Do You Look More American When Fat?
Does being fat make a person appear more American? The answer to the question, while not applicable across the board, does hold true when it comes to Asian Americans, according to a report published Monday.
A study led by the University of Washington (UW) found Asian Americans, who were heavier than other people of the same heritage, were perceived by others as more “American” while also having less prejudice directed at them than the thinner Asian Americans.
According to the researchers, the perception is fed by stereotypical views on ethnicity where Asians are thought of as thin while Americans are considered fat. This in turn means if a person of Asian heritage is fat, they would appear more American to some people.
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The study titled “Unexpected Gains: Being Overweight Buffers Asian Americans From Prejudice Against Foreigners” was published July 26 in Psychological Science. Researchers showed over 1,000 college students the photographs of men and women of varying ethnicities and of different weights and asked about they perceived their nationality as well as other traits.
"In the U.S., there is a strong bias associating American identity with whiteness, and this can have negative consequences for people of color in the U.S.," said corresponding author Caitlin Handron, who conducted the study while at the UW. Handron is a doctoral student at Stanford University. "We wanted to see whether ideas of nationality are malleable and how body shape factors into these judgments."
"People in the U.S. often encounter prejudice if they are overweight — they may be mistreated by a customer service person, for example, or a health care provider. Weight can be an obstacle to getting good treatment," said the co-author of the study, Sapna Cheryan, who is also the UW associate professor of psychology .
"We found that there was a paradoxical social benefit for Asian Americans, where extra weight allows them to be seen as more American and less likely to face prejudice directed at those assumed to be foreign."
Body weight however, did not yield similar perceptions among white or black people whose photographs were shown.
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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 70 percent of American adults are considered overweight or obese. Compared to white, black and Latino Americans, Asian Americans have the lowest prevalence of obesity at 11.7 percent.
The perception linking Americans to overweight and obesity may also be helped by the observation that the rate of obesity has been on the uptick in the U.S., according to a paper published in March in the journal JAMA, that said fewer Americans were trying to shed weight.
More than a third of American adults are considered obese by the CDC standards, with body mass indexes of 30 or higher. Two in three are considered overweight due to body mass indexes of 25 and more, according to the overweight and obesity statistics available on the website of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
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