Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Sewell, Mary Ann

Titel

Ameliorating fat stigma: Resilience as a correlate to self-esteem, body image, and sexual quality of life for internet-savvy Big Beautiful Women

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

2008

Link zum Volltext

• ProQuest

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Fat stigma is one of the last recognized acceptable forms of discrimination in this nation where 66% of the population is overweight or obese. Fat people are stereotyped as lazy, gluttonous and responsible for their condition which has been medicalized by the term 'obesity'. Fat women more than fat men are negatively judged in our thin-obsessed society. Women are unfairly discriminated against by parents, peers, educators, employers and health providers. Dating opportunities through traditional means can be limited by culturally-skewed notions of female attractiveness. The internet however, has evolved as one method to circumvent conventional restrictions for marginalized fat women. On websites designed specifically to bring together fat women and the men who find their body type erotic, women call themselves Big Beautiful Women—BBW's. This cross sectional, descriptive study focused on fat women who have learned to navigate the internet successfully to find offline sexual partners. The purpose of this investigation was to determine if resilience could be correlated with body image, self-esteem and quality of life, for these internet-savvy fat women. Resilience was significantly correlated with body image, self-esteem and sexual quality of life for 149 survey respondents. Study results suggested the participants not only projected the image of big beautiful women but internalized this descriptor. These results are counter-intuitive, since fat stigma for women has been associated with poor body image, low self-esteem and a less than positive sexual quality of life in prior research literature. This study contributes to a more balanced perspective of the psychosocial profile of sexually active fat women.