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The Weight of Society's Judgment

Jeannine Gailey's research highlights size discrimination in health care, career options and more.

By TCU Magazine

May 16^th, 2022

by Rachel Hedstrom

A 2003 article on the cover of a Cleveland entertainment weekly drew Jeannine Gailey’s attention to the violence that fat women can experience.

The magazine “had a picture of a man with a pig-face mask on,” said Gailey, professor of sociology at TCU. “He’s wearing a tie and white button-down shirt and holding a bouquet of flowers. Over the picture were the words, ‘They chase chubbies for sport and pleasure. They call it hogging.’ I looked at it and was like, what is this?”

The story, Gailey said, detailed how some men seek fat women with the goal of having sex for sport, an activity called hogging.

Urban Dictionary defines hogging as “a competition, usually between a group of men, that involves going to a bar/frat/house party. Participants go with the direct intention of hooking up with the fattest girl at the party. The guy who bags the fattest girl wins.”

Learning about hogging was Gailey’s awakening to what she describes as fat oppression.

“Since that time, I have spent my academic career studying the stigma, shame and oppression that fat women experience,” Gailey wrote in “The Violence of Fat Hatred in the ‘Obesity Epidemic’ Discourse,” research published in Humanity & Society in 2021.

Gailey’s research, spanning multiple published works, details the harm society can inflict on fat people.

“It’s a form of discrimination that can result in lost wages, poor health care and missed opportunities in education and in careers,” Gailey said.

Together, these experiences constitute symbolic violence, a term coined by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to describe nonphysical harm that reflects power differentials between social groups.

“Effectively,” Gailey said, “it’s the same as violence because it prevents fat people from achieving their full potential and has the impact of making you hate yourself and feeling that you are somehow responsible.”

Gailey points to the words overweight and obese, often used to define people’s body size, as a form of oppression. In her 2014 book The Hyper(in)visible Fat Woman: Weight and Gender Discourse in Contemporary Society, Gailey explained her choice of the word fat throughout her own works: “I use the word fat not in a pejorative sense but as an adjective like those involved in the field of fat studies (sometimes also known as critical weight studies) and in the spirit of size acceptance. Fat studies scholars argue that obesity is a highly contentious word that denotes a medical condition and problematizes human diversity. In these circles, fat is the preferred adjective because it does not denote a medical condition or suggest that there is an ideal weight, such as overweight.”

Jeannine Gailey’s research focuses on sociology of the body, fat studies, gender and sexuality. Photo by Carolyn Cruz

Outsiders

Lauren*, a student at TCU, said she has experienced mistreatment on account of her body size.

“One of the most excluding situations I have ever been in is the dating scene,” Lauren said. “From the time I was in middle school, I was every guy’s best friend and the first person they came to for questions and concerns about their love interests.”

In high school, Lauren said, she noticed a shift in the attention: “Many of my high school friends privately tried to pursue something with me, but it was always sexual and never romantic. These guys would confess their attraction toward me over text, but it was always very secret. I was never flirted with in public.”

Experiences such as these illustrate symbolic violence against people whose bodies don’t meet a societal ideal, Gailey said.

“Fat people are assumed to overeat, are considered lazy, irresponsible, gluttonous and lacking self-respect,” Gailey said. “Numerous studies show that fat people, especially fat women, are less likely to be hired, promoted, finish college or get married.”

The symbolic violence also has a long-term negative effect on the psyches of those who endure it, Gailey said: “People who are targeted by this oppression begin to internalize it.”

TCU student Lauren* says that she became skeptical of doctors after having her health concerns dismissed because of her weight. Photo by Carolyn Cruz

A Medical Problem?

Almost half of U.S. adults now fall into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s definition of obese — a body mass index of 30 or higher.

The index is problematic, Gailey said, because the metric is a simple description of weight and height.

“Not taking into account body composition makes the measurement arbitrary,” Gailey said. She pointed to Arnold Schwarzenegger at the height of his bodybuilding career as someone whose height and weight would qualify him as obese.

Lauren concurred: “I know a lot of women and influencers who are over 200 pounds and are in amazing shape and are the healthiest they have ever been. I think people forget that healthy looks different for everyone.”

In the U.S., 42.4 percent of adults were considered obese in 2017-2018, an increase from 30.5 percent in 1999-2000. The reasons for this increase include accessibility of inexpensive, calorie-dense foods; growth of portion sizes; reduction in manual labor; and availability of public transportation.

In 2013, the American Medical Association defined obesity as a medical problem, which constitutes further symbolic violence, Gailey said. “Labeling somebody who is not sick, whose health markers are good, as diseased means they’re going to be treated differently.”

