问答题 Signs of American culture, ranging from fast food to Hollywood movies, can be seen around the world. But now anthropologists have discovered a far more troubling cultural export from the United States—stigma against fat people.
Negative perceptions about people who are overweight are becoming the cultural norm in many countries, according to a new report in the journal Current Anthropology. (47) Although some of the shift in thinking likely is explained by idealized slim body images promoted in American advertising and Hollywood movies, the emergence of fat stigma around the world may also result from public health efforts to promote obesity as a disease and a worrisome threat to a nation's health.
Researchers from Arizona State University Dr. Brewis and her colleagues recently completed a multicountry study intended to give a snapshot of the international zeitgeist about weight and body image. (48) The researchers elicited answers of true or false to statements with varying degrees of fat stigmatization. The fat stigma test included statements like, "People are overweight because they are lazy" and" Fat people are fated to be fat". Using mostly in person interviews, supplemented with questions posed over the Internet, they tested attitudes among 700 people in 10 countries, territories and cities.
The findings were troubling. Dr. Brewis said she fully expected high levels of fat stigma to show up in the "Anglosphere" countries, including the United States, England and New Zealand, as well as in body conscious Argentina. (49) But what she did not expect was how strongly people in the rest of the testing sites that have historically held more positive views of larger bodies, including Puerto Rico and American Samoa expressed negative attitudes about weight. The results, Dr. Brewis said, suggest a surprisingly rapid "globalization of fat stigma. "
To be sure , jokes and negative perceptions about weight have been around for ages. But what appears to have changed most is the level of criticism and blame leveled at people who are overweight. (50) One reason may be that public health campaigns branding obesity as a disease are sometimes perceived as being critical of individuals rather than the environmental and social factors that lead to weight gain. "Of all the things we could be exporting to help people around the world, really negative body image and low self-esteem are not what we hope is going out with public health messaging. "Dr. Brewis said.
Dr. Brewis notes that far more study is needed to determine the extent of fat stigma and whether people were experiencing more social or workplace discrimination as a result of the growing fat stigma. "I think the next big question is whether it's going to create a lot of new suffering where suffering didn't exist before, " Dr. Brewis said. "I think it's important that we think about designing health messages around obesity that don't exacerbate the problem. /