Contribution of Media in discriminating against Fat People

[GuestAdmin]

Does media plays a role to fuel the discriminating faced by Fat People?

In our modern society the role of media in influencing people's opinions and attitudes is greatly significant. Unfortunately, however, media are often un-educational, and this is most obvious when considering the fake image of beauty, happiness and success they have contributed to create.

The media bombards us with images of thin people who are happy and successful, while fat people (when they are allowed to appear on tv or in print media) are always ridiculed. And undoubtedly this attitude of media has greatly contributed to teaching people to judge others on the basis of their appearance, and especially on the basis of their weight.

Let us consider, for example, how fat people are portrayed in movies and TV shows. Fat people are never protagonists, but they always appear as secondary figures. They are often portrayed as stupid or lazy people that spend all day eating, and they are often lonely and never have a sentimental life.

It's clear that this portrait of fat people is fake and only contributes to discriminating against them in the real world. In fact, overweight and obese people suffer discrimination in all aspects of their lives, especially in the areas of employment, education and medical care. There is evidence that overweight and obese people have more difficulties to find a job than normal-weight or thin people and, when they are employed, they have lower level jobs as well as lower incomes. In addition obese people are less likely to attend college and can suffer discrimination in medical settings too, due to anti-fat attitudes of many health care providers. And the worst thing is that, unlike race discrimination, weight discrimination is not prohibited by laws.

Of course the media are not the only responsible for weight discrimination. However they play a significant part in it. It would be enough that media start changing the absurd concept of beauty and success as thinness and ugliness and stupidity as fatness, because people start changing their attitude towards fat persons and start not judging others on the basis of their body condition.

This would be not a simple task for media and probably it would take a lot of time to see some positive results. However, given the immense power of media on public opinions and attitudes, this would be surely a breakthrough in the fight against weight discrimination.

[James]

See models, thin actresses etc .. thats how media changes our perception. Fat people are usually projected as funny, mean or stupid.