Though the American cultural standard of beauty has never been thinner, obesity rates in America have never been higher. According to the American Center for Disease Control, more than one third of all adults in the United States are obese. Considering how common obesity is in America, one would think that Americans would approach the problem with tolerance. However, the opposite is true. Prejudice and discrimination towards obese people in American seems to be as rampant as obesity itself.
Dr. Jonny Bowden refers to prejudice against the obese as the “last acceptable prejudice” in American society. Statistics seem to support this assertion, with studies indicating that weight discrimination has increased by 66% over the last decade. Weight discrimination has become increasingly common within the workplace, particularly towards women. Weight discrimination stems from the idea that obese people are obese simply because they are lazy and lack the discipline to exercise and eat well. A tweet written by a respected professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico encapsulates American prejudice attitudes towards obese people. In the process of admitting students to his graduate program, the professor openly engaged in weight based discrimination towards applicants, tweeting the following: “Dear obese PhD applicants: if you don’t have enough willpower to stop eating carbs, you won’t have the willpower to do a dissertation #truth.” These types of cruel generalizations towards obese people have become all too common and accepted in American society, and in large stem from an unfortunate ignorance regarding the true cause of obesity.
Denise Cummins, author of Good Thinking: Seven Powerful Ideas That Influence the Way We Think, has explored the dichotomy between the American perception of obesity and weight loss versus the scientific evidence on these topics. Contrary to popular belief, weight loss is a lot more complicated then simply cutting back on calories and exercising more. Weight gain studies have shown the huge impact of genetics on a person’s ability to lose weight. Genetics influence the hormones that manage a person’s appetite and fullness after a certain amount of food. People with certain genetic predispositions will have more difficulty maintaining a healthy weight because of irregularity in the hormones that trigger fullness and appetite. People with these hormone irregularities will have a more difficulty losing weight than those without these irregularities.
By further educating Americans about the complex causes of obesity, the negative stigma towards obesity can be broken. This stigma needs to be broken down because obesity prejudice doesn’t help obese people to lose weight or promote a healthy lifestyle; it just shames and implicates a large portion of the American population.