Body Norms and Fat Stigma in Global Perspective

Author(s): Alexandra A. Brewis, Amber Wutich, Ashlan Falletta-Cowden and Isa

Rodriguez-Soto
Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 52, No. 2 (April 2011), pp. 269-276
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research
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Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 2, April 2011

Reports
Body Norms and Fat Stigma in
Global Perspective
Alexandra A. Brewis, Amber Wutich,
Ashlan Falletta-Cowden, and Isa Rodriguez-Soto
School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona
State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287-2402, U.S.A.
(alex.brewis@asu.edu). 19 IX 10
CA Online-Only Material: Supplement A

While slim-body ideals have spread globally in the last several

decades, we know comparatively little of any concurrent proliferation of fat-stigmatizing beliefs. Using cultural surveys
and body mass estimates collected from 680 adults from urban
areas in 10 countries and territories, we test for cultural variation in how people conceptualize and stigmatize excess
weight and obesity. Using consensus analysis of belief statements about obese and fat bodies, we find evidence of a shared
model of obesity that transcends populations and includes
traditionally fat-positive societies. Elements include the recognition of obesity as a disease, the role of individual responsibility in weight gain and loss, and the social undesirability of fat but also the inappropriateness of open prejudice
against fat. Focusing on statements about fat that are explicitly
stigmatizing, we find most of these expressed in the middleincome and developing-country samples. Results suggest a
profound global diffusion of negative ideas about obesity.
Given the moral attributions embedded in these now shared
ideas about fat bodies, a globalization of body norms and fat
stigma, not just of obesity itself, appears to be well under
way, and it has the potential to proliferate associated prejudice
and suffering.
Big body size and fatness are imbued with cultural meaning
in all human societies, often profoundly reflecting and shaping
identities and the broader social order (Bordo and Heywood
2003 [1993]; Brown and Konner 1987; Brown and Sweeney
2009; Douglas 1970). In much of the industrialized West,
where bodies are dominant and preferred symbols of self
(Becker 1995:33; Degher and Hughes 1999; Rubin, Shmilovitz, and Weiss 1993), slimness is associated with health, beauty,
intelligence, youth, wealth, attractiveness, grace, self-discipline, and goodness (Caputi 1983; Moreno and Thelen 1993).
Fatness and obesity are by contrast associated with ugliness,
sexlessness, and undesirability but also with specifically moral
2011 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2011/5202-0008$10.00 DOI: 10.1086/
659309

269

failings, such as a lack of self-control, social irresponsibility,

ineptitude, and laziness (Becker 1995; Cordell and Ronai
1999; de Garine and Pollock 1995; DeJong 1993; de Vries
2007:61; Grogan and Richards 2002; Martin 2001 [1987];
Stunkard and Sobal 1995; Turner 1984).
The social discrediting implicit in these moral judgments,
as the key to shaping social stigma (Goffman 1986 [1963]),
maps well onto the high rates of enacted and felt prejudice
reported by the fatter members of society in places such as
the United States (Janssen et al. 2004; Puhl and Heuer 2009;
Sjoberg, Nilsson, and Leppert 2005). The technically obese
(those with body mass index [BMI] greater than 30) have less
career and educational access, lower pay, and worse health
care service, and they are significantly more likely to be fired,
bullied, teased, and romantically rejected (see Puhl and Heuer
2009 for a recent literature review). Profoundly, many Americans say they would rather die younger or be blind than be
obese (Schwartz et al. 2006).
In sharp contrast, a number of ethnographic studies conducted in the 1980s and 1990s have detailed social contexts
in which fat bodies express beauty, marriageability, attractiveness, and an array of positive moral attributes such as
control of selfish desires, closeness to God, generosity, fertility,
familial responsibility, and social belonging. Some of the best
examples are Popenoes (2004) study with Azawagh Arabs in
Niger, Sobos (1994) study in rural Jamaica, Anderson-Fyes
(2004) work on a Belize caye, Massaras (1989) research with
Philadelphia Puerto Ricans, and Beckers (1995) study of a
Fijian village conducted in the late 1980s. However, there has
been substantive globalization of slim-body ideals since at
least the 1980s, whereby many of the places where large or
fat bodies were reported to be valued or viewed neutrally now
increasingly state a preference for slim bodies on standard
body image scales (e.g., Brewis et al. 1998). Beckers (2004)
follow-up study in Fiji in the early 2000s provides some of
the most detailed ethnographic examination of this implied
global shift. Over just one decade, Becker found young women
had completely transformed their identities in relation to their
bodies; following the introduction of television, young women
adopted slimmer-body ideals tied to increased use of individual body presentation as an identity anchor and supplanting an identity tied to community, such as through nurturing
others (Becker 2004).
Due to an absence of any comparative studies, it is not well
understood whether and how fat negativism might be transforming and homogenizing across groups in the same manner
as the adoption of slim idealism. Slim idealism in itself need
not inevitably lead to fat negativism, raising the possibility
that the processes of any spread in these ideas may be connected, or not. For example, in Samoa in the mid-1990s,
Brewis et al. (1998) found that most adults expressed a slimbody ideal that was paired with a lack of appreciable negative
concern about fatness despite the traditional value afforded
to it. This compels us to wonder to what degree antifat ideas

