Spreading Fat Stigma Around the Globe

Spreading Fat Stigma Around the Globe - NYTimes.com
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, including places where plumper, larger bodies traditionally have been viewed as attractive, according to a new report in the journal Current Anthropology. Although some of the shift in thinking most likely is explained by idealized slim body images promoted in Western advertising and 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.