Discriminação baseada no peso: representações sociais de internautas sobre a gordofobia

The concept of fat phobia has been usually used to define ways of discrimination towards overweight bodies. The present work aimed to know the social representations of fat phobia elaborated by internet users. A documental research was conducted based on internet comments on an article about fat phobia published by the Superinteressante magazine. Selected opinions comprised a textual corpus which was submitted to a lexical analysis through IRAMUTEQ, revealing five thematic classes: (i) "Health as discourse to justify discrimination", (ii) "Fat versus Slim: instituting differences", (iii) "Weight loss: reinforcement versus deconstruction of the standard", (iv) "Fat phobia: invention or reality?" and (v) "Fat phobia and the (in)appropriateness of affirmative actions". Anchored on the technical and scientific argument which affirms that obesity is an epidemic disease, the representations of internet users legitimized discrimination and prejudice processes against overweight people. Moreover, ironic propositions against quota policy for overweight people showed a dissatisfaction about the existence of affirmative actions that promote equality among social groups, ratifying the idea that the privileges cannot be granted to “inferior groups” or depreciated groups, and these groups, in order to be respected by society, should try to fit their bodies into the refined standard. In this context, aiming to make fat phobia an irrelevant topic, disqualifying the magazine’s approach on this topic, representational strategies directed to deny its existence by comparing suffering between groups or setting differences (fats x thins) was observed. Considering the lack of researches about discrimination against overweight in Brazil, other studies on this topic are suggested.