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Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 2, April 2011

might have gained traction in recent years and are now entwined with proslim ones.
This question of how widely antifat ideas have spread is
especially current given that overweight and obesity rates are
rising quickly among adults in all regions except sub-Saharan
Africa; many developing countries now identify obesity as a
major public health issue and express concerned about both
health and economic implications (Popkin 1994, 2004). Little
thought at all, however, is being given to its possible social
costs. The spread of cultural ideas about the negative moral
meanings of fat would, however, anticipate an increase in
people vulnerable to fat stigma, adding increased social costs
to obesity as well as with the better-documented and anticipated medical and economic ones.
Here we report on an empirically oriented cross-cultural
study designed as a preliminary effort to identify potential
globalizing patterns in peoples cultural models related to obesity and fat bodies in general and their fat stigma in particular.
By cultural models we refer to the ideas that form a consensus in a specific domain of knowledge (Romney, Weller,
and Batchelder 1986). By fat stigma we mean specifically
negative values placed on fat or large bodies that are socially
discrediting, in the manner of Goffman (1986 [1963]). The
organizing questions are whether there is evidence of a globalization of ideas regarding obesity and fat bodies, and do
local differences in cultural models explain any observed patterns of variation, or is the distribution of cultural knowledge
rather tied more to individual factors such as education or
body size (thereby suggesting a more globalized, less culturally
specific patterning)?
Based on existing published ethnographies we would predict considerable across-population variation in ideas about
fat stigma, including the very low stigma seen in places like
American Samoa that are conventionally understood to be
relatively fat neutral or positive, compared to places such as
the mainland mainstream United States, where widespread
antifat ideas have been documented and dominant for several
decades. However, the pace of change in slim-body ideals
globally suggests we need to determine whether this assumed
distinction between the West and the rest is actually observable.

Samples and Methods

Given that we framed our study as a pilot study to test for
very basic patterns cross-culturally, our selection of sites was
based on convenience. We selected nine diverse country and
territory research sites where Arizona State University anthropology faculty and students have active research programs, including several that have been glossed as fat-positive
in the ethnographic record (American Samoa, Puerto Rico,
Tanzania). We also included a sample from the United States,
specifically, from predominantly white middle-class neighborhoods, as our basic frame of reference as a known fatstigmatizing context. There is a conventional wisdom that

U.S. hegemony in a multitude of domains is relevant to how

people think about and respond to obesity. There is some
evidence to support this idea, such as studies tracing the mass
promotion of very slim ideals through such media as television (e.g., Rubinstein and Caballero 2000), a highly medicalized and globalizing model of obesity that emphasizes its
status as a sickness and thus the need for medical treatment
(e.g., Sobal 1995), in mass production and marketing of obesogenic food (e.g., Kelly 2005), and the uber-stigmatization
of fat (e.g., Stearns 2007). We also collected an eleventh sample
of undergraduates to provide a further frame of reference,
since the vast majority of the body image studies, including
those done internationally, have been conducted with such
student populations (e.g., Akan and Grilo 1995; Crandall et
al. 2001).
Data were collected between April and September 2009. We
collected data through in-person interviews in Pago Pago,
American Samoa; Dar Es Salaam and Zanzibar, Tanzania; the
border town of Nogales, Mexico; San Jose in Puerto Rico,
Asuncion in Paraguay; London; Buenos Aires in Argentina,
relatively affluent Scottsdale, Arizona, United States; and with
undergraduate students at Arizona State University. (We also
collected interview data with Quichua speakers in Amazonian
Ecuador, but problems with the surveys prevented their being
included in the analysis.) Participants were recruited in public
places at each of these sites, with the rationale that this approach should be sufficient to identify agreement around cultural knowledge if agreement in fact existed at the local level.
We then supplemented these with Internet-based versions of
the same surveys conducted through respondent-driven sampling with people living in urban Puerto Rico, New Zealand,
and Iceland. The sample sizes and some sample-specific characteristics are given in table 1.
Our primary tool was a survey containing cultural statements regarding obesity, body norms, and fat to which each
participant responded with agreement or disagreement. The
responses to survey questions were used to conduct cultural
consensus analysis using UCINET software to identify culturally specific answer keys (i.e., the culturally correct answer
to each question; see Hruschka et al. 2008 for a detailed
discussion), to test for shared cultural models and assess individual competencies against that model, to compare those
models from place to place, and to identify variation in fat
stigma specifically. Evidence of a shared cultural model was
a single factor and a large ratio between the first and second
eigenvalues. Following Weller (2007:353354), we considered
average cultural competency scores above 0.5 to indicate moderate agreement about an underlying cultural model and
above 0.66 to indicate strong agreement with an underlying
model. In assessing individual competencies against shared
models, we considered a score above 0.8 to be very high
competency (i.e., a person who knows what others know).
In terms of assessing fat stigma in particular, we selected
25 statements from the survey that represent socially discrediting attributions related to body fat and obesity (e.g.,

