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205 23 Stigma Threat and the Fat Professor Reducing Student Prejudice in the Classroom Elena Andrea Escalera Weight Discrimination in Academia Weight discrimination in the workplace has long been documented in many disciplines (Kristen, 2002; Roehling, 1999). This study looks at how fat discrimination plays out in a very specialized venue: the college classroom. In academic settings, professors are not only evaluated by their colleagues, department chairs, and deans, but also by their students. Students, who have relatively less status in the system, have significant power in the evaluation of their professors. Rank and tenure committees use these evaluations to determine promotion and retention. Quite literally, a professor’s job is on the line if student evaluations are low. Student evaluations have been studied in relation to bias and discrimination, and many studies have found that these all important evaluations may not be the reliable form of teacher review that they are hoped to be. Sprague and Massoni (2005) found that student evaluations vary depending on how closely the teacher adhered to their expected gender role. Discrimination in student evaluation extends to professors based on their appearance as well. Attractive professors received much higher evaluations than those who were rated less attractive by students (Hamermesh & Parker, 2005). Professors who dress in formal or stylish attