A Research Paper on Debating Fat Phobia in Physical Education

 Debating Fat Phobia in Physical Education

Introduction 

In this paper, "fat-phobic discourses" in physical education are looked at in terms of how they are made and always changed by students who are "fat" or "overweight." People who have been overweight or obese at some point in their lives say this is true. There has been vast literature discussing how fat students deal with their bodies in fat-phobic classrooms, through the use of feminist post-structuralism, queer theory, and feminist fat theory. Mainstream media has shown that weighting and measuring overweight people is meant to make them feel bad and punish them. People who have a "fat phobia" make sex and gender more normal, the literature says. Literature also shows how some kids deal with their fear of fat in physical education by not doing certain physical activities that they don't like, and in some cases, succeeding at them. 

Analysis of Fat in Physical Education from a Critical Point of View 

In 1980, Robert Crawford (1980) came up with the idea of "healthism," which is the idea that people can use their efforts and discipline, mostly in the form of controlling their bodies’ shape and size, to improve their health. The body stores a great deal of surplus energy when you consume a lot of energy, more so fat and sugars, but do not burn it off through exercise and physical activity (NHS., n.d). In Kirk and Colquhoun's book, they say that this individualistic health point-of-view, along with their notion that "exercise equals fitness, which then equals health," was the foundation for the push for approaches of physical education based on health as well as everyday programs for physical education in Australian schools during the 1980s. In schools, they found that many teachers did regular exercise sessions, not to teach, but because they were concerned about their students' physical health, which was shown in terms of their weight and size. 

Thin people, on the other hand, are portrayed by mainstream media as the ideal of virtuous and disciplined life, allowing them to receive the advantages of their hard work, according to Ekern (2022). As a result, teachers of physical education discriminate against obese students, who are perceived to be sluggish and undisciplined. In reality, this is not the case because fat accumulation on the body is not always directly related to how disciplined a person is as portrayed in the mainstream media, but it can be due to a variety of complex factors such as stress and hormonal imbalance, making such a judgment by physical education teachers illogical. Teachers' views in physical education can lead to pupils receiving lower grades in school, college, and university, despite the fact that they do not perform any worse on intelligence exams or other assessments. These teachers have lower expectations for overweight students than for normal-weight students, as well as for teachers who do not offer sports or health subjects. 

When Kirk and Colquhoun (1989) wrote their book two decades ago, they claimed that the underlying notion among most educators of physical fitness is that fitness in addition to possessing a thin physique are indicators of health. They also said that the dominant preoccupation of physical education based on health is fatness. "The cult of slenderness," which values bodies that are thin, trim, firm, and tight, should be taught to students so that they can think critically about the "cult of slenderness," asserts Tinning (1985). Tinning goes on to state in his research that individuals try to emulate media-generated images of the ideal body type, which places them under a lot of pressure to emulate what they see on mainstream media (1985). According to researchers, these studies are still very important today, even though physical education has had a "culture of weightism" since the early 1980s. This is despite the fact that this topic has been under a lot of scrutiny since then. As it turns out, Tinning and Kirk (2006) both came back in recent times to this subject with new views on the current debate about obesity. "The Slenderness Cult" has turned into the "Body Cult." People used to worry about a "CHD (cardiovascular health disorder) pandemic," but now they're worried about an "obesity epidemic." Work by Gard and Wright (2001), showing how uncertainty in the biomedical field about obesity research is substituted with “expert” knowledge in obesity in the context of physical education, is without a doubt the most important analysis of the obesity crisis by physical education scholars. A similar shift from acknowledging limited evidence to making bold statements about the causes and existence of the obesity crisis characterizes the entire body of scientific literature. 

It's crucial to remember that mainstream and societal perspectives on being overweight vary from place to place and time to time while discussing fat phobia. Most of the time, individuals talk about being obese in a non-traditional manner. There is a true and sensational notion that the world is becoming fatter, and this assumption drives anti-fat discourses and discursive practices in government programs and articles in the media (Fox et al., 2019). Historical descriptions of fat help to cut down on the sensational feeling of newness that often comes with modern talks concerning fat and encourage a more detailed look at both the figures and the theories about fat. 

In 2001, Huff wrote a book called "Horror of Corpulence," whereas in 2004 “fat Boys” was written by Gilman. All of these important historical works put fat in a historical setting. Fat History by Stearns A book written by Schwartz in 1986 called "Never Satisfied." As part of history, "Horrors of Corpulence" and Gilman's "Fat Boys" are two of the most important works that put fat into context. Researchers look at the meanings of fat in the Western world, focusing on how both scientific and cultural understandings of fat can change over time. Their findings are discussed in great detail. Each says that the definitions of fat have changed over time with changes in both the economy and gender roles in society. Stearns' (2002) work, for example, says that dieting and weight concerns are not timeless. It shows how fat epistemologies changed in the late 1800s and early 1900s and links them to changes in gender relations at the same time. The author says that when the Victorian era came to an end and the modern era began, American women were more involved in the public sphere than they had ever been before. This is because women's involvement in paid work and politics became more visible. As such, Victorian gender divides, which were based on aspirations and distinctions between public and private domains, were considered as less relevant. Women were held to extremely high standards of thinness in order to prevent, or at least delay, the gender panic that led to the delegitimization of Victorian gender classifications. These prohibitions were founded on a long-standing phobia of fat that arose from Americans' guilt over capitalism's emergence. 

