While we talk a lot about sexism and women's rights here at Cosmo, there's another, just-as-disturbing prejudice that's often overlooked: The bias against overweight people.
And what's really not cool about "fattism," as some call it, is that such discrimination starts scarily young, according to a new study.
In the study, researchers in England gave 126 kids who had just started school different versions of the same story, varying the weight and sex of the main character. When the character was an overweight boy, only one of the 43 kids reading the story said they would choose to befriend him and when the character was an overweight girl, only two in 30 said the same. Majorly sad, right?
Of course, how kids feel about overweight playmates has a lot to do with how they're raised and the messages they get from society. And while obesity is a serious health issue, we obviously need to collectively be more careful about how we talk about, and treat, people of size. (Case in point: Samantha Brick's highly-publicized comment that "there is nothing in life that signifies failure better than fat.")
This study shows that weight and body type can be just as contentious as race, gender, and class, and maybe even more so, as far as our preconceived notions go.
So, let's do overweight people—and kids—a solid and get it over it already. Passing judgment on other people's body types isn't helping anyone.