Women’s weight discrimination. (Jodi Hilton/The New York Times)It only takes a modest weight gain for a woman to experience weight discrimination, but men can gain far more weight before experiencing similar bias, a new study shows.
The notion that society is less tolerant of weight gain in women than men is just one of the findings suggested by a new report from the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University, published this month in the International Journal of Obesity.
For the study, researchers documented the prevalence of self-reported weight discrimination and compared it to experiences of discrimination based on race and gender among a nationally representative sample of adults ages 25 to 74. The data was obtained from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States.
Overall, the study showed that weight discrimination, particularly against women, is as common as racial discrimination. But the researchers also identified the amount of weight gain that triggers a discriminatory backlash. They found that women appear to be at risk for discrimination at far lower weights, relative to their body size, than men.
Based on body mass index, which is a measure of body fat based on height and weight, a normal weight is in the range of 18.5 to 24.9. The study found that women begin to experience noticeable weight bias — such as problems at work or difficulty in personal relationships — when they reach a body mass index, or B.M.I., of 27. For a 5-foot-5-inch woman, that means discrimination starts once she reaches a weight of 162 pounds — or about 13 pounds more than her highest healthy weight, based on B.M.I. charts.
But the researchers found that men can bulk up far more without experiencing discrimination. Weight bias against men becomes noticeable when a man reaches a B.M.I. of 35 or higher. A 5-foot-9-inch man has a B.M.I. of 35 if he weighs 237 pounds — or 68 pounds above his highest healthy weight.
The study also revealed that women are twice as likely as men to report weight discrimination and that weight-related workplace bias and interpersonal mistreatment due to obesity are common. The researchers found that weight discrimination is more prevalent than discrimination based on sexual orientation, nationality or ethnicity, physical disability and religious beliefs.
“However, despite its high prevalence, it continues to remain socially acceptable,” said co-author Tatiana Andreyava, in a press release.
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“However, despite its high prevalence, it continues to remain socially acceptable” is a logically confusing quote. Isn’t it highly prevalent because it’s socially acceptable? Not many things that are highly prevalent are socially unacceptable, right? Maybe the idea is that it is highly prevalent but not often recognized or publicized, especially compared to the other forms of discrimination that happen less often.
— JesseFile under category “duh.”
— cassandraIt’s a man’s world, you’re saying? I generalize. Apparently when you get nice and old people don’t throw up when they see you either. My own mother once said I was “more acceptable” now that I am older.
— StarAnother revelation that just makes me slap my head in amazement!! Wow — they needed a “study” to figure this out?!
— schatzienyCould it be that women are more sensitive to this discrimincation. i.e. they are more attuned to looking out for it? I know that women who watch thier weight (which is nearly all) pretty much avoid ‘fat’ guys … I think it goes both ways.
— KevinWomen are traditionally and historically judged on their looks. Bottom line is obesity is becoming more prevalent among men and women. The health concerns are going to cost society in the end. What ever happened to a moderate exercise program 3 days a week, 30 minutes a session?? People are too busy eating I guess.
— DerekActually, if women are viewed as “normal” at size “0″ on the runways, press, etc. Then it takes very little for a woman to seem overweight. So women aren’t more sensitive, there is more discrimination
— samKevin #5 - or we’re more sensitive with good reason because we are subjected to it when we’re perfectly normal. BMI is a good rule of thumb certainly but it doesn’t adjust for age, how many children you’ve had, how much exercise you can do given your other health issues etc.
For a woman who is 5′2″ to be BMI 24.9 would be 136 pounds. To be 12 pounds “overweight” at 148 pounds she would get discriminated against in this study. Trust me, being 5′2″ and 148 pounds is NOT grossly overweight, nor is it particularly unhealthy. It may well reflect build and body type (we know that bottoms and hips can carry more weight without the health risks of tummy and chest weight).
I definitely think that BMI is a good indicator to a woman of when she needs to watch out for healthy weight issues. But to use it as a tripmeter for a person being acceptable or unacceptable is neither fair nor medically justified.
Incidentally, my doctor told me that she’d be very happy for me to be a weight that would yield a BMI of 29 and that at that weight I would be perfectly healthy.
