This page contains links to publications arising out of work presented at the Weight Stigma Conference, some key publications from invited speakers, and papers pertaining to the philosophy of the conference. It is a work in progress – the papers below relate to the 2013–2015 conferences, with more recent events to follow. If you would like to suggest a paper for inclusion, please contact us at stigmaconf@gmail.com.
Topics
Stigma reduction interventions
Terminology
NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY: Our preference is for the use of the terms “weight stigma” or “anti-fat bias” in WSC abstracts and presentations, rather than “obesity stigma”. We also prefer that person-first language be avoided. The following two papers explain this position. However, these are guidelines and we will not insist on specific terminology.
Meadows & Daníelsdóttir (2016). What’s in a word: On weight stigma and terminology. Frontiers in Psychology. DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01527
Lozano-Sufrategui, Sparkes, & McKenna (2016). Weighty: NICE’s not-so-nice words. Frontiers in Psychology. doi:10.3389/ fpsyg.2016.01919
Weight Stigma & Health
Hunger, Dodd, & Smith (2020). Weight discrimination, anticipated weight stigma, and disordered eating. Eating Behaviors, 37, 101383. DOI: 10.1016/j.eatbeh.2020.101383
Mensinger & Meadows (2017). Internalized weight stigma mediates and moderates physical activity outcomes during a healthy living program for women with high body mass index. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 30, 64–72. DOI: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2017.01.010
Mensinger, Calogero, & Tylka (2016). Internalized weight stigma moderates eating behavior outcomes in women with high BMI participating in a healthy living program. Appetite, 102, 32–43. DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2016.01.033
Sutin & Terracciano (2015). Weight Discrimination and Risk of Mortality. Psychological Science, 26(11), 1803-11. DOI: 10.1177/0956797615601103
Tylka, Annunziato, Burgard, Daníelsdóttir, Shuman, Davis, & Calogero (2014). The Weight-Inclusive versus Weight-Normative Approach to Health: Evaluating the Evidence for Prioritizing Well-Being over Weight Loss. Journal of Obesity, Article ID 983495. DOI: 10.1155/2014/983495
Vartanian & Smyth (2013). Primum non nocere: obesity stigma and public health. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 10(1), 49-57. doi: 10.1007/s11673-012-9412-9
Bacon & Aphramor (2011). Weight science: evaluating the evidence for a paradigm shift. Nutrition Journal, 69. doi: 10.1186/1475-2891-10-9
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Physical activity
Greenleaf, Hauff, Klos & Serafin (2019). “Fat people exercise too!”: Perceptions and realities of shopping for women’s plus-size exercise apparel. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, 38(2), 75-89. DOI: 10.1177/0887302X19878507
Mensinger & Meadows (2017). Internalized weight stigma mediates and moderates physical activity outcomes during a healthy living program for women with high body mass index. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 30, 64–72. DOI: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2017.01.010
Ng, Thøgersen-Ntoumani & Ntoumanis (2012). Motivation contagion when instructing obese individuals: a test in exercise settings. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 34(4):525-38. DOI: 10.1123/jsep.34.4.525
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Societal Attitudes
Gillborn, Rickett, &Woolhouse (2022) “You just feel like you’ve failed them”: A Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis on mothers’ voiced accounts of the ‘duty to protect’ children from fatness. Feminism and Psychology, 32(2), 224–245. DOI: 10.1177/09593535221074802
Gailey & Harjunen (2019). A cross-cultural examination of fat women’s experiences: Stigma and gender in North America and Finnish cultures. Feminism & Psychology, 29(3), 347-390. DOI: 10.1177/0959353518819582
Munro (2017). Everyday indignities: using the microaggressions framework to understand weight stigma. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 45(4), 502–509. DOI:10.1177/1073110517750584
Evans, Bias & Colls (2016). The Dys-Appearing Fat Body: Bodily Intensities and Fatphobic Sociomaterialities When Flying While Fat. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 111(6), 1816–1832, DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2020.1866485. Animation.
Lozano-Sufrategui, Carless, Pringle, Sparkes, McKenna (2016). “Sorry Mate, You’re Probably a Bit Too Fat to Be Able to Do Any of These”: Men’s Experiences of Weight Stigma. International Journal of Men’s Health, 15(1), 4-23. DOI: 10.3149/jmh.1501.4
Monaghan (2016) ‘Re-framing weight-related stigma: From spoiled identity to macro-social structures’. Social Theory & Health, DOI: 10.1057/s41285-016-0022-1
Alperin, Hornsey, Hayward, Diedrichs & Barlow (2014). Applying the contact hypothesis to anti-fat attitudes: contact with overweight people is related to how we interact with our bodies and those of others. Social Science Medicine, 123, 37-44. DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.10.051
Levine (2013). Corpulence and correspondence: President William H. Taft and the medical management of obesity. Annals of Internal Medicine. DOI: 10.7326/0003-4819-159-8-201310150-00012
Saguy (2013). What’s wrong with fat? Oxford University Press
Fardouly & Vartanian (2012). Changes in weight bias following weight loss: the impact of weight-loss method. International Journal of Obesity, 36, 314–319; DOI:10.1038/ijo.2011.26
Healthcare Professionals
Kasardo (2019). Size as diversity absent from multicultural textbooks. Women & Therapy, 42(1-2), 181–190. DOI: 10.1080/02703149.2018.1524069
Meadows, Higgs, Burke, Dovidio, van Ryn, & Phelan (2017). Social dominance orientation, dispositional empathy, and need for cognitive closure moderate the impact of empathy-skills training, but not patient contact, on medical students’ negative attitudes toward higher-weight patients. Frontiers in Psychology. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00504
Bombak, McPhail, & Ward (2016). Reproducing stigma: Interpreting “overweight” and “obese” women’s experiences of weight-based discrimination in reproductive healthcare. Social Science & Medicine, 166, 94–101. DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.08.015
Heslehurst, Russell, Brandon, Johnston, Summerbell, & Rankin (2015). Women’s perspectives are required to inform the development of maternal obesity services: a qualitative study of obese pregnant women’s experiences. Health Expectations, 18(5), 968-981. DOI: 10.1111/hex.12070
Kroshus, Fischer, Nichols (2015). Assessing the awareness and behaviors of U.S. high school nurses with respect to the female athlete triad. Journal of School Nursing, 31(4), 272-279. DOI: 10.1177/1059840514563760
Setchell, Watson, Jones, & Gard (2015). Weight stigma in physiotherapy practice: Patient perceptions of interactions with physiotherapists. Manual Therapy, 20(6), 835-41. DOI: 10.1016/j.math.2015.04.001
Bibi, Redwood & Taheri (2014). Raising the issue of overweight and obesity with the South Asian community. British Journal of General Practice; 64 (625): 417-419. DOI: 10.3399/bjgp14X681145
Phelan, Dovidio, Puhl, Burgess, Nelson, Yeazel, Hardeman, Perry, & van Ryn (2014). Implicit and Explicit Weight Bias in a National Sample of 4,732 Medical Students: The Medical Student CHANGES Study. Obesity, 22, 1201-1208. DOI: 10.1002/oby.20687
Setchell, Watson, Jones, Gard, & Briffa (2014). Physiotherapists demonstrate weight stigma: a cross-sectional survey of Australian physiotherapists. Journal of Physiotherapy, 60(3), 157-62. DOI: 10.1016/j.jphys.2014.06.020
Swift, Hanlon, El-Redy, Puhl & Glazebrook (2013). Weight bias among UK trainee dietitians, doctors, nurses and nutritionists Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, 26(4), 395-402. DOI: 10.1111/jhn.12019
McHugh & Kasardo (2012). Fat prejudice: The role of psychology in explication, education, and eradication. Sex Roles, 66, 617-627. DOI: 10.1007/s11199-011-0099-x
Public Health
Derricks & Earl (2019). Information Targeting Increases the Weight of Stigma: Leveraging Relevance Backfires When People Feel Judged. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 82, 277–293. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2018.12.003.
