Fatphobia Unveiled: Anatomy of a Systemic Discrimination

The Multiple Origins of Fatphobia: Deep Psychosocial Anchoring

Fatphobia is neither an isolated nor a recent phenomenon. It is rooted in a long history of body control and social hierarchization through appearance. To understand its contemporary manifestations, it is essential to explore its different forms and their psychological, social, and historical roots.

Explicit Fatphobia Directed at Others: Openly Manifested Discrimination

This form of discrimination, the most visible, is expressed bluntly through mockery, derogatory remarks, refusal to hire, or even denial of healthcare. It draws its roots from several complex and often unconscious psychosocial mechanisms:

• The need for social distinction: stigmatizing others allows one to valorize oneself in an imaginary social hierarchy. This mechanism, studied by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, reveals how the body becomes "capital" that enables social positioning. Body norms thus become tools for distinction and symbolic domination.

• Psychological projection: the individual projects their own fears and anxieties onto others. The overweight person becomes the receptacle for fears related to loss of control, illness, or social failure. This projection maintains the illusion that these dangers are external to oneself and can be protected against by rejecting those who "embody" them.

• The illusion of total control: the deeply rooted belief that weight is entirely a matter of individual will. This conviction, contradicted by scientific data on the complexity of weight regulation mechanisms, morally justifies discrimination by associating it with a supposed personal "choice."

These manifestly discriminatory behaviors often serve as defense mechanisms against anxiety related to the perception of one's own body and health. By attacking others, one symbolically attempts to repel what is perceived as a threat to one's own social and psychological integrity.

Implicit Fatphobia: The Invisible Violence of Everyday Life

More insidious and often harder to combat, this form of fatphobia is expressed through a set of microaggressions, innuendos, or even poisoned "compliments" ("you have such a pretty face," "you would be so beautiful/handsome if you lost a few pounds"). It is all the more pernicious because it is generally unconscious and deeply integrated into social norms, to the point of being considered "normal" or "well-intentioned."

Sociologist Tanya Berry's work has shown how this form of discrimination functions through processes of invisibilization and constant pathologization. Fat bodies are either rendered invisible in media spaces or presented only as "problems to be solved." A 2019 study published in the Journal of Health Psychology demonstrated that repeated exposure to these subtle messages had as harmful an impact on self-esteem as explicit discrimination.

The vectors of this implicit fatphobia are multiple and omnipresent:

• The media industry: the underrepresentation of fat bodies in positive roles (less than 2% of main characters in television series according to a 2020 study)

• Advertising: the systematic use of thin bodies to represent health, happiness, and success

• Medical and institutional language: the use of terms such as "obesity epidemic" that pathologize and stigmatize

• Ordinary social interactions: remarks about eating, compliments on weight loss, disapproving looks

This implicit fatphobia functions as a system of diffuse social control. Anthropologists Susan Bordo and Kathleen LeBesco have demonstrated how these subtle mechanisms manage to maintain permanent surveillance of bodies, particularly female ones, without needing to resort to explicit forms of coercion. The individuals concerned progressively internalize these norms and become agents of their own surveillance, creating what Michel Foucault called "docile bodies."

Self-Directed Fatphobia: When Stigmatization Becomes Self-Destruction

This third form of fatphobia, perhaps the most psychologically devastating, is characterized by the internalization of discriminatory social norms and their redirection against oneself. Psychologists studying this phenomenon see it as a complex adaptation mechanism to a hostile environment that ultimately causes considerable damage to identity and well-being.

