogue even gave Graham the title of “2016’s Breakout Supermodel,” with her accomplishment shattering the boundaries of a beauty world once dominated by size zeros and skinny jeans. Ivan Bart, president of IMG Models, said that “[Graham] has challenged not only the fashion and modeling industry but also the nuances of what acceptance of beauty means in our culture today.” And with an increase in the number of plus-sized models being embraced across various social media platforms and fashion campaigns, it is clear why Bart has chosen to praise Graham.

When asked to think about some of the most famous stars in pop culture today, people tend to think of celebrities like Nicki Minaj and Kim Kardashian, who have managed to make a large portion of their popularity and image revolve around their enviable bigger bodies.

Through subtle changes like this, Americans are gradually making progress toward a more acceptable and diverse society. However, the progress that America has made cannot mask the progress that it has yet to make.

According to Time Magazine, it is currently legal in 49 states to fire an employee solely based on how much they weigh. Though some cities, such as San Francisco and Binghamton, have passed legislation that allows for the prosecution of employers who discriminate based on weight, the only official state that has a definite law doing so is Michigan. Federal law prohibits people from being dismissed on several bases, including race, age, gender, religion, natural origin, and ability. These laws do not acknowledge fat people, despite there being past studies showing explicit work discrimination against those who are fat. Vanderbilt University conducted an investigation in 2014 and found that across various industries, overweight women were paid less than their male coworkers. In addition, in 2008, researchers at Yale University found that 10 percent of women and five percent of men experienced weight bias with some people even being rejected from getting a job as a result.

Much of the lack of recognition of the weight bias that is so prevalent in America is a consequence of the issue being so socially stigmatized yet formally unrecognized. Not many people tend to think about fatness as a topic surrounded by stigma, and in 2016, an investigation published by the Journal of Health Psychology found that stigmatization of obese women has dramatically increased in the last two decades compared to what was previously thought. Past research revealed that people typically only experience negative weight-related stigmatization several times in their lives. However, the study showed that in a single week, 50 women experienced a total of 1077 stigmatizing experiences—an average of three a day per woman.

Fat people are stigmatized partially because there are various health problems linked to being extremely fat, such as high blood pressure and heart disease. However, it isn’t necessary for society to consistently comment about the matter. Simply telling people that there is an issue with being fat and ridiculing those who are fat does not do anything productive. Rather, it exacerbates the problem and fuels the stigma surrounding fatness, inducing fat people to become more self-conscious, unmotivated, and anxious. In fact, a 2017 study done by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity showed that weight teasing and bullying in adolescence resulted in higher BMIs 15 years later and dangerous behaviors like induced vomiting.

Changing Our Perceptions

Though we’ve made some advances in terms of accepting fat people, we still have a long way to go before completely erasing the issue. We have only managed to mitigate the problem in a limited number of ways, but it is time to begin eradicating the issue from its very roots. Beauty is socially constructed, and we can take steps toward altering the unreasonable standards that have been created.

One way to create change is by discrediting the origins of stigma. For instance, microaggressions, such as saying things like “Do I look fat in this?” and allowing for the A4 Waist Challenge to go viral, are exactly what have stigmatized fat to the point it is today. We have to stop letting things like these just pass us by without saying anything about them. It may be hard to completely change our mindsets because we have been taught to look at society through the lenses of the culture in which we have grown up in, but it is not impossible. Being considered fat is an attribute that is hard to love about one’s self, but no fat person is entitled to lose weight or be ashamed of themselves.