Originally Posted by
dann
How do you propose to do that? Divide children into three groups, fat-shame one, fat-praise the other, and somehow isolate the third from ever hearing about demeaning attitudes to obesity?!
ETA: I can see that Ziggurat was already there.
I was not making the proposal, I am not a researcher. I wondered if it had been attempted.
One might look at historical attitudes towards obesity, try to measure the societal tendency to "fat shame", and compare the prevalence of fat shaming with the obesity rate to see if there is a correlation between the prevalence of fat shaming attitudes and obesity rates.
Perhaps formerly obese individuals could be interviewed to attempt determine how big a factor their desire to avoid fat shaming played in their motivation to lose weight?
Maybe factors that are found to be prevalent in the environment of obese individuals could be isolated, then other individuals who experienced similar environments yet did not become obese could be examined to try to determine if their avoidance of obesity was driven by fat shaming, and if so to what extent?