Perhaps TPP this is indicative of a deeper gender bias - women are “supposed” to remain thin (ie attractive) while men are not.
— JillyflowerOh come on, really? Did we really need to have the picture of the Faceless Icky Fat Person accompany this? In the first place, it’s as cliched as photos get, and in the second place, it’s not even relevant. The point is that women start seeing discrimination when they are much, much smaller than the people in the standard obesity-crisis-booga-booga stock photos (including the one you selected).
— SPCan’t say this is particularly surprising, but it’s always valuable to have these sorts of experiences quantified. I appreciate the work of these authors who are looking at the cost of discrimination against people who are overweight, rather than just sounding that tired old alarm of the national health risk.
Also not surprising: there’s already one commenter suggesting that the real problem is oversensitive women, and another suggesting that fat people are only fat because they’re too lazy to stop eating and go exercise. Nice, guys.
— NicoleGWYou want a lesson in weight discrimination, drop sixty pounds and several dress sizes in two months (of course, that’s not really *healthy*, so I’d advise against it on principle…).
I thought people had just gotten ruder while I was in college. I moved from a college town, where most of the people I saw every day knew me, to a metropolitan area, and chalked up the increased nastiness to the ‘college town’ vibe vs the ‘city’ vibe. I’d put on almost a hundred pounds in college, and kept gaining when I moved back to KC, and I really thought the snarkiness from clerks and waitresses, the dismissive tone and hateful comments from co-workers (I was doing a lot of temping because though my resume generated a lot of interviews, those interviews generated a lot of rejections) were a function of the different attitudes based on location. After all, in my college town, all my friends were people I’d known for years, and I was a regular at all the places I shopped or ate. I rarely met new people unless it was through existing friends, so when I moved and everyone was just new people, it never occurred to me that people meeting me fat were treating me differently than people who’d known me while I was getting that way.
Then I dropped so much weight people I knew walked past me on the street. Suddenly, store clerks were nicer, waitresses more attentive, and people in general were more polite. The woman sending me on temp assignments congratulated me on my ‘more professional appearance’ despite the fact that I was wearing the same clothes as before - only they were loose and baggy and held together with safety pins and quick stitching to keep them from falling off at work (I had one really embarrassing moment in the grocery store when I put my hands in my pockets and caught my shorts at mid-thigh). I started getting sent on higher-paying assignments. The first interview I went on after I started having to pin my clothes together to keep them on resulted in a job.
A lot of people would chalk up the change to the fact that I must have been carrying myself more confidently or being more outgoing, but the fact was, I lost the weight because depression and illness made me stop eating; the only thing that really changed was my size.
I remembered, though, who had been hateful to me when I was fat and who had always been nice, and I stopped going to businesses and hanging around with people who thought I was more worth being treated like a person at a size 16 than at a size 24.
— RowanJillyflower (#8)–”Perhaps TPP this is indicative of a deeper gender bias - women are “supposed” to remain thin (ie attractive) while men are not.”
Straight, available, employed goodhearted decent guys are increasingly rare birds in today’s society so their appearance is less important.
— MARK KLEIN, M.D.This makes sense. I feel like a lot of female “power” comes from our bodies. They are like billboards of our “work ethics.” Men get to have wealth and financial security as their symbols of work ethic. No matter how much you earn in the workplace, if you are an overweight woman, people will think you’re lazy. Not the same for men.
— MelissaRe: post #8 Jillyflower
Actually, I’ve been 148 at 5′2″ (I’m now about 115) - and the only difference that I notice is that men flirt with me more than they did when I was fat. And, while I lived in denial, I was fat and out of shape at that weight–a size 14 regular, instead of petite–I was filling things horizontally so they weren’t too long.
But I got offered the same job at a size 14 as I did as a size 4 a year later (I’d had to turn it down the first time) for the same money.
I think people who meet me now that I’m slim think of me as athletic (whodathunk?) and young, whereas those who met me fat thought of me as older and matronly–because that’s how I looked.
More importantly, I’m stronger with more endurance and sleep better than I did when I was fat because I am way more active. I work hard at maintaining my weight (7 years now) but it’s worth it in improving the way I feel.