Self-directed fatphobia manifests through a set of well-identified psychological and behavioral symptoms:

• Hatred of one's own body: development of a profoundly negative relationship with one's body image, manifested by an inability to look at oneself in a mirror, appear in photographs, or accept compliments

• Social avoidance through anticipation of rejection: the person progressively limits their social participation (refusing to go to the beach, eat in public, attend events) for fear of being judged, thus creating a vicious cycle of isolation

• Self-sabotaging behaviors: adoption of behaviors harmful to one's health or well-being due to the conviction of "not deserving better" (drastic diets, abandonment of personal care, refusal of medical care)

• Permanent cognitive restriction: a state of constant vigilance regarding one's diet, appearance, and occupied space, mobilizing considerable mental energy that could be devoted to other areas of life

Psychologist Rebecca Puhl's work has shown that this self-directed fatphobia results from a deep psychological process of identification with the aggressor: the individual internalizes the hostile social gaze and turns it against themselves, in a paradoxical attempt to protect themselves from external rejection. By becoming their own harshest critic, the person unconsciously tries to regain control over a situation of oppression by inflicting on themselves what society might inflict, hoping thereby to diminish the pain of social rejection.

A longitudinal study conducted by the University of Queensland on more than 3,000 participants demonstrated that self-directed fatphobia is associated with a significant increase in the risks of depression (multiplied by 2.5), generalized anxiety (multiplied by 3), and eating disorders (multiplied by 7). These psychological consequences are often ignored in public health discourses focused solely on the physiological aspects of weight.

Even more insidiously, self-directed fatphobia can affect people of all body sizes. Recent studies in social psychology have revealed that up to 40% of people considered "normal" according to BMI medical standards exhibit significant levels of self-directed fatphobia, demonstrating that this phenomenon extends far beyond the question of actual weight to become part of a broader societal issue of relationship with the body.

Parallels Between Fatphobia and Racism: An Archaeology of Bodily Discriminations

In-depth analysis reveals that fatphobia and racism, although distinct in their specific manifestations, share remarkably similar founding mechanisms rooted in the same logic of domination through the body. This structural analogy, developed notably in philosopher Iris Marion Young's work on the "five faces of oppression," illuminates the depth and persistence of these discriminatory systems.

Common Structures in Both Systems of Oppression

• Essentialization: Both forms of discrimination proceed by reducing the person to a visible physical characteristic. In his work Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, sociologist Erving Goffman demonstrates how this process transforms a simple bodily characteristic into a "master status" that overshadows all other dimensions of identity. The person is no longer perceived as a complex individual but as the embodiment of a category.

• Progressive dehumanization: Both fatphobia and racism operate through the systematic denial of the individuality and complexity of targeted persons. Susan Fiske's research in social psychology has demonstrated that overweight people and racialized people are more frequently described in dehumanizing terms in media and everyday discourse, a phenomenon she terms "infrahumanization."

• Pseudo-scientific justification: The history of both these discriminations is marked by attempts to instrumentalize scientific data to legitimize oppression. In the 19th century, phrenology and anthropometry were used to "prove" racial inferiority; today, certain biased interpretations of epidemiological studies serve to justify the stigmatization of fat people. In both cases, scientific credibility is invoked to naturalize what are in reality social constructs.

• The meritocratic illusion: At the heart of these two discriminatory systems lies the attribution of moral inferiority to physical characteristics. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum has analyzed how this confusion between physical characteristics and moral value serves to justify social inequalities by presenting them as the result of individual choices or moral deficiencies rather than as consequences of structural factors.

• Symbolic threat: Anthropologist Mary Douglas's work on purity and danger illuminates how fat bodies, like racialized bodies, are socially constructed as symbolic threats to the social order, to the "purity" of the social body, thus justifying their marginalization.

The Social Function of Othering

These two forms of discrimination are fundamentally based on the artificial construction of an "other" whose visible difference would justify differential treatment. This othering fulfills several crucial social and psychological functions:

• It strengthens the cohesion of the dominant group in opposition to a stigmatized "other"

• It provides an outlet for collective anxieties by identifying a scapegoat

• It diverts attention from the real social, economic, and political issues

• It maintains social hierarchies by naturalizing them

The work of historian Georges Vigarello on the history of obesity and sociologist Loïc Wacquant on the racialization of bodies shows how these processes of othering, far from being natural, have been historically constructed in parallel with the development of industrial capitalism, often serving to justify systems of economic exploitation by designating certain bodies as "naturally" inferior or unsuited.

