College Honors Program

Body Stigma and Food Insecurity: How the Cultural Attitude Towards Weight Amplifies Hunger and Perpetuates Disordered Eating Pathology

Date of Creation

5-31-2023

Document Type

Campus Access Only

First Advisor

Daina Cheyenne Harvey

Abstract

Whether within our conscious awareness or not, the subject of weight permeates our everyday conversation and behavior. While we typically associate fatness with laziness, mass media often characterizes thinner bodies as ideal, healthy, and youthful. Understanding the nuanced ways in which such stigmatized attitudes manifest in everyday lives is critical to addressing and improving health and well-being, particularly for people within marginalized populations. A majority of the existing research on individuals who endure mild to severe levels of food insecurity focuses on socioeconomic factors that lead to the lack of access to a variety of consistent, nutritious foods or the longitudinal physical health outcomes of starvation or malnutrition. However, individuals living with food insecurity are subject to the same, if not a heightened sense, of biases related to weight and eating. In this thesis, I will argue that the interaction between hunger and weight stigma links food insecurity to negative physical and mental health effects, particularly disordered eating behaviors. I use survey data and interviews from a local food pantry as well as from a weekly eating disorder support group to illuminate and analyze the intersections between weight stigma, food insecurity, and disordered eating.

Comments

Reader: Ara Francis

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS