ABSTRACT
There is a wide literature that notes that the experience of fatness between the sexes is very different. Research has indicated that women are more likely than men to perceive themselves as fat and to attempt to lose weight (Cox et al., 1987; Gilbert, 1989). One of the explanations for this is the focus on women by the diet and slimming industry (Parham et al., 1986) and the representations of women in the media (Greaves, 1990) in western industrialized societies. Additionally, it has been argued that doctors are more likely to offer advice and treatment to fat women than fat men (Bovey, 1989). There is also evidence that being fat is a far more negative and stigmatized experience for women than it is for men. Fat women have been found to have unpleasant characteristics assigned to them on the basis of their size (Hillier, 1981), to be actively discriminated against in the labour market (Allon, 1980) and to be excluded from full participation in society (Jenkins and Smith, 1987; Greaves, 1990). Such experiences may not be confined to women. However, it is argued that societal disapproval of fatness is aimed chiefly at women rather than men because there is far greater pressure on women to conform to cultural notions of attractiveness. Such notions of attractiveness have, since the 1960s, been closely equated with slimness (Chernin, 1983; Cline and Spender, 1987; Bovey, 1989; Greaves, 1990).
