Weight Bias In The Media Summary

The article Weight Bias in the Media: A Review of Recent Research by Rheanna N. Ata and J. Kevin Thompson was about how the media tends to stigmatize overweight people. There are two terms that come out in literature very often weight bias and stigmatization. In a culture that seems to emphasize thinness, weight bias has become a form of prejudice that seems to be widely accepted by many people. The media has a lot of influence on the beliefs, attitudes, and social norms that deal with weight. The media tends to stereotype obese characters and idealizes body types. Usually in the media body types for males and females are different, females are always shown to be thin, while males are portrayed as muscular and in good shape. In cartoons characters

that were overweight were associated with being unattractive, mean, and unhappy. In sitcoms for children overweight characters are portrayed in a more favorable light. However, when a character was considered to be unattractive or friendless it was usually a overweight character. Compared to other shows children sitcoms are at least making an effort to have realistic body weight portrayals. Kids who use more media like play video games, and read magazines more than other kids tend to have more stigmatized beliefs about overweight kids. Overall whether it be reality television, newspapers, magazines, cartoons, sitcoms, or video games they all tend to stigmatize overweight people and can lead to biased stereotypes.
The article mentioned how overweight people are often portrayed as unhappy or unattractive in the media.

However, the article was more broad than specific, I feel that the article could have focused on the differences between overweight people of different ethnicities more and how they were portrayed in the media. The organic activity we did in class about the magazine ads was a good example of portrayals of people in the media. Both of the ads I found had young skinny women advertising the product. The one overweight looking person in one of the ads was doing an ad for a type of medication. This ad just further encouraged the stigmatization that overweight people tend to be unhealthy which is not necessarily true. I agree with the article that the media does have an influence in the way that people see overweight individuals. While, the paper was only about how the media affects peoples stereotypes against overweight people I believe there could also be an influence from friends and family. Friends and family can have a very big psychological effect on a person especially if they get made to feel bad for being overweight. Much of the negative comments that affect a persons self esteem come from friends and family and that has a big effect on their self esteem. I feel that the article focused more on the effect the media has on children than adults I think a good idea would have been to focus on adults as

well.