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271

Table 1. Sample characteristics

Sample size
(N)

Female
(%)

Average age
(yr)

Average
BMI

Average BMI
for men

Average BMI
for women

Percentage
overweight
(BMI 1 25)

Survey
format

80
40
86
66
46
44
105
52

62.5
50
66.3
40
34.8
70.5
69.2
63.5

32.3
32.4
32.4
34.5
45.0
51.9
37.2
37.3

34.1
23.4
25.8
23.9
28.3
23.7
25.9
26.9

33.1
24.1
26.4
24.8
28.7
24.9
26.2
27.0

34.7
22.7
25.6
22.5
28.4
23.2
25.8
26.9

86.3
28.2
49.4
40.6
75.6
27.3
53.8
51.9

In person
In person
Online
In person
In person
Online
In person
Online

44
77
40

61.4
67.5
57.5

37.2
24.1
46.9

23.6
23.5
25.3

27.9
24.4
23.9

24.6
23.1
26.5

27.3
27.0
48.5

In person
Online
In person

60

36.3

26.1

26.3

26.0

48.5

American Samoa
Argentina
Iceland
London
Mexico
New Zealand
Paraguay
Puerto Rico
United States (excluding
undergraduates)
U.S. undergraduates
Tanzania
Total

680

Note. BMI p body mass index.

people are overweight because they are lazy). A high score

on the scale (closer to the maximum of 25) indicated more
expressed fat stigma. The items used to create this scale are
shown in CA online supplement A.
Following Weller (2007:348), the cultural statements themselves were derived inductively and deductively. We extracted
statements from interview transcripts and field notes from
our teams previous qualitative research in Samoa, Mexico,
New Zealand, and the United States, and from detailed readings of any relevant ethnographies (especially Anderson-Fye
2004; Becker 1995; Massara 1989; Nichter 2001; Popenoe
2004; Sobo 1994). We also systematically reviewed public
health Web sites, such as for the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and the American Medical Association, for recommendation statements. The statements derived from these
sources emphasized the role of individual decisions and behaviors in the genesis of obesity, (i.e., overeating, underexercising) but also sometimes noted factors purportedly beyond the control of individuals, such as built environments
or genetic predisposition. This process yielded an initial pool
of 150 cultural statements. We went through several rounds
of translation and back-translation between English and Spanish and piloting in both languages, and after removing items
that people did not understand or did not respond well to
or that were duplicative, we were left with a final survey
containing 83 statements, shown in CA supplement A.
Translation and backtranslation into other languages was done
only at the end of the tool development process. In developing
the tool we used true or false as the only response options
because we wanted to compel people to make decisions on
ostensibly judgmental items (e.g., obese people should be
ashamed of their bodies), and the formal consensus model
assumes that respondents will guess without bias when given
dichotomous response choices (Weller 2007:344).
Participants level of body fatness (i.e., being overweight or
obese) was included as a factor of interest in this study because

it might help explain both cross-population and interindividual differences in how people respond to the cultural statements. To assess body fat status, we used height and weight
measures to estimate BMI using the standard formula of
weight (kg) divided by height (m2). Measures were (1) taken
using a portable scale and flexible tape in sites where people
do not weigh themselves often (e.g., Mexico, American Samoa) or (2) based on self-reports in places where a reasonable
correlation between self-reported weight and weighed weight
in adults can be expected (e.g., New Zealand, Iceland, United
States). The use of self-reported height and weight in some
of the samples is a potential limitation of this study, although
in countries where people weigh themselves often, self-reports
tend to be reasonably accurate (see Engstrom et al. 2003).
Regression analyses were conducted using PAWS (SPSS),
version 18.0. Oversight for this study was provided by the
Arizona State University Office of Research Compliance and
Assurance.

