Posts Tagged ‘weight discrimination’

From Pelosi or Trump, Fat Shaming Is Never Cool

May 19, 2020 — Common ground is awfully hard to find right now. But here’s an easy one. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a D or an R or anything else. Fat shaming is never cool. It just happened last night when Speaker Nancy Pelosi made an off-handed remark about President Donald Trump being “morbidly obese.” Please, people. This […]

Fixing a Doubly Toxic Environment for People with Obesity

March 11, 2020 — Many people can agree on one thing about obesity. Certainly, it’s clear that we live in a toxic environment that promotes the condition. We can debate what elements are most responsible. Is it the food supply or the structures of our lives that keep us inactive? Then we have to consider toxic chemicals, drugs, and […]

OCW2020: Weight Bias at the Core

March 2, 2020 — Today for Obesity Care Week, the focus is weight bias, which lies at the core of our problems with making progress against obesity. It’s the core problem because it frustrates us in two ways. First of all, intellectual bias about obesity itself leads some very smart people to think (and say) some very dumb things […]

The Connection Between Obesity, Employment, and Productivity

September 30, 2019 — Business leaders are figuring out that we need more effective strategies for reducing the impact of obesity. New data published in Obesity now adds to the understanding of this need. People with obesity are less likely to have employment. If unemployed, they’re less likely to find work. And if they’re working, absences due to illness […]

James Corden: A Clear Rejection of Bullying

September 15, 2019 — In response to Bill Maher’s suggestion for more fat shaming, James Corden has a simple message. “Let’s be honest, fat-shaming is just bullying and bullying only makes the problem worse.” Opening the Floodgates Corden opened the floodgates with his 8-minute response to Maher. Already, his clip has more than a million views on YouTube – […]

No Time For Hateful Public Figures

September 10, 2019 — Bill Maher has kindly reminded us that we have no time for hateful public figures. Friday he held forth with a hateful diatribe about fat people on his HBO platform. He says we need more fat shaming. According to him, the answer to obesity is to shame people into having smaller bodies. With talk about […]

DEEP Talk: Powerful Personal Insights into Obesity

September 3, 2019 — Yesterday in Copenhagen, ten outstanding advocates for people living with obesity gathered. They came from all over Europe and North America. And for a little over two hours, they presented compelling personal stories about their lived experiences with the disease. These DEEP talks draw upon Disease Experience Expert Panels that Novo Nordisk assembles to guide […]

Moralizing Obesity Builds Stigma Three Ways

August 30, 2019 — Almost 30 years ago, David Allison, Vincent Basile, and Harold Yuker were studying how to measure weight stigma. Among other things, they found belief in personal control over obesity is a key factor in bias against people with obesity. Likewise, disgust is a key factor. Together, these factors provide the basis for moralizing obesity. They […]

My Story of Health and Weight and Childhood

August 18, 2019 — Last week, the introduction of Kurbo by WW prompted a flutter of twittering about weight and health and childhood. Twitter exploded with strong opinions from people who didn’t need to know much about Kurbo to render judgment. In today’s guest post, our friend Sarah Bramblette offers a very personal perspective on having options in childhood. […]

Hate and Prejudice Do Not Go Quietly

August 8, 2019 — People do not like it when deep prejudices come under challenge. Folks in the UK are processing some despicable hate speech from a public figure, Michael Buerk. He casts the death of people with obesity as a good thing for saving money in the NHS. But a brief discussion on Good Morning Britain perfectly illustrates […]