— RebaFirst of all, there’s a difference between gaining a “little” weight and the picture of the morbidly obese woman shown along with the article. Second, I really hate the reliance on BMI as a health indicator. I work out 4-5 days a week and eat quite a healthy diet but I’m 5′7″ and 170 pounds. I’ve always been quite athletic (fluctuating between 160 - 170 my whole life) and have a perfectly normal “healthy” body fat percentage. However, if i went by BMI, I’d be “overweight”.
I understand pressures on people’s lives and inherent genetic differences don’t allow them to look like supermodels and I have my own body image issues but I’m SICK of the lack of self-discipline in this country.
There are SOME people who don’t have the income or the access to fresh and healthy food and face true barriers to a healthier lifestyle. BUT in my opinion, the vast majority of Americans are just LAZY.
— Bernardette#12: This explains the lack of employment-related discrimination how, exactly?
— SPRemember that Jack Black movie, “Shallow Hal?” I thought it made quite a statement about how men view women as either babes or dogs. Nothin’ in between!
— RAMI really, really wish news outlets would stop using the token “anonymous fat person” picture to accompany any story having to do with obesity, weight gain, etc. This is especially insensitive considering this blog post concerns weight discrimination. How might the woman in the photo feel if she came across this post and realized she was being used to illustrate this trend? As if the individual discrimination and humiliation they face on a daily basis weren’t enough.
— cryanI would like to echo the above comments with a well-deserved “duh.”
— NicoleThat said, this particular study is useless, as its data is completely self-reported. With a few more questions designed to gauge self-esteem and body image, the conclusions could have said something about how women take weight gain more seriously and suffer more emotional turmoil than men. This says nothing about society at large, and reaches way beyond the actual data they have to make conclusions.
And posters: all the anecdotal evidence in the world will not change the fact that the data in this study does not support the conclusions.
You know, I really don’t think that this study proves anything, due to the reliance on self-reporting. It’s pretty obvious that women are going to be more sensitive to “being discriminated against” than men.
I don’t doubt that society is tougher on obese women than men (this goes w/o saying; there are numerous factors for this, and it certainly cannot be attributed to sexist men) but this study’s methodology is so flawed that it adds nothing to the conversation.
— BrianI agree 100% with Rowan. My experience was similar. I gained weight during graduate school and lost a large amount of weight after. After I lost the weight I was treated much better by strangers. Strangers talk and smile at you, hold the door for you, etc. I regained the weight after taking on a stressful, time consuming job and all the nice treatment disappeared. It was remarkable, it was like I became invisible.
— SueCryan (#18),
Just so you know, all of those anyonomous fat people in photos and on the news are paid models (actually, paid pretty well).
— BrianIt is unbelievable that we even need a study on this subject. I see it every day. When I go to the supermarket or some other public place, I always see somewhat normal-age women walking around with husbands who have a tremendous pot. That seems to be okay. Personally, I don’t understand it. I’d never get like that if my wife worked to keep herself in shape, or otherwise. But there seems to be a real disparity between the two: the women accept this, but if the woman was fat, the guys won’t be okay with it.
I’m not sure why that is, but I think it has to do with the fact that men are more image-oriented, period. People make this out to be some kind of discrimination, but lets face the facts: human beings are discriminatory by nature, no matter what the subject is. Men being critical of women’s looks isn’t some 20/21st century phenomenon, it has gone on for all time. What is attractive and what is not has changed throughout time, but the principle still holds the same. We don’t need these studies: as others have said, it’s a no-brainer. But unless hateful comments are involved, there is nothing inherently wrong with this. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, including men who don’t necessarily like overweight women.
— John-Robert La PortaMelissa (#13)–”I feel like a lot of female “power” comes from our bodies.”
Sex sells.
— MARK KLEIN, M.D.Per Nicole, I haven’t read the study itself, but certainly its reliance on self-reporting raises all kinds of red flags. On first glance, it does seem quite weak, and certainly not supportive of the far-reaching conclusions it seeks to draw.
Perhaps this research could be done using some of the same “implicit association” techniques that are used to quantify racial bias? (See http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A06E4D81E30F936A3575AC0A9669C8B63&scp=14&sq=implicit+association&st=nyt for example.)
— bcamarda