Gordofobia como violência: representações sociais da pessoa gorda e impactos na saúde

Abstract

The study aimed to recognize fatphobia as a form of violence through the Theory of Social Representations, in order to establish a theoretical relationship between socially reproduced thinking about fat people and the possible impacts on the victims' physical, mental and social health. The dissertation was composed of two scientific articles: 1) “Fatphobia as violence and its consequences for health: a narrative review” and 2) “Social representations about fat people, experiences of fatphobia and impacts on health: possible relationships”. The first article aimed to understand and characterize fatphobia as violence and identify the consequences for the physical, mental and social health of those who experience it. A narrative literature review was carried out through searches in the databases: Scielo, Web of Science and VHL-Psi. The 6 keywords were used: fatphobia, weight prejudice and discrimination based on weight, using the Boolean operator OR, and its equivalents in English and Spanish, with no limitation on publication date. It was possible to observe advances in discussions about weight-based discrimination and the use of the term fatphobia in scientific circles over time. The study enabled the identification of different fatphobic behaviors, thoughts and contexts, as well as the way in which they can impact the physical, mental and social health of those who experience them. Experiencing fat-phobic situations can cause harm to physical health, for example, with the adoption of unhealthy weight control practices; in mental health with the development of psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, among others; and social health, interfering with social relationships and interactions. The second article aimed to understand the social representations of fat people and verify how these social representations may be related to experiences of fatphobia and health damage. For this purpose, a questionnaire prepared through a digital platform was made available and shared on the social networks Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook. 309 people participated in the study, 246 women, 60 men and three non-binary people, in any weight range, aged between 18 and 59 years. The data were analyzed based on the structural approach of the Theory of Social Representations, through prototypical analysis and descriptive statistics in terms of mean, standard deviation and absolute and relative frequency. It was possible to verify that fat people are viewed negatively in society and the higher the participants' BMI range, the more experiences of fatphobia they experienced. It was observed that female participants reported having experienced more fat-phobic situations compared to male participants. The study indicated that socially shared thinking about fat people is related to experiences of fatphobia. Therefore, it is clear that being a victim of fatphobia can have negative consequences for the physical, mental and social health of those who experience it.