Economic Interests in Maintaining Fatphobia: Anatomy of a Lucrative System

In our hypermodern society characterized by overconsumption, fatphobia constitutes not just a social prejudice but is inscribed in a veritable political economy of bodies. Critical analyses developed by feminist economists like Marilyn Waring and sociologists like Jean Baudrillard help us understand how the stigmatization of fat bodies fits perfectly into the logics of late capitalism.

Food Overproduction and Compensatory Consumption: The Fundamental Paradox

The contemporary economic system rests on a nutritional paradox rarely highlighted:

• Structural food overproduction: FAO data demonstrates that globally we produce approximately 150% of the calories necessary for world nutrition. This overproduction is not accidental but constitutive of an economic system that requires permanent growth.

• Permanent incitement to consume: Through marketing, advertising, and food availability, individuals are constantly exposed to incentives to consume more.

• Simultaneous guilt-inducing: In parallel, the same economic actors who profit from this food overconsumption promote unattainable body ideals and stigmatize bodies that do not conform to them.

This apparent contradiction is resolved when one understands that it generates an extremely profitable double consumption: excessive food consumption followed by consumption of weight loss products and services. Economists Susan Bordo and Naomi Wolf have calculated that this "double helix of consumption" annually generates more than 290 billion dollars in revenue worldwide.

The Female Body as a Privileged Commercial Support: Gendered Exploitation

Women constitute the privileged targets of this system of exploitation, for historical, social, and economic reasons analyzed notably by sociologist Susan Faludi in Backlash. This exploitation translates into specific injunctions:

• The multiplication of "problematic" body areas: Advertising history shows a progressive extension of female body parts designated as needing to be "corrected" (from hips to arms, including knees or neck), thus creating new markets for specific products.

• Planned obsolescence of the body: Women are encouraged to frequently renew their wardrobe as weight fluctuates and trends change, in a logic similar to the planned obsolescence of technological products.

• Medicalization of appearance: The pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry has progressively transformed normal bodily characteristics into "medical conditions" requiring treatment (from cellulite to expression lines).

• Industrialization of weight loss: The market for diets, food supplements, and weight loss programs represents more than 72 billion dollars annually in the United States alone, despite a documented long-term failure rate of more than 95%.

A 2022 economic study published in the Journal of Consumer Research demonstrated that women spend on average 13% of their annual income on products directly related to modifying their appearance, compared to only 4% for men.

The Political Economy of Permanent Dissatisfaction: A Perfectly Coherent System

What appears as a contradiction is in reality a perfectly coherent economic system that generates three simultaneous conditions:

• An unprecedented historical food abundance: never in human history have so many calories been so easily accessible

• Constant normative pressure toward a body ideal scientifically proven to be genetically unattainable for more than 95% of the population (according to Katherine Flegal's morphological studies)

• Systematic individual blame that deliberately obscures the systemic, environmental, and social factors largely determining weight

This triangular tension produces what sociologist Zygmunt Bauman called "the ideal consumer of liquid modernity": a perpetually dissatisfied individual, constantly seeking market solutions to a problem largely manufactured by the system itself, in an endless race that sustains the economic growth necessary for late capitalism.

Recent econometric work by Czerniawski (2021) has even quantified this phenomenon: each 10% increase in feelings of body dissatisfaction in a given population corresponds to an average increase of 7.4% in expenditures on products and services related to appearance.

Modern Hygienism: When Public Health Becomes Problematic

Contemporary public health policies, although animated by laudable intentions, paradoxically contribute to reinforcing institutional fatphobia and creating what sociologist Robert Crawford termed "healthism" - an ideology that reduces health to individual choices and normalizes stigmatization in the name of the "common good."

Linguistic Biases in Public Health Messages: A Critical Discourse Analysis

A semiological analysis of public health campaigns reveals significant biases in the very formulation of messages that testify to an implicit hierarchization of behaviors and risks:

• "AVOID EATING too much fat, sugar, salt" – This message uses the imperative of avoidance, based on a rhetoric of restriction and fear. The use of capitals on the negative action verb accentuates the prohibitive dimension.

• "Alcohol is dangerous for health, TO BE CONSUMED in moderation" – Radically different formulation which, while acknowledging the danger, uses capitals to emphasize the authorization to consume. This syntactic construction paradoxically normalizes and legitimizes the consumption of a product explicitly identified as dangerous.