Historical authors also discuss race and how individuals grow more racialized. They also place epistemologies and the measurement of body fat in historical context. According to Gilman (2006), the obesity moral panic is a remnant of a racial discourse that emerged in the 1800s and resulted in anti-Semitic categories of Jewish "racial adiposity," which has affected racist medical understandings of obesity. Scientists have been fascinated by the "thrifty genotype," which may be seen in both immigrant and indigenous populations, since the 1960s. Hilde Bruch's psychoanalytic views on obesity and anorexia were inspired by her medical training in Germany throughout the 1920s. In contrast to the medical establishment, Brunch refused to believe that Jews were more likely to develop diabetes and obesity because of their race. As a result, such ideas lead to racial discrimination in physical education, with particular races, such as Jews, experiencing hostility from their peers on the field. As a result, overweight children from these marginalized groups may develop low self-esteem and feel uneasy or afraid to participate in physical education programs. They may subsequently continue to gain weight as a result of their lack of enthusiasm to exercise. 

Upon his escape from Nazi Germany and subsequent immigration to USA, Bruch (1928) developed an alternative obesity model that was psychoanalytic in nature but which was at odds with the most prevalent obesity racial model in Germany and equally with the obesity metabolic model popular USA in the 1930s and 1940s. Bruch did psychosomatic clinical work regarding body size aspects, which led her to the idea that "developmental obesity" was a way to connect changes in an individual concerning their development with the outside dynamics of a troubled family, especially their mother. According to Bruch, obesity arose as a consequence of interactions between parents and children throughout childhood, notably the child's effort to gain independence. Her psychoanalytic approach to obesity contrasted sharply with the biological and racial ideas that dominated medical discourse at the time. "Another non-biological, non-racial solution to what was previously a biological/or racial explanation," her ideas on obesity were lauded (Bruch, 1928). 

• Fat Subjectivity

 It is when fat subject positions are integrated into a person's whole body-based subjectivity that they are called fat subjectivity. It's a post structural way of thinking about the self that looks at how the body, the social, and your psyche all come together. The study by Kwate and Threadcraft (2015) shows that students’ bodies are shaped within a normative gender-sex system that is racist and values slender, productive bodies as depicted in movies, TV shows. Pre-service instructors' perceptions of overweight students' language abilities and IQ are linked to their perceptions of them (Glock et al., 2016). On these measures, pre-service teachers with higher unfavorable attitudes made more negative judgements regarding overweight children. As a result, they give overweight kids poorer grades based on their preconceived assumptions that overweight students are lazy and unmotivated. Teachers giving overweight kids lower grades despite no differences in how they performed an exercise is an obvious setback in their effort to get fit. The study of sociology and physical education are both concerned with the construction of embodied subjectivity in the present. People who write about Macdonald claim that he did this in 2002 with other people. Several scholars have urged people to have a more body-centered reasoning that recognizes how our social environment impacts our bodies, as well as the importance of physical education for the formation of embodied identities in students (Verbrugge, 2012). Embodiment has been conceptualized in several different ways, such as corporeal feminisms, queer theory, critical disability theory, and psychoanalytical thinking.   

• Fat phobia

 Fat phobia in physical education is caused by process that are discursive which try to keep a shaky boundary between a fat and non-fat body. Individually, people who aren't overweight are afraid of becoming fat, which is called "fat-phobia" (Longhurst, 2005). For example, people might suggest that upon looking in their mirrors, they see a person that is thin, but immediately they step away, they perceive themselves as overweight (Cook, 1996).  Fears of being or becoming fat are based on fears about female reproduction, miscegenation, and the contamination of physical boundaries that permeate the cultural imagination (Bordo, 1993; Kristeva 1982; Gilman, 2006). As a result of fatphobia, many places, such as physical education and health education, exclude people who are deemed unfit, unathletic, and untalented. The psyche of the public, as well as how school teachers think about obesity, is strongly influenced by public policy and practice in health-promoting institutions. According to Evans et al., (2003), this is a "cultural poison." In this way, healthy living is seen as the removal of fat from one's psychological, social, and national bodies. 

