14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers have recently determined that people around the world, regardless of culture or creed, tend to place a stigma on overweight and obese people. Apparently, this is becoming a worldwide cultural norm, in spite of the fact that a small portion of those who are obese got so because they are sick.
Experts came to this conclusion after conducting a cross-cultural study on the issue. Details of their investigation will appear in the April issue of the esteemed journal Current Anthropology.
Interestingly, it was found that the stigma permeates cultures and groups where people with high amounts of body fat were until now perceived favorably. A few centuries back, being fat was considered to be a sign of wealth and being well-off.
For the new research, experts at the Arizona State University (ASU) surveyed participants at nine locations spread around the world. They discovered that the stigma against obese people persisted at every single one of them.
The team in charge of the investigation termed this the rapid “globalization of fat stigma.” Everyone who is above the normal weight for that particular region is regarded as lacking the ability to exercise self-control, even if sometimes it's not actually their fault.
Obese individuals are also regarded as lazy, undesirable and ugly, the investigators determined. While this is nothing new in the United States, it was a surprise to see these views shared across cultures.
ASU biological anthropologist Dr. Alexandra Brewis says that the rest of the world has been traditionally more reluctant to sharing the same views on various topics as Americans do. In the US, fat people have been stigmatized for decades/
“Previously, a wide range of ethnographic studies have shown that many human societies preferred larger, plumper bodies. Plump bodies represented success, generosity, fertility, wealth, and beauty,” adds the investigator, who was also one of the authors of the new study.
The expert says that people from the American Samoa, who are generally larger than others in the US, also changed their view on things in the past two decades or so.
“When I was doing research in the Samoas in the 1990s, we found people starting to take on thinner body ideals, but they didn’t yet have discrediting ideas about large bodies. But that appears to be changing very quickly,” Dr. Brewis explains.
“People from sites that have adopted fat-negative attitudes more recently seem to be more strident. The late adopters were more likely to agree with the most judgmental statements like ‘fat people are lazy',” adds Amber Wutich.
The expert holds an an appointment as a cultural anthropologist at ASU. She was also an author of the new investigation, Science Blog reports.