Results
As figure 1 shows, average fat stigma scores ranged from a
low of 10.4 for Tanzania to a high of 15.0 for Paraguay, out
of a possible total of 25. This suggests fat stigma is apparent
in all the samples. To identify to what degree the mean levels
of fat stigma are similar or different across samples, we computed a matrix (V) where the ijth element is what proportion
of study group is single deviation from their mean stigma is
overlapped by that of group j. In other words, if V(i, j) is
close to 1, then is variation in fat stigma is almost completely
contained within js variation. If V(i, j) # V(j, i) is close to 1,
then the two groups can be said to have the same level of fat
stigma because j overlaps i considerably and i overlaps j considerably, meaning they cannot be of very different sizes. On
this basis we find that U.S. undergraduates, London, and New
Zealand samples overlap with all other samples the most (that

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Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 2, April 2011

is, V(i, j) # V(j, i) is very close to 1.0), while Paraguay and

Tanzania overlap least (i.e., are the more distinctive at both
ends of the spectrum).
From the cross-cultural body image literature, which suggests women on the whole are much more concerned with
body idealism and are earlier adopters of slim ideals than
men, we might expect women to also express greater fat
stigma than men. Based on a logistic regression model combining all individuals from the different samples, we instead
found that higher fat stigma scores (16) were predicted by
lower education level (a five-level variable based on completed
primary, secondary, high school, technical training, or graduate/professional school; 95% confidence interval [CI] p
.705.964, P ! .05), but not gender, age level (three-level variable), or overweight status (two-level variable: BMI 1 25 or
not; all P 1 .05, and CI contained 1.0). Similarly, low stigma
scores (10) were predicted by higher education level (95%
CI p 1.0521.501, P ! .05), but not age level, overweight
status, or gender (all P 1 .05, and CI contained 1.0).
Given the findings of prior ethnographic surveys (e.g.,
Brown and Konner 1987), we predicted that shared understandings about the social meanings of big bodies could be

Table 2. Average competency scores, by country and

territory
Each population
independently

Global model

.446
.621
.578
.491
.448
.563
.611
.626

.402
.586
.549
.479
.406
.531
.569
.609

.566
.555
.531

.546
.529
.354

American Samoa
Argentina
Iceland
London
Mexico
New Zealand
Paraguay
Puerto Rico
United States (excluding
undergraduates)
U.S. undergraduates
Tanzania

found within all of these 11 surveyed groups and that the

models derived for each sample would vary across groups.
When we ran the consensus analysis on each sample independently (table 2), the average competency scores ranged
between 0.45 (American Samoa and Mexico) and 0.63 (Puerto
Rico), indicating that population samples fall within a range

Figure 1. Boxplot showing variation in average stigma scores across the

samples. The middle of each box represents the average, the vertical line
the median, the boxes the twenty-fifth and seventy-fifth percentiles, and
range is represented by the whiskers.

