Publication Date

5-9-2025

Document Type

Student Project

First Advisor

Jaekel, Katy

Degree Name

B.A. (Bachelor of Arts)

Department

Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality

Abstract

In an increasingly technologically connected society, and in a society that lacks fundamental legal protections for weight- or size-based discrimination, it is crucial research examines how and why fatness is being pathologized in digital popular culture spaces. The present research aims to examine this question by analyzing various social media posts and advertisements for patterns of anti-fat bias indicating pathologization. Advertisements and posts were sourced from Snapchat and X, respectively, and a goal of this research was to remove my personal social media algorithms and their output from their intended context (the screen) and into the space of higher education and academia. Two primary findings emerged through this analysis of digital content: (1) advertisements taken from Snapchat function as causes for the internalization of anti-fat bias and the individual thought being posted on X, and (2) fatness is being pathologized on social media platforms largely through concurrent forces of discrimination and marginalization (i.e. racism, ableism, and religiocentrism). The significance of this work lies in the lack of fat studies literature being produced on college campuses and in the ongoing marginalization and medicalization of fat bodies; I hope for this research to provide pathways for fat justice, counterforces against anti-fat bias and fatphobia, and a restorying of the dominant narrative that fatness is abnormal or pathological.

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

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