In mainstream media, talking about obesity conjures up a negative image of being overweight. Diet and body weight seem to have a strong relationship with medicalized ideas about fatness, exercise, health, and weight loss (Andersen et al., 1998). This is one of the reasons people are talking about obesity now. Having a lot of body fat and being unhealthy aren't symptoms of medicalized solipsism. Scholarly work in feminist movements challenges such views. The concept that the body works like a machine makes it nearly impossible to understand why people are overweight. According to them, many factors of both the effects and causes of obesity and being overweight are unknown. Fat accumulates when you consume more calories than you burn through exercise. Due to these beliefs, overweight students are discriminated against by their teachers and peers due to their eating habits. Consequently, overweight students may be told they must consume less food even though the problem is not in food quantity. When the students realize that reducing serving portions quantities will not lead to weight loss, the become unhappy. According to Gard and Wright, this how metabolism and obesity get fat (energy-out). Even if there is scientific evidence that the opposite may be true, the energy-in/energy-out equation is important to think about. According to them, there are no clear links between more activity and more weight loss, or between low levels of exercise and increased fatness. There can be a correlation between some people being able to lose fat easily while others cannot, due to the fact that some people may have hyperthyroidism, which makes it easier for them to lose fat, while those with hypothyroidism are not able to lose fat easily. 

Female authors who wrote about obesity in the 1980s contend that being overweight isn't bad but that being afraid of being overweight is bad. This is because they say that being afraid of being overweight isn't good for you. Many feminist authors have written about their own experiences with fat phobia, which are both psychologically and physically bad. Stress, self-hatred, and dieting play a greater role in obesity-related health problems than fat itself (Duarte et al., 2017). People often say that they don't see the connection between being overweight and being unhealthy, which they blame on being fat-phobic rather than knowing the truth. Participants in such studies might think that scientific, medical, and mechanical paradigms linking fatness with ill health aren't enough, or even fatphobic, to suggest fatness is dangerous. In turn, overweight students are told by their physical education instructors that if they do not exercise and lose weight, they may become susceptible to illnesses. This motivates the students to exercise vigorously in order to avoid being victims of fat-related disorders, such as diabetes. However, when overweight students realize that slimmer counterparts don't have to work as hard to stay slim, it breaks their psyches, since they have to work twice as hard for similar results. 

Recommendations  

Firstly, learning institution should ensure that policies and the way the institution’s appearance encourages a healthy diet and physical activity. The following should be consider in order to achieve such a strategy. The learning institution should consider layout for buildings , recreational spaces should be available, catering including vending machines, food brought from home by students , the curriculum inclusive of PE, travel plans for school and with space for students to cycle. 

Secondly, in order to intervene obesity in learning institution, long-term interventions to help students develop healthy habits for the rest of their lives should be initiated. In this case, learning institutions should think about how students feel about healthy food, as well as things like cost or how they think it tastes. Additionally, physical education teachers should try to find activities that children enjoy and that they can do outside of school and keep up with as adults, too. In a pleasant, social setting, students should eat their food. There should be no distractions. If possible, trying to get parents involved as much as possible, such as through special events or newsletters is fundamental. 

Alternatively, learning institutions should make sure that the language and the primary message are appropriate. Instead of a “bad” or “good” food, a balanced diet should be prioritized more. Stressing that physical activity and a healthy diet is essential; that physical activity does not just solely involve sports; stressing the positive, for example, "be healthy," "feel better," and "get active."  Adoption of a whole school attitude that recognizes all four themes is the first thing you should do to help keep kids from becoming obese (physical activity, healthy eating, emotional health and wellbeing and social, personal, and health education). Also enforcement a food policy for the school; provision of an interesting curriculum in physical education and a wide range of extracurricular activities; and giving students opportunities to learn about personal safety skills and physical literacy are all good ways to help students (e.g. cycling, pedestrian safety). 

Engagement of parents and caregivers in learning institution’s activities is also crucial. Families can be involved in changes to school food, for example. They can also be encouraged to make changes at home, learn about healthy eating, and get involved in physical activities with their kids. They can as well plan events with their kids, like vegetable growing clubs, cooking clubs, or sports afternoons. Lastly, exploring new opportunities for people who are overweight or obese is important in learning institutions. If schools want to help students with obesity, nutrition, or physical activity, they should get help from outside groups. 

Conclusions 

Fat-phobic attitudes and behaviors, which influence most individuals in deep and overwhelmingly negative ways, prevent the majority of people from creating a positive fat subjectivity in physical education venues. Some people, however, are only able to temporarily change their fat identity in physical education class in very rare and non-normative situations. Taking part in emotionally and physically demanding social, mental, and kinesthetic exercises as well as other actions can help fight fat-phobic attitudes and behaviors. In the face of modern, cultural, pedagogical, and unethical fat phobia investments, these instances of fat survival and resistance by students in physical education settings serve as a testament to the students' ethical reactions. In terms of physical education, being big is very close to what research says is a topic that doesn't need to be judged by anyone else. We should support and encourage these kids in their efforts to overcome the common fat phobia among physical education students. Furthermore, it is important that such dialogues be tempered with a clear acknowledgement by governments and the mainstream of fat bodies as slaves and of the socioeconomic, racial, and patriarchal systems that support and promote that subjugation (Frieden et al., 2010). I do not say, however, that they are devoid of oppressive power relations and that they behave as if they are. Similar to the counter and reverse discourse by Foucault (1978) in The History of Sexuality, Butler (1993) argues in Bodies That Matter (Bodies That Matter) that expressions of agency are subjected to limitations of these exact discourses that are dominant as well as power relations which demand the expression of agency.  

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