Is weight having an impression on the society o one's self esteem?

Question

Is weight having an impression on the society o one's self esteem?

Answer 1

If you are referring to members of our USA population who are grossly obese, I believe it is seen as a negative by prospective employers, dating hope fulls, health care providers, educators, bank employees, actually being grossly obese in our nation is not a positive.  Certainly negative impressions spill over into all factors of a "fat" persons life.  I am not fat, and truthfully, I do have a negative impression of individuals who obviously continue in this self destructive behavior.  There is intervention available to combat obesity.  However, I accept the psychological dynamics that really obese folks use as rationalizations for their gross overweight.   Rationalizations do not solve the problem.  So, to those who seek a return to acceptance by regular society, they really have to accept that they have to become less obese.

Answer 2

Despite all the propoganda out there that claims so many negative things about the lives of larger sized people, if one looks around they'll see that there are plenty of people who are overweight, and yes, even obese who manage to make happy and full lives for themselves.  

Many of them do not go around constantly obsessing about their weight...or constantly talking about diets. They're busy getting out there and doing the same things that thinner people do: pursuing careers, spending time with family and friends, traveling, exercising and being active, being community volunteers, engaging in hobbies, enjoying romance (and yes, even having active s*x lives)

I really wish that larger sized people would speak up more often to combat the negative stuff and straight out lies that are put out there. Being large doesn't mean you are doomed to be unhappy, unhealthy or have low self esteem any more than being thin and allegedly "perfect" means you are guaranteed a happy, successful life...or even necessarily be healthier.

Answer 3

In US society, weight, like race, class, and gender, matters.  Societally, we make it important or menaingful.  If we, as individuals, do not measure up to what we see as the societal norm or ideal, then our self-esteem can suffer. Society develops the norm or ideal, and the individual is either rewarded or devalued based on how well they live up to the ideal.

     Deflation and humiliation are not the only possible results, however. For some, weight is more bothersome than for others - there are certainly individual differences in the reaction to weight.  Resistance to the norm and counter-norms are possible.  By and large, however, weight has....weight - if you know what I mean.

There are two things I would like to add. First, the societal ideal is not the same for all societies across all time periods.  The first poster feels that his/her view of weight is somewhat objective - but two hundred years ago, he/she may have said completely the opposite. "Rubenesque" figures were the ideal. There are other societies throughout time that saw weight as a sign of economic acheivement, superiority.

Second . . . weight concerns can be politically and/or economically motivated.  The recent obsession with obesity in America was politically motivated.  Average Americans have been losing ground economically over the last 35 years, and there are political interests who choose to mask this fact by saying, "We're not doing so bad - see how fat we are? If anything, we're doing too good." The original obesity report was a government report - the government publishes hundreds if not thousands of reports every year. Why did that one get so widely reported?  The Nixon administration ordered a report done on the effects of marijuana in the 1970s - Nixon did not like the results - that marijuana was not as bad as the "Reefer Madness" crowd would have us believe - so he suppressed the report. Other reports - like the State of Working America - are not widely reported on in the news outlets that matter. So, why did the obesity report get so much attention?