Goldberg (2017). On Stigma & Health. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 45, 475-483. DOI: 10.1177/1073110517750581
Hoyt, Burnette, Auster-Gussman, Major (2017). The obesity stigma asymmetry model: The indirect and divergent effects of blame and changeability beliefs on antifat prejudice. Stigma and Health, Vol 2(1), 53-65. DOI: 10.1037/sah0000026
Rich (2017). Childhood, surveillance and mHealth technologies. In E.Taylor and T.Rooney (Eds) Surveillance Futures: Social and ethical implications of new technologies for children and young people. Ashgate. 132-146
Salas, Forhan, Caulfield, Sharma & Raine. A critical analysis of obesity prevention policies and strategies. Can J Public Health 108, e598–e608. DOI: 10.17269/CJPH.108.6044. Critique: Brady & Beausoleil (2017). Response to “A critical analysis of obesity prevention policies and strategies”. Can J Public Health, 108, e630–e632 (2017). DOI: 10.17269/CJPH.108.6520
Aphramor (2005). Is a weight-centred health framework salutogenic? Some thoughts on unhinging certain dietary ideologies. Social Theory & Health, 3(4), pp 315–340. DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.sth.8700059
Education
Nutter, Ireland, Alberga, Brun, Lefebvre, Hayden, & Russell-Mayhew (2019). Weight Bias in Educational Settings: A Systematic Review. Current Obesity Reports, 8, 185–200. DOI: 10.1007/s13679-019-00330-8
(2018). Fat pedagogy: Improving teaching and learning for everyBODY, Fat Studies, 7(1), 1–10, DOI: 10.1080/21604851.2017.1363573
Rich (2016). Troubling obesity discourse through public pedagogy. In E.Cameron and C.Russell (Eds) The fat pedagogy reader: Challenging weight based oppression in education. Counterpoints series. Peter Lang Publishers.
Employment
Flint, Čadek, Codreanu, Ivić, Zomer, & Gomoiu (2016). Obesity discrimination in the recruitment process: “You’re not hired!” Frontiers in Psychology. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00647
Media
Raisborough, Ogden & de Guzman (2019). When fat meets disability in poverty porn: exploring the cultural mechanisms of suspicion in Too Fat to Work. Disability & Society, 34(2), 276-295. DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2018.1519408
Atanasova & Koteyko (2017). Obesity frames and counter-frames in British and German online newspapers. Health, 21(6), 650–669. DOI: 10.1177/1363459316649764
Brooker, Barnett, Vines, Lawson, Feltwell & Long (2017). Doing stigma: Online commenting around weight-related news media. New Media & Society, 20(9), 3201-3222. DOI: 10.1177/1461444817744790
Smith & Bonfiglioli (2017). Reporting physical activity: Perceptions and practices of Australian media professionals. Journal of Physical Activity and Health, 12(8), 1096–1101. DOI: 10.1123/jpah.2014-0218.
Smith & Bonfiglioli (2015). Physical activity in the mass media: An audience perspective. Health Education Research, 30(2), 359–369. DOI: 10.1093/her/cyv008
De Brún, McCarthy, McKenzie, McGloin (2014). Weight stigma and narrative resistance evident in online discussions of obesity. Appetite, 72, 73-81. DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2013.09.022
Eli & Lavis (2014). From abject eating to abject being: representations of obesity in ‘Supersize vs. Superskinny’. In Eli & Ulijaszek (Eds.) Sound Bites: Media Representations of Obesity and Eating Disorders. Ashgate.
Raisborough (2014). Why we Should be Watching More Trash TV: Exploring the Value of an Analysis of the Makeover Show to Fat Studies Scholars. Fat Studies, 3(2): 155-165. DOI: 10.1080/21604851.2014.840525
Plotz (2013). Paul Blart and the Decline of White Working-Class Masculinities. Fat Studies, 2(2), 173-182. DOI: 10.1080/21604851.2013.780510
Hilton, Patterson & Teyhan (2012). Escalating coverage of obesity in UK newspapers: the evolution and framing of the “obesity epidemic” from 1996 to 2010. Obesity 20(8), 1688-95. DOI: 10.1038/oby.2012.27
Cooper (2007). Headless Fatties. Essay.
Intersectionality
Slater, Águstsdóttir, & Haraldsdóttir (2018). Becoming intelligible woman: Gender, disability and resistance at the border zone of youth. Feminism & Psychology, 28(3), 409-426. DOI: 10.1177/0959353518769947
Rinaldi, Rice, LaMarre, Pendleton Jiménez, Harrison, Friedman, McPhail, Robinson, & Tidgwell (2016). Through thick and thin: Storying queer women’s experiences of taking up and resisting idealized body images and expected body management practices. Psychology of Sexualities Review, 7(2), 63–77.