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273

that indicates each has shared cultural model about the meanings of fat/obesity. Answer keys for each of the samples are
found in CA supplement A, showing the commonalities
and differences across the samples.
While some negative ideas about fat/obesity were evident
in the answer keys of all our samples, it is important to pair
this with the observation that many of the sample-specific
culturally correct answers also included statements that did
not endorse the most negative statements around meanings
applied to fat/obesity. American Samoa, Mexico, and Paraguay were the only samples in which the culturally correct
answers associated overweight and obesity with laziness.
American Samoa and Mexico had the greatest degree of mix
of fat-positive and fat-negative statements. Tanzania had a
more fat-neutral cultural model than the other groups, based
on a reading of the answer keys. However, in Tanzania as
elsewhere, the cultural model recognized obesity as a disease
with negative health effects.
Following evaluation of the cultural models derived for
each of the 11 samples, we combined all 680 participants in
a pooled cultural consensus analysis. We termed this our
global model in the sense that it is not specific to any site
and includes the fuller range of cultural diversity captured by
our study. The results suggest this global sample also has a
shared cultural model in the domain of obesity/fat; average
competency score for all participants was 0.51. Elements evident in the answer key for this global model included those
expressing slim as desirable, obesity as dangerous and a disease, and the role of both personal responsibility and genetic
or biological predisposition in the etiology of obesity. The
most stigmatizing statements, however, did not feature in any
noticeable way in the shared global answer key, and the reading of the culturally correct statements in this regard speak
to the idea that that fat is highly undesirable but that extreme
fat stigma and prejudice is not socially acceptable. The answer
key for this global model is also given in CA supplement
A. Interestingly, as with the stigma scores, we found little
difference by gender in individual competency scores against
the global model. Using Student t-tests to compare withinsample competency scores and stigma scores between women
and men, only Argentina showed significant gender differences (P p .047).
To specify the degree to which other country and territory
samples (vs. individuals) showed similarity to the U.S. cultural
model, we first pooled all U.S.-born participants (excluding
territories) into one further consensus model and compared
the answer key for each sample against this additional U.S.
answer key and estimated the proportion of items that were
in agreement. These are shown in table 3 and range from
62.7% of the culturally correct answers from Tanzania being
the same as the U.S to 94% for London being the same.
Using logistic regression, we then tested the relationship
between individual demographic variables and individual
competencies against the U.S. cultural model for those who
were born and are still living outside the United States, sum-

Table 3. Correlation of answer keys for different

samples compared with the United States answer
key
Overlap of answer keys
with the the U.S. model
American Samoa
Argentina
Iceland
London
Mexico
New Zealand
Paraguay
Puerto Rico
United States (excluding
undergraduates)
U.S. undergraduates
Tanzania

.867
.867
.928
.94
.771
.867
.807
.867
.988
.976
.627

Note. Agreement scores generated by comparing each samples answer key to the United States answer key.

marized in Table 4. Predictor variables included age, education, gender, and a binary variable related to being overweight
or not (BMI 1 25).The resulting odds ratios and confidence
intervals suggest that the likelihood of having higher competency (defined as a score 10.6) against the U.S. model was
significantly different (P ! .05 ) and estimated to be 1.56 times
increased with each level of education and was two times
higher for women. However, higher competency was not associated with age level or overweight status (P 1 .05).
There also proved to be no association between a continuous measure of BMI and individual participants competency scores against the global cultural model of obesity of
individuals (as shown in table 4) in a pooled multipleregression analysis. We also ran a separate analysis to test
whether individual BMI predicted variation in individual levels of cultural competency against this U.S. model; the result
was also not significant (both P 1 .05).

Conclusion
Based on this analysis of a limited but reasonably diverse set
of cross-cultural samples, globalization of a cultural model
about obesity and the globalization of fat stigma are clearly
evident. Key ideas in the global model of obesity include the
notions that obesity is a disease and that fat reflects personal
and social failing. In all our samples, some fat stigma is evident, and the global model suggests that the cultural shared
idea that fat or obesity is a basis for judging the social and
personal qualities of the individual. However, and critically,
the shared cultural model also suggests the culturally correct
perspective that expressing those judgments too obviously or
forcefully is not acceptable. We do see some evidence of more
mixed cultural models balanced between fat neutral/positive
and fat negative ideaswhich may indicate an ongoing period
of cultural transitionin sites like Mexico and American Samoa. Only Tanzania had a cultural model that can be char-

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Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 2, April 2011

Table 4. Average proportion of individuals culturally correct answers against the

United States and the global (pooled) shared cultural model answer keys

American Samoa
Argentina
Iceland
London
Mexico
New Zealand
Paraguay
Puerto Rico
United States (excluding
undergraduates)
U.S. undergraduates
Tanzania

