Writing in the pages of Inside Higher Ed, sociology student and “self-identified fat woman” Bobbi Reidinger bemoans the hardships of eating the food of 3 people and being a fat would-be educator.
Fat academics need to be more vocal in calls for increased structural accessibility such as larger desks or substitutions for tables and chairs, greater ease in access to elevators, and more. Yet in addition to structural changes that campuses could make to help people of size be more comfortable -- such as providing larger bathrooms, chairs without arms and larger auditorium seating -- we need to discuss more techniques to combat stigma within classrooms.
You see, it’s not just a question of remodelling half the campus:
Weight-based stigma has an impact on the credibility of fat academics, in particular female academics who often must contend with both gender and fat stigmas... Weight stigma negatively impacts a professor’s credibility as a communicator within the classroom, with greater credibility being given to those who argue against their own self-interest.
Being sufficiently obese that it requires special furniture and enlarged bathrooms, and such that it becomes an obvious topic of classroom conversation, is in a person’s self-interest, apparently. As opposed to, say, a significant health concern - a cause of hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, gallbladder disease, stroke, osteoarthritis, joint failure, incontinence, sleep apnea, breathing problems, depression, anxiety, and cancer.
The importance of recognizing and addressing weight-based discrimination in academe (opinion) | Inside Higher Ed
Fat academics need to be more vocal in calls for increased structural accessibility such as larger desks or substitutions for tables and chairs, greater ease in access to elevators, and more. Yet in addition to structural changes that campuses could make to help people of size be more comfortable -- such as providing larger bathrooms, chairs without arms and larger auditorium seating -- we need to discuss more techniques to combat stigma within classrooms.
You see, it’s not just a question of remodelling half the campus:
Weight-based stigma has an impact on the credibility of fat academics, in particular female academics who often must contend with both gender and fat stigmas... Weight stigma negatively impacts a professor’s credibility as a communicator within the classroom, with greater credibility being given to those who argue against their own self-interest.
Being sufficiently obese that it requires special furniture and enlarged bathrooms, and such that it becomes an obvious topic of classroom conversation, is in a person’s self-interest, apparently. As opposed to, say, a significant health concern - a cause of hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, gallbladder disease, stroke, osteoarthritis, joint failure, incontinence, sleep apnea, breathing problems, depression, anxiety, and cancer.
The importance of recognizing and addressing weight-based discrimination in academe (opinion) | Inside Higher Ed