Andrews, Greenfield, Drever, & Redwood (2015). Strong, female and Black: Stereotypes of African Caribbean women’s body shape and their effects on clinical encounters. Health (London). DOI: 10.1177/1363459315595847
van Amsterdam (2013). Big fat inequalities, thin privilege: An intersectional perspective on ‘body size’. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 20(2), 155-169. DOI: 10.1177/1350506812456461
Children
Bhagat, & Howard (2018). The dominant obesity discourse versus children’s conceptualizations of health: A comparison through dialogue and drawings. Qualitative Health Research, 28(7), 1157–1170. DOI: 10.1177/1049732318764396
Zuba & Warschburger (2018). Weight bias internalization across weight categories among school-aged children. Validation of the Weight Bias Internalization Scale for Children. Body Image, 25, 56–65. DOI: 10.1016/j.bodyim.2018.02.008
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Weight Stigma Research Topics
Meadows, Daníelsdóttir, Calogero, O’Reilly (2017). Why fat suits do not advance the scientific study of weight stigma. Obesity,25(2), 275. DOI: 10.1002/oby.21742
Calogero, Tylka, & Mensinger (2016). Scientific weightism: A view of mainstream weight stigma research through a feminist lens. In Roberts et al (eds). Feminist Perspectives on Building a Better Psychological Science of Gender. Springer.
Cooper (2013). Fat research: Nothing about us without us. Blog post
Stigma Reduction Interventions
Selimbegovic, Collange, Bocage-Barthélémy, & Chatard (2021). ‘Large Is Beautiful!’ Associative Retraining Changes Implicit Beliefs About Thinness and Beauty and Decreases Women’s Appearance Anxiety. International Review of Social Psychology, 34(1), 5, 1–15. DOI: 10.5334/irsp.442.
Werkhoven (2020). Designing, implementing and evaluating an educational intervention targeting weight bias and fat stereotyping. Journal of Health Psychology. DOI: 10.1177/1359105319901310
Khan, Tarrant, Weston, Shah, & Farrow (2017). Can Raising Awareness about the Psychological Causes of Obesity Reduce Obesity Stigma? Health Communication. DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2017.1283566.
DeJoy (2014). Pilot test of a preconception and midwifery care promotion program for college women. Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health, 59(5), 523-527. DOI: 10.1111/jmwh.12106
Flint, Hudson, & Lavallee (2013). Counter-conditioning as an intervention to modify anti-fat attitudes. Health Psychology Research, 1(2): e24. DOI: 10.4081/hpr.2013.e24
Activism and Resistance
Meadows & Higgs (2022). Challenging oppression: A social identity model of stigma resistance in higher-weight individuals. Body Image, 42, 237–245. DOI: 10.1016/j.bodyim.2022.06.004.
Slater, Águstsdóttir, & Haraldsdóttir (2018). Becoming intelligible woman: Gender, disability and resistance at the border zone of youth. Feminism & Psychology, 28(3), 409-426. DOI: 10.1177/0959353518769947
Rinaldi, Rice, LaMarre, Pendleton Jiménez, Harrison, Friedman, McPhail, Robinson, & Tidgwell (2016). Through thick and thin: Storying queer women’s experiences of taking up and resisting idealized body images and expected body management practices. Psychology of Sexualities Review, 7(2), 63–77.
Other
Conason & Du Breuil (2019). “But Everything Is Supposed to Get Better After Bariatric Surgery!” Understanding Postoperative Suicide and Self-injury. Bariatric Times, 16(10), 16–21.
Ensslin, Skains, Riley, & Mackiewicz (2016). Exploring digital fiction as a tool for teenage body image bibliotherapy. Digital Creativity, 27(3), 177-195. DOI: 10.1080/14626268.2016.1210646
Riley, Evans, & Mackiewicz (2016). It’s just between girls: Negotiating the postfeminist gaze in women’s ‘looking talk’. Feminism & Psychology, 26(1), 94-113. DOI: 10.1177/0959353515626182
Seo (2014). You Mean It’s Not My Fault: Learning about Lipedema, a Fat Disorder. Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, 4(2) E6-E9. DOI: 10.1353/nib.2014.0045
Robinson & Christiansen (2014). The changing face of obesity: Exposure to and acceptance of obesity. Obesity, 22, 1380-1386. DOI: 10.1002/oby.20699
Harris (2013). Skin Deep: the skin as repository (artwork). Website
Diedrichs & Lee (2011) Waif Goodbye! Average-size female models promote positive body image and appeal to consumers . Psychology and Health, 26(10), 1273-1291. DOI: 10.1080/08870446.2010.515308
Art and Performance
Amy Godfrey. Performer. amygodfrey.com/the-biscuit-chronicles/
Rebecca Harris. Artist. rebecca-harris.com/
Alison Brumfitt. Poet. alisonbrumfitt.wordpress.com/performance-poetry/
Lucy Aphramor. Poet. lucyaphramor.com/poet/
Hildur Ása Henrysdóttir. Artist. hildurhenrysdottir.is
Jamin Zuroski. Artist. jaminzuroski.com