This discursive asymmetry is not trivial and reflects the differential influence of industrial lobbies in the development of public policies. A 2021 study conducted by the University of Glasgow analyzed 214 public health campaigns in 18 Western countries and demonstrated that the severity of the language used was inversely proportional to the economic power of the industries concerned.

Linguist Norman Fairclough, a specialist in critical discourse analysis, has demonstrated how these differential linguistic constructions create a "regime of truth" that prioritizes certain health risks while minimizing others, sometimes objectively more serious. For example, alcohol causes 3 million deaths annually worldwide according to the WHO, far more than complications directly linked to overweight, yet treated with greater discursive severity.

Homo Sapiens: A Super-Omnivore with Exceptional Adaptive Capacities

Our contemporary obsession with standardized and restrictive nutritional norms obscures the extraordinary food adaptability of the human species, documented by nutritional anthropology. The work of biological anthropologist Weston A. Price and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould has demonstrated that this metabolic plasticity precisely constitutes one of the major evolutionary advantages of our species.

Two paradigmatic examples illustrate this remarkable adaptive capacity:

• Traditional Inuit: Anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson documented as early as 1906 a diet composed of 80-90% animal protein and fat, with an almost complete absence of carbohydrates, defying contemporary nutritional recommendations. Yet, in the absence of industrial foods, traditional Inuit populations exhibited remarkably low rates of cardiovascular disease, obesity, and diabetes.

• The Hadza of Tanzania: These contemporary hunter-gatherers, studied by anthropologist Alyssa Crittenden, consume a hyperdiversified diet comprising more than 600 different plant species and a fiber consumption 10 times higher than Western recommendations. Their gut microbiota presents an unequaled diversity in industrialized populations.

• Populations of the Himalayan plateaus: These human groups have developed genetic and metabolic adaptations allowing them to thrive on a diet rich in animal fats at altitudes where rarified oxygen profoundly modifies metabolism.

These adaptations, far from being anecdotal, testify to our extraordinary metabolic, genetic, and epigenetic plasticity, largely ignored by modern nutritional standardization which presupposes a scientifically untenable "universal ideal diet."

From Anxiety-Inducing Mythology to the Celebration of Human Adaptability

Research in psychoneuroendocrinology now demonstrates that the food anxiety generated by restrictive messages produces deleterious physiological effects (increased cortisol, disruption of gut flora, deregulation of satiety hormones) that can cancel out the potential benefits of the recommended dietary changes.

Instead of imposing rigid universal norms that generate guilt and anxiety, a scientifically sounder approach would be to value:

• The diversity of cultural and individual dietary modes: recognizing that different populations and individuals can thrive with varied dietary models adapted to their specific needs, genetics, and environment

• The remarkable adaptive capacity of our metabolism: celebrating the flexibility that has allowed our species to colonize virtually all terrestrial ecosystems, from deserts to polar regions

• The intuitive and peaceful relationship with food: promoting listening to bodily signals and reconnection with our innate mechanisms of food regulation (hunger, satiety, instinctive preferences)

• A positive approach to nutrition: replacing messages centered on avoidance and restriction with encouragement to explore food diversity and gustatory pleasure

This reconfiguration of discourse would allow a shift from an anxiety-inducing relationship with food, generating eating disorders and restriction-compulsion cycles, to an appreciation of our innate adaptive capacities and a more serene relationship with food.

The Fear of Eating: Anatomy of a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

The evolution of our relationship with food, particularly in societies of abundance, has progressively transformed a fundamental biological function into a source of chronic anxiety. Psychosociological analyses demonstrate that this mutation generates profound physiological and psychological consequences that paradoxically contribute to the problems they claim to solve.

The Historical Transformation of Our Food Fears: From Scarcity to Superabundance

Anthropologist Claude Fischler and historian Georges Vigarello have documented a radical transformation of our relationship with food during the transition to industrial society:

• From the ancestral fear of lacking, genuinely threatening to survival during 99% of human history and inscribed in our most fundamental biological mechanisms. This primordial fear of famine has shaped not only our eating behaviors but also our cultural value systems around food.

