Pictures Worth a Thousand Words in Weight Bias

This week, we are in Montreal for the International Weight Bias Summit at Concordia University. A host of organizations committed to better strategies, policies, and care for people living with obesity are supporting this effort. Leading into the summit is the launch this week of a new and improved bias-free obesity image gallery at HLTH 2024 by the Obesity Action Coalition. It’s important because pictures truly are worth a thousand words when it comes to weight bias. Eli Lilly and Company partnered with OAC on this project, providing generous support to make it possible.

Images can convey the stigma attached to obesity and reinforce it. Or they can serve to humanize the people living with obesity as a critical step toward ending weight bias. Even today, though explicit weight bias has declined, implicit weight bias is pervasive and pernicious. And images are critical for overcoming it.

Research and Action Priorities

The work in Montreal starts today with a research showcase and priority setting discussion involving some of the world’s top researchers and advocates for putting an end to weight bias. Concordia’s Angela Alberga and Marilou Côté of Université Laval are co-chairs for these two days of work.

Then the program continues tomorrow with a webinar to be broadcast worldwide from the 4th SPACE at Concordia. Registration and attendance are free and open to the public. It will feature presentations by Ximena Ramos Salas, Rebecca Puhl, and Stuart Flint, along with discussion moderated by Lisa Schaffer, Executive Director at Obesity Canada.

Prevalence of Stigmatizing Imagery

Puhl recently collaborated with Aditi Rao and Kirstie Farrar to publish an analysis of stigmatizing imagery in depictions of persons with obesity through online news media. Nearly half (46%) of the individuals with higher weight were depicted with their heads partially or fully removed from their images. There is hardly a more powerful way to dehumanize a person than to remove their head. Only 25% of individuals with lower weight were depicted in this way.

Puhl and colleagues also noted stigmatizing imagery was 2.5 times more prevalent in U.K. versus U.S. news reports.

So yes, we need better imagery to humanize persons with obesity and we are grateful to the OAC for providing this new image gallery and to Lilly for their partnership in this effort.

Click here for Puhl’s analysis of stigmatizing imagery in online news media, here and here for more on the debut of the new online image gallery. To find more information and register for tomorrow’s global webinar, click here. Finally, for excellent guidance on producing accurate, stigma-free reporting about obesity, click here.

Portraits of Obesity, exhibit at HLTH 2024 for the debut of the OAC Stop Weight Bias Image Gallery

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October 24, 2024