Danielle TaylorNorrel Blair

Plan of Action: Fat Shaming

Around the world, for many years, there have been several different versions

of what the “ideal” body type and standard of beauty is. There are two YouTube

videos that display this perfectly. The first one, Women’s Ideal Body Types

Throughout History, starts in Ancient Egypt and goes through each decade up till

now. The ideal body type has shifted from slender, to plump, full-figured, flat

chested, hourglass figure, boyish figure, adolescent physique, athletic build, and we

have now reached to the ideal being healthy skinny with a big butt and thigh gap.

The second video, Men’s Standards of Beauty Around the World, gave insight to

what the ideal look for a man is in a variety of different countries. What was

considered masculine was different in every country. Some popular features that

varied from country to country were beards, tattoos, the use of makeup, body hair

removal, lightening of skin, and the practice of cosmetic surgery. Both of these

videos are examples of how society has always held us to a standard of what we

should look like.

Through research we found that even though the ideal body type has been

changing over time, in recent years, people have began to shift their opinions of

fatness being a sign of health and vitality, to look with disgust at people who are

considered obese. Within recent years, suddenly the fat stigma has begun to arise,

and so has American’s average weight. Though it is a well-known fact that many

Americans struggle with their weight, a recent event has stood out to us and has

made this problem more and more prevalent just within the past few months. Early

September 2015, comedian Nicole Arbour made a YouTube video called ‘Dear Fat

People’ that has gone viral. In her video she criticizes and degrades fat people in a

variety of ways. She mentioned that fat-shaming was not a thing, rather, let’s make it

a thing and “shame people who have bad habits until they fucking stop.”

There has been body image uproar in the media since then so we decided to

dig a little deeper in to the subject of weight. We found that there is a lot more that

people should know before looking at someone and assuming that they are lazy or

that the only thing they consume are unhealthy foods. There are three factors that

we came up with that are main contributors to the weight-gaining problem: the

rising cost of healthy foods, health issues that cause a person to gain weight or

prevent them from losing it, and lack of nutritional education.

There was a study done by researchers in the United Kingdom that was

published in PLOS ONE that proves that the cost of healthy food items are

significantly higher than the cost of unhealthy food options. For the study, food price

and nutrition data was obtained from two different sources and were linked

together. The food was put in to groups based on their nutritional content while the

price was broken down by price-per-unit-of-energy value separated the food. The

price change was then evaluated from 2002 to 2012. According to the study, “We

found an absolute difference in price between the nutrient profile categories in

2012, with more healthy foods approximately three times more expensive than less

healthy foods.” Researchers also found, “between 2002 and 2012 the mean price of

all foods in our sample rose 35%, from £3.87/1000 kcal to £5.21/1000 kcal.” With

over 45 million Americans living under the poverty line, there’s no wonder why a

majority of the country is overweight.

The tables below accurately display their findings.

The understanding that most people have is that if you have a balanced diet

and exercise regularly, there should be no reason for someone to not be in shape.

However, this idea is far from true. The reality is, there are several outside and

uncontrollable factors that could cause someone to gain weight and not be able to

lose it. For example, extreme levels of stress, anxiety, or depression can cause

someone to gain weight. According to Psychology Today, when your brain detects a

threat, it releases chemicals such as adrenaline, CRH, and cortisol. When you are

stressed, for instance, your brain will release those chemicals but eventually

adrenaline wears off, cortisol (known as a stress hormone) is what is left. Cortisol’s

job is to signal the body to replenish your food supply. Psychology Today says,

“excess cortisol also slows down your metabolism, because your body wants to

maintain an adequate supply of glucose for all that hard mental and physical work

dealing with the threat.” If you are chronically stressed and those chemicals are

continuing to be released, your body is literally telling you to continue eating with

the intention of storing the fat. Another uncontrollable factor would be fluid

retention, which causes parts of the body to become swollen, which translates into

weight gain. Others would include: Polycystic ovary syndrome, steroid treatment,

ageing, diabetes treatment, and an underactive thyroid.