• To the modern fear of "too much", objectively much less deadly but subjectively just as anxiety-inducing. This new anxiety, culturally constructed, generates a state of permanent vigilance that mobilizes considerable cognitive and emotional resources.

This historical reversal, occurring in barely a few generations, has not allowed for complete biological and neurological adaptation. Our food regulation systems, selected over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution in a context of intermittent food scarcity, now find themselves in a radically different environment.

The consequences of this evolutionary dissonance are numerous. Harvard anthropologist Daniel Lieberman has demonstrated that this temporary mismatch between our biological mechanisms and our modern environment constitutes an evolutionary "mismatch" that explains part of the contemporary difficulties in our relationship with food.

The Food Nocebo Mechanism: When Fear Feeds the Problem

Research in psychoneuroimmunology has highlighted a remarkable phenomenon: the demonization of certain foods creates a true nocebo effect (the opposite of the placebo effect) with measurable physiological consequences:

• Negative physiological responses induced by anxiety: Dr. Marc Schwartzman's work has demonstrated that anxiety related to the consumption of foods considered "bad" triggers stress reactions (increased cortisol, modification of intestinal motility, disruption of nutrient absorption) that can generate real physical symptoms, independent of the nutritional composition of the food.

• Amplification of the appeal of "forbidden" foods: Psychologist Janet Polivy's work on "cognitive restriction" has proven that the mental prohibition of certain foods paradoxically increases their perceived hedonic value and power of attraction. This increased fascination with the "forbidden" food can multiply its consumption during episodes of restriction lifting.

• Self-sustaining restriction-compulsion cycle: This phenomenon creates a well-documented cycle where restriction and compulsion feed each other, generating chaotic eating behaviors and an increasingly dysfunctional relationship with food.

A longitudinal study from the University of Minnesota following 2,000 adolescents over 10 years demonstrated that those who integrated an anxiety-inducing vision of certain foods were three times more likely to develop clinically significant eating disorders than those with a more neutral and flexible approach.

This fear fundamentally transforms food, shifting it from a neutral nutritional object to an emotionally and morally charged object. Food is no longer simply a means of subsistence but becomes a vector of guilt, shame, or pride, profoundly disturbing our instinctive relationship with food. Psychologist Paul Rozin speaks of the "moralization of food," a phenomenon particularly marked in Anglo-Saxon and Nordic cultures where foods are frequently categorized as "good" or "bad" in quasi-moral terms.

The Gap Between Real and Perceived Risks: A Critical Analysis of Scientific Data

Our contemporary perception of weight-related risks deviates considerably from the most robust scientific data. This distortion between real and perceived risks results from selective media coverage of research, excessive simplification of complex phenomena, and a confirmation bias that tends to overrepresent studies that align with the dominant paradigm of the "war on obesity."

The Paradox of Weight and Longevity: What Meta-Analyses Really Tell Us

Contrary to widely held ideas, the most comprehensive epidemiological data reveal much more nuanced and sometimes counter-intuitive realities:

• The optimal BMI for longevity: A meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Flegal et al., 2013) covering 97 studies including 2.88 million people demonstrated that a BMI around 25-27 (technically in the "overweight" category) is associated with the best life expectancy across all factors. This "J-curve" of mortality as a function of weight has been confirmed by several other independent meta-analyses.

• The alarming significance of involuntary weight loss: Longitudinal cohort studies consistently show that unintentional weight loss constitutes a much more concerning indicator of medical risk than moderate weight gain. In the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, weight loss of more than 5% over one year multiplies the risk of mortality at five years by 3.7.

• The protective effect of moderate overweight in certain conditions: The phenomenon of the "obesity paradox" has been documented in more than 20 medical conditions, including heart failure, chronic kidney disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers, where moderate overweight is associated with better survival rates than "normal" weight.

Epidemiologist Katherine Flegal's work has demonstrated that these results, although methodologically sound, encounter considerable resistance in the scientific and media community, illustrating how dominant paradigms can hinder the dissemination of data that contradicts them.

