Weight stigma after bariatric surgery: A qualitative study with Brazilian women.

Prior studies suggest that one anticipated benefit of bariatric surgery is the achievement of a thinner body, one that is less subject to perceived negative judgment and condemnation by others. However, additional analyses also indicate that stigma may persist even with significant post-surgery weight loss. To investigate the stigma-related perceptions and experiences of women who have undergone bariatric surgery and the resulting body transformations, we conducted individual, semi-structured interviews with thirty Brazilian women (15 aged 33-59 and 15 aged 63-72).

Managing menstruation with dignity: Worries, stress and mental health in two water-scarce urban communities in India.

An emerging body of literature examines multiple connections between water insecurity and mental health, with particular focus on women's vulnerabilities. Women can display greatly elevated emotional distress with increased household water insecurity, because it's them who are primarily responsible for managing household water and uniquely interact with wider water environments. Here we test an extension of this proposition, identifying how notions of dignity and other gendered norms related to managing menstruation might complicate and amplify this vulnerability.

Fat Is All My Fault: Globalized Metathemes of Body Self-blame.

Norms valorizing not-fat bodies appear to have spread around the world, combined with a globalizing belief that thinness is the result of individual management of self and hard work. We examine themes of blame and felt responsibility for weight and "fat" in four distinct geographic and cultural locations: peri-urban Georgia, United States; suburban Osaka, Japan; urban Encarnación, Paraguay; and urban Apia, Samoa. Use of a novel metatheme approach that compares and contrasts these four distinct places characterized by different population-level prevalences of obesity and by specific cultural histories relevant to body norms and ideals provides a flexible toolkit for comparative cross-cultural/multi-sited ethnographic research.

The Harm Inflicted by Polite Concern: Language, Fat, and Stigma.

Understanding language as a social action draws attention to the ways in which fat stigmatizing discourses do social harm. Drawing on interviews and experiences situated in Osaka, Japan and north Georgia, US, this paper looks closely at the ways in which fat stigma is expressed across the two sites, both blatantly and through more subtle language use. We identified four key themes in people's narratives around localized ideas about fatness.

Eating in the Panopticon: Surveillance of Food and Weight before and after Bariatric Surgery.

In this article, we explore the processes by which surveillance of eating and weight is coupled with popular and medical ideas about discipline, responsibility, and moral worth for individuals identified as fat/obese. We then follow these individuals through bariatric surgery and weight loss, paying attention to what discourses and practices shift and what remain unchanged. We argue that weight loss does not temper the intensity and constancy of surveillance, because it is at the core of ideas concerning good citizenship and personal responsibility.

Not 'Taking the Easy Way Out': Reframing Bariatric Surgery from Low-effort Weight Loss to Hard Work.

Cultural notions equating greater morality and virtue with hard work and productive output are deeply embedded in American value systems. This is exemplified in how people understand and execute personal body projects, including efforts to become slim. Bariatric surgery is commonly viewed as a 'low-effort' means of losing weight, and individuals who opt for this surgery are often perceived to be 'cheating.

Shame, Blame, and Status Incongruity: Health and Stigma in Rural Brazil and the Urban United Arab Emirates.

Stigma is a powerful determinant of physical and mental health around the world, a perennial public health concern that is particularly resistant to change. This article builds from sociologist Erving Goffman's classic conception of stigma as a unitary social phenomenon to explore the stigma attached to two seemingly dissimilar conditions: food insecurity in rural Brazil, and obesity in the urban United Arab Emirates. Our analyses underscore that both conditions are stigmatized because they represent a departure from a deeply-held social norm, and in both cases, self-stigma plays an important role.

Elective surgery to save my life: rethinking the "choice" in bariatric surgery.

Aims: The aim of this study was to explicate the processes by which a patient's choice to undergo bariatric surgery is made to feel like a medical necessity, to explore the ways widespread societal stigmatization of weight and bariatric surgery shapes patient and provider discourse about surgery and to discuss patient rationalizations of the choice to have surgery.

Background: Severe obesity is currently highly stigmatized. Bariatric surgery has become an increasingly used option for individuals seeking to lose drastic amounts of weight.

Bariatric Surgery Patients' Perceptions of Weight-Related Stigma in Healthcare Settings Impair Post-surgery Dietary Adherence.

Weight-related stigma is reported frequently by higher body-weight patients in healthcare settings. Bariatric surgery triggers profound weight loss. This weight loss may therefore alleviate patients' experiences of weight-related stigma within healthcare settings.

Publically Misfitting: Extreme Weight and the Everyday Production and Reinforcement of Felt Stigma.

Living with extreme weight in the United States is associated with discrimination and self-stigma, creating structural exclusions, embodied stress, and undermining health and wellbeing. Here we combine ethnographic interviews and surveys from those with experiences of living with extreme weight to better explain how this vulnerability is created and reinforced by public cues, both physical (e.g.

Translating obesity: navigating the front lines of the "war on fat".

Objectives: Obesity is treated within medicine, public health, and applied sciences as a biomedical fact with urgent health implications; obesity is also, however, a social fact and one that reveals biomedical concerns can lead to social suffering. Translation of social science-oriented obesity research for broader public good requires navigation of the space between these polemical and seemingly mutually exclusive positions.

Methods: Using examples from our own current programs of biocultural research, we explain the opportunities and ongoing challenges of efforts to bridge the chasm between critique and intervention when the topic under discussion is obesity.

Negotiating weight and body image in the UAE: strategies among young Emirati women.

Objectives: The goal of this study was to evaluate weight, nutritional status, and attitudes toward weight and health among a cohort of young women drawn from local populations in the United Arab Emirates.

Methods: This sample was composed of 103 female Emiratis, aged 18-30. Eighty of the women were students at Zayed University (ZU) in Dubai and 23 were students at UAE University (UAEU) in Al Ain.

Body image, health, and modernity: women's perspectives and experiences in the United Arab Emirates.

The countries of the Arab Gulf have experienced accelerated development and urbanization over the last 50 years. Changes in health have likewise been dramatic: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE now have some of the highest proportions of obese/overweight people in the world, with correspondingly high rates of chronic disease. In the UAE, particularly high rates of obesity/overweight have been reported among middle-aged Emirati women, but other problems relating to health and nutrition are starting to be identified in younger age groups as well.