Proportion correct
against the U.S. model

Proportion correct
against the global model

.666
.765
.762
.732
.65
.757
.745
.786

.661
.751
.758
.725
.632
.752
.727
.775

.757
.749
.672

.765
.758
.65

acterized as largely fat neutral, with an absence of fat-stigmatizing beliefs. In this regard, Tanzania appears as an outlier
that warrants specific explanation; we are unable to offer one
at this juncture except to recognize that sub-Saharan Africa
is the one remaining part of the world not affected by rapidly
rising obesity rates and where hunger remains a daily challenge for many.
One of the most noteworthy findings is that the highest
fat stigma scores are not in the United States or London but
rather in Mexico, Paraguay, andperhaps mostly unexpectedlyin American Samoa. These higher scores reflect their
agreement with several fat-stigmatizing items on the survey,
including those associated with the relationship between overweight and laziness, not agreed with in the other samples. We
propose, based on a careful examination of the answer keys
and confirmed by our own ethnographic experience in several
of the sites, that this is due to differences in the consciousness
of these populations about politically correct responses to
certain kinds of overtly fat-stigmatizing statements. For example, in Mexico, Paraguay, and American Samoa, there is
not a high social value placed on self-censoring stigmatizing
statements about fat/obesity. In the other sites, in contrast
(and reflected in the shared model), it is understood that it
is impolite or otherwise socially inappropriate to express
highly stigmatizing opinions about overweight people and
obesityeven if one thinks them. The difference is thus not
necessarily in the underlying beliefs attached to fat bodies but
rather the presence of norms regarding the importance of
masking these beliefs. Further support for this interpretation
can be found in the association between more education and
lower expression of the stigma statements, regardless of sample group, and the fact that some sites (e.g., Iceland) agreed
almost universally with slim-idealizing statements yet did not
endorse these highly fat-stigmatizing statements.
Interestingly, individual fat stigma scores and individual
cultural competency scores against the global model were both
best predicted by education, not gender nor country of residence. Further, they did not relate within or across groups

to respondents actual body fat status. Education may emerge

as the best predictor of this variation because it provides a
proxy measure of respondents exposure to antifat ideas via
mass media (e.g., television and film) and public health messages. Both of these factors would make it more likely that
respondents would be exposed to, adopt, and express stigmatizing ideas. For example, obesity is afforded significant
public health attention in the island Pacific, including in
American Samoa, and most people living in urban areas in
the region would be regularly exposed to fat-as-unhealthy
types of messages (e.g., WHO 2000).
In summary, these analyses suggest that norms about fatas-bad and fat-as-unhealthy are spreading globally and that
cultural diversity in conceptions of ideal or acceptable body
size appears to be on the decline. Certainly, negative and
especially discrediting ideas about fat/obesity are now seemingly much more widespread than a thorough reading of the
available ethnographies would suggest. This process of cultural change appears to be happening very quickly, likely representing homogenization in beliefs in this domain just within
the last decade or two. This leans us toward the age-old anthropological challenge of better understanding what drives
the cultural diffusion of new ideas and feeds their gaining
salience. Our findings hint that newer forms of educational
media, including global public health campaigns, may be driving this trend. Whatever their source, it is important to understand the dynamics of fat-stigmatizing cultural models because of their potential influence on both physical and social
well-being of individuals in a wide range of socioecological
contexts.
The findings and limitations of this study both suggest ways
forward in researching these problems. The cultural and geographic span represented by the samples included in this study
was limited (e.g., nothing from Asia) and sample sizes were
modest, but these results certainly suggest that more comprehensive studies examining the global dissemination and
impact of fat-stigmatizing ideas are warranted and should
prove fruitful. The findings around the role of education sug-

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275

gest that more detailed, ethnographically situated studies, in

the middle-income developing nations in particular, seem justified, examining in more sophisticated ways how likely related
factors as media, migration, and economic changes affect
stigma, both as an expressed and an experienced phenomenon. While we did not detect age effects on stigma levels, we
also did not collect any data from anyone under 18 years of
age. The apparently rapid spread of stigmatized ideas about
obesity/fat, however, certainly raises questions about possible
intergenerational and cohort effects as well. Almost all our
participants are living in urban areas, and our observations
might have been very different if we had instead focused on
rural contexts or the contrast between the two. Further, Internet versus in-person sampling, the use of measured and
self-report height anthropometric data, and the use of cultural
statements drawn from a subset of the populations sampled
may lead to various biases, and more comprehensive comparative studies should address these.
Ultimately, a combination of both comparative and locally
focused studies will be required to unravel the details of how
and why this process of the globalization of fat stigma is
occurring and what it means ultimately for those who represent the enormous global trend toward obesity. What we
do observe, however, is that there is a critical process around
the globalization of fat stigma that is very much in progress
and should be of concern.

Acknowledgments
We thank Arizona State University Presidents Initiative Fund
for support for the Late Lessons from Early History projects,
Daniel Hruschka, A. Magdalena Hurtado, Benjamin Morin,
and the students who helped collect data in the summer of
2009, especially Ashley Archer-Hayes, Lubayna Fawcett, Benjamin Lang, Cristina Ochoa, Stephen Ruffenach, Alissa Ruth,
Sveinn Sigurdsson, Martha Wetzel, and Rossana Vega.

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