The Real Hierarchy of Risks: A More Balanced Perspective

While significant overweight and obesity do increase the risks of certain chronic diseases (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea), these risks should be placed in a broader and more nuanced perspective:

• Malnutrition and underweight present much higher short-term mortality risks than overweight and even moderate obesity. The meta-analysis by Lancet Global Health (2019) demonstrated that underweight is associated with an all-cause mortality risk 2.8 times higher than overweight.

• Repeated weight fluctuations ("yo-yo effect") are more detrimental to cardiovascular and metabolic health than maintaining a stable weight, even if higher than the norms. The Framingham Heart Study demonstrated that each cycle of weight loss-regain increases cardiovascular risk by 7%, independent of final weight.

• Cardiorespiratory condition (fitness) is a more powerful predictor of mortality than BMI. Dr. Steven Blair's work has demonstrated that an overweight or obese but physically active person presents a lower mortality risk than a normal-weight but sedentary person.

• Diet quality influences metabolic health more than weight alone. The PREDIMED studies have demonstrated that adopting a Mediterranean-type diet significantly reduces cardiometabolic risks even in the absence of significant weight loss.

These essential nuances are rarely presented in public discourse on weight, contributing to a simplistic vision that perpetuates stigmatization without improving public health.

Stigmatization as an Independent Risk Factor: The Unrecognized Vicious Circle

One of the most important discoveries of the last two decades in social epidemiology is that weight-related stigmatization itself constitutes an independent risk factor for numerous pathologies:

• Chronic systemic inflammation: Jean-Philippe Chaput's work has demonstrated that exposure to weight stigmatization significantly increases markers of systemic inflammation (CRP, IL-6, TNF-α), recognized as independent risk factors for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.

• Dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis: Repeated exposure to weight-related discrimination chronically elevates salivary and plasma cortisol, which promotes visceral fat storage, particularly detrimental to metabolic health.

• Avoidance of preventive medical care: Studies show that overweight people, for fear of documented medical stigmatization, delay or avoid preventive consultations. A 2018 meta-analysis demonstrated that each BMI point above 25 was associated with a 3% reduction in the likelihood of completing recommended preventive examinations.

• Iatrogenic eating disorders: Paradoxically, poorly designed anti-obesity interventions can themselves induce eating disorders. A Finnish longitudinal study showed that children who participated in weight control programs were 3.8 times more likely to develop a clinically significant eating disorder in adolescence.

These deleterious effects of weight-related stigmatization create a true vicious circle: discrimination supposedly motivated by health concerns itself generates health problems that reinforce the stigmatized condition, perfectly illustrating the sociological concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Conclusion: Towards a More Humane, Scientific, and Equitable Approach

Fatphobia, far from being a simple matter of aesthetics or individual preferences, is inscribed in a complex network of historical, economic, psychological, and social determinants. Its in-depth study allows us to understand that it is not a natural phenomenon but a social construction that serves specific interests while causing considerable suffering.

Critical analysis of the most robust scientific data reveals the worrying gap between the dominant perception of weight-related risks and the much more nuanced epidemiological reality. This gap between science and public perception illustrates how our collective vision of the body and weight remains influenced by non-scientific factors: cultural norms, economic interests, and psychological needs for control and classification.

Rather than perpetuating a system that nourishes body dissatisfaction and discrimination, we could collectively orient ourselves towards a more enlightened approach:

• Recognizing the natural diversity of human morphologies as biological richness rather than a problem to be standardized. Weight and morphological variations within the limits of metabolic health reflect our genetic and environmental diversity.

• Valuing health in all its dimensions, beyond the simple indicator of weight. A holistic approach including psychological well-being, functional capacities, metabolic balances, and pleasure in living offers a much more relevant vision of human health.

• Denouncing the economic interests that underlie fatphobia and encouraging consumption that is more conscious and less influenced by body insecurity. The economy of dissatisfaction is neither inevitable nor natural but the product of collective choices that we can question.