She said the rhetoric around fatness, sometimes called an obesity epidemic, too often emphasizes individual responsibility and ignores structural causes.

“Since the late 1990s, we’ve increasingly heard how people who are obese are taking up more than their fair share of resources,” Gailey said. “They are blamed for everything from health care costs to global warming.”

Blaming individuals for their size is a core aspect of symbolic violence, Gailey said.

Negative messages about fatness also omit societal factors, including food deserts, unequal access to health care and schooling that doesn’t include physical education. “The messages are all about you as an individual,” Gailey said. “You are the problem, and you have to fix yourself.”

Jeannine Gailey investigates the interface between fat women's perceptions of their bodies and of the social expectations and judgments placed on them. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)

TCU Magazine Podcast: The Toll of Body Shaming

“Labeling somebody who is not sick, whose health markers are good, as diseased means they’re going to be treated differently.”

Health Care Hostility

Women interviewed for Gailey’s research also shared stories of mistreatment by physicians. “Overwhelmingly, the women were not seen as patients who needed help with an ailment,” Gailey wrote. “Instead, they were treated as though their fat was responsible for their sore throat, cough or sprained ankle.”

While in high school, Lauren was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome. Her physician recommended birth control to manage the symptoms but emphasized “the weight gain aspect” of her symptoms rather than her pain, Lauren said.

When she started college, Lauren began losing her hair and feeling fatigued, but she did not see a doctor. “I started losing hair in clumps, gaining weight, having massive headaches almost daily and other symptoms,” Lauren said. “My mom deeply felt for me and knew I needed the help that I never would personally reach out for.

“I was incredibly skeptical, of course, because I had been told over and over [by doctors] to just lose weight, get on birth control, try doing keto and cutting out carbs,” Lauren said. “I felt like doctors all just sort of throw out the same suggestions or basically just say that many women have it and that my diagnosis is common. They basically pushed it under the rug.”

Tired of seeing her daughter struggle, Lauren’s mother took her to a thyroid specialist who diagnosed Lauren with hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an autoimmune disease affecting the body’s thyroid gland, making metabolism slow, leaving people feeling tired and causing weight gain, among other effects.

“Once I went to the specialist and saw how trained and well-educated they were on my issues, I felt like I was in good hands,” Lauren said. Treatment involved medications and lifestyle modifications, including a gluten-free diet. Lauren said she hopes that learning how to nourish her body with the foods it needs will help her feel better.

Many women Gailey interviewed for her latest research discussed their experiences of “mistreatment, hostility, disgust and disdain” from health care workers, she wrote. “It became clear to me why so many fat people avoid going to the doctor. … Anti-fat bias has been linked to subpar health care in a variety of ways, including providers spending less time with larger-bodied patients; speaking more curtly and less compassionately to them; and misattributing symptoms to their weight instead of referring them for testing or offering evidence-based, nonweight-related treatment options.”

Body Positivity

While the body positivity messages seen in recent years on social media and in advertising have brought awareness to the fact that bodies exist in all shapes and sizes, Lauren and Gailey said they are reluctant to call the movement a success.

“I think it is nice to see plus-size women and models be so expressive about their bodies and their imperfections, but overall I don’t think the culture is actually doing much to open other people’s eyes,” Lauren said. “To most people, when plus-size women step out and put their bodies on the internet or wear crop tops without fear of judgment, it is seen as a joke.”

“Until there’s a serious, concerted effort to address discrimination and marginalization and the oppression of fat bodies, no amount of talking about body positivity is going to have any effect,” Gailey said, noting that this form of discrimination is rarely discussed.

Lauren has approached her autoimmune diagnosis with an open mind and is learning how to improve her health. She shares information with friends and family in hopes of inspiring a more accepting culture.

Lauren’s self-respect also continues to mature. “I’m learning to love being a plus-size woman every day. I think it makes me who I am and who I was meant to be,” she said. “I just feel that I can still be 200-ish pounds and be healthy and athletic, and eat foods that fuel my body rather than make me feel miserable.”

“I’m learning to love being a plus-size woman every day. I think it makes me who I am and who I was meant to be,” Lauren says. Photo by Carolyn Cruz

“There needs to be a focus on dismantling that form of oppression,” Gailey said. “The ideal body is always changing — you can never catch it; you’re constantly chasing it. Right now, for example, having a big butt and tiny waist is in, but you’re also supposed to be thin and toned.

"How is anyone supposed to be like that?"

Footnotes

*Editor’s note: Last name withheld as a courtesy to the source.

FootNotes

*Editor’s note: Last name withheld as a courtesy to the source.

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