Aside from food prices skyrocketing and facing other health issues that

contribute to weight gain; some people simply lack enough nutritional education for

them to keep weight off. A common misconception people have is that there is one

basic diet they can follow or that they can follow the same eating regimen as

someone else. The reality is that everyone has a different body type, metabolism,

and exercise schedule. Another area that gets people in trouble is following what’s

popular. Labels can be misleading, and just because something says it is “whole

grain,” “gluten free,” or “organic” doesn’t necessarily mean it is healthy. All sorts of

junk food can be made with ingredients that would be considered organic or gluten

free, but the truth is, it’s still junk food that may be made with ingredients that are

even worse. Being knowledgeable about nutrition and knowing what you need to

feed your body takes work and you will have to do a little bit of studying.

After researching and finding uncontrollable factors to weight gain, we

decided to survey UCF students and find out what their experiences with fat

shaming were. Out of the 89 respondents surveyed, 84.27% of them admitted to

being made fun of for their body or size. Furthermore, 60.67% of respondents

admitted to having psychological and physical health-related issues such as

anorexia, anxiety and confidence issues because of their body, For example, one

respondent said they felt uncomfortable wearing a bathing suit because they felt

self-conscious about their stomach.

One of the most interesting results from the survey were the findings from a

question asking if respondents felt there was an ideal body shape. While the

majority of respondents (61.36%) responded “No,” the 38.64% who responded

“Yes” yielded revealing comments toward the idea of an “ideal body” is. Many of the

responses used the same words over and over; thin, tiny, skinny, flat, small and

toned. Not surprisingly, with those responses, there were even comparisons Victoria

Secret models as to what an ideal body should look like. Our findings not only reveal

that most people have suffered from some form negative feedback or abuse due to

their body or feelings about their body, but that the idea of an ideal body shape in

the minds of those believing in one particular body shape is almost uniformly

characterized by adjectives that only promote a visually thin frame, but none that

promote actual health.

Because over half of our participants admitted to having some sort of

psychological or physical health issues due to the anxiety of maintaining an ideal

body type, we decided to do a search on the average percentage of Americans who

have also dealt with this. According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa

and Associated Disorders, “the body type portrayed in advertising as the ideal is

possessed naturally by only 5% of American females.” Therefore, it is no surprise

that we had such a high number of responses confirming that they have felt self-

conscious about their weight or have taken extreme measures in order to change it.

All of the participants from our survey were college students. Kids are now being

influenced and taught from a young age to perceive anything larger than the “ideal”

body type, as being fat. Anad.org states that “47% of girls 5th-12th grade reported

wanting to lose weight because of magazine pictures, 69% of girls in 5th-12th grade

reported that magazine pictures influenced their idea of a perfect body shape, 42%

of 1st-3rd grade girls wanted to be thinner, and 81% of 10 year olds are afraid of

being fat.”

In order to resolve this problem, we have decided to make a blog that is both

educational and interactive. This blog would be created and ran by a team of people

with the same desire to stop the fat shaming trend. Daily posts will include

education on the outside health issues that may be causing weight gain and what

their symptoms are. Other posts would include tips on where to find reasonably

priced healthy options as well as updates on where to find sales. We will also do

posts that offer nutritional information that may not be common sense to everyone,

with the idea that people will pay more attention to what they are buying at the

grocery stores. People will be able to ask questions and suggest topics that they

would like to be covered and our team will interact back with them. The idea is to

make them feel like whatever situation they are in or have experienced, they are not

alone and they have people that they can talk to and get information from.

Works Cited

"ANAD." Eating Disorders Statistics. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.

Farrell, Amy Erdman. Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture. New

York, NY: New York UP, 2011. Print.

Greenberg, Melanie. "Why We Gain Weight When We're Stressed-And How Not To."

Psychology Today. N.p., 28 Aug. 2013. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.

Jones, Nicholas R. V., Annalijn I. Conklin, Marc Suhrcke, and Pablo Monsivais. "The

Growing Price Gap between More and Less Healthy Foods: Analysis of a Novel

Longitudinal UK Dataset."PLoS ONE 9.10 (2014): n. pag. Web.

"What This Fat-Shaming Comedienne Gets Wrong About Obesity." ThinkProgress RSS.

N.p., 07 Sept. 2015. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.

"Men's Standards Of Beauty Around The World." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 10 Dec.

2015.

Women's Ideal Body Types Throughout History. YouTube. BuzzFeed, 26 Jan. 2015. Web.

10 Dec. 2015.

"9 Medical Reasons for Putting on Weight." NHS Choices. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.