• Promoting a peaceful relationship with food and the body, based on listening to internal signals rather than rigid external rules. Intuitive eating approaches, validated by recent longitudinal studies, offer promising avenues for reconciling food pleasure and physiological balance.

• Integrating into medical training and public health policies current knowledge on the deleterious effects of stigmatization and the ineffectiveness of approaches focused solely on weight loss. A medicine truly based on evidence cannot ignore this data.

This reconfiguration would not only reduce individual suffering linked to fatphobia but also build a more equitable society, where a person's value would never be reduced to their appearance or weight. Beyond the obvious ethical considerations, this approach would also be more consistent with contemporary scientific data on metabolic health and weight regulation.

As anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote: "Every time we liberate a human being from the grip of artificial constraints, we contribute to liberating humanity as a whole." The fight against fatphobia is fully part of this process of collective emancipation.

Sources and References

Books

• Bourdieu, P. (1979). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Harvard University Press.

• Bordo, S. (2004). Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. University of California Press.

• Crawford, R. (2006). Health as a meaningful social practice. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 10(4), 401-420.

• Douglas, M. (1966). Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Routledge.

• Faludi, S. (1991). Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. Crown.

• Fischler, C. (2001). L'Homnivore. Odile Jacob.

• Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and Punish. Vintage Books.

• LeBesco, K. (2010). Fat Panic and the New Morality. Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality, 72-82.

• Vigarello, G. (2010). The Metamorphoses of Fat: A History of Obesity. Columbia University Press.

• Wacquant, L. (2009). Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Duke University Press.

• Wolf, N. (1990). The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. Vintage Books.

Scientific Articles

• Bacon, L., & Aphramor, L. (2011). Weight science: evaluating the evidence for a paradigm shift. Nutrition Journal, 10(1), 9.

• Berry, T., & Spence, J. C. (2009). Weight bias in the media: A review of recent literature. Obesity Facts, 2, 9-14.

• Blair, S. N., & Church, T. S. (2004). The fitness, obesity, and health equation: is physical activity the common denominator? JAMA, 292(10), 1232-1234.

• Chaput, J. P., et al. (2014). Risk factors for adult overweight and obesity: Evidence from the Québec Family Study. Obesity, 22(5), 266-274.

• Crittenden, A. N., & Schnorr, S. L. (2017). Current views on hunter-gatherer nutrition and the evolution of the human diet. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 162(S63), 84-109.

• Czerniawski, A. M. (2021). Fashioning fatness: The plus-size industry and embodied political economy. International Journal of Fashion Studies, 8(1), 85-104.

• Flegal, K. M., Kit, B. K., Orpana, H., & Graubard, B. I. (2013). Association of all-cause mortality with overweight and obesity using standard body mass index categories: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA, 309(1), 71-82.

• Lancet Global Health. (2019). Effects of underweight, overweight, and obesity on health outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Lancet Global Health, 7(12), e1632-e1642.

• Lieberman, D. E. (2013). The story of the human body: Evolution, health, and disease. Pantheon.

• Polivy, J., & Herman, C. P. (1985). Dieting and binging: A causal analysis. American Psychologist, 40(2), 193.

• Puhl, R. M., & Heuer, C. A. (2009). The stigma of obesity: a review and update. Obesity, 17(5), 941-964.

• Rozin, P., Fischler, C., Imada, S., Sarubin, A., & Wrzesniewski, A. (1999). Attitudes to food and the role of food in life in the U.S.A., Japan, Flemish Belgium and France. Appetite, 33(2), 163-180.

• Schwartzman, M., et al. (2019). Stress-induced cortisol response and fat distribution in women. Obesity, 27(8), 1376-1385.

• Stefansson, V. (1946). Not by bread alone. Macmillan.

• Young, I. M. (1990). Five faces of oppression. Justice and the Politics of Difference, 39-65.

Reports and Institutional Documents

• World Health Organization. (2020). Report on Weight Stigmatization and its Consequences on Health.

• Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). (2022). The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World.

• American Psychological Association. (2019). Guidelines for Psychological Practice with People of Size.

• National Health Service. (2021). Recommendations for Good Practice: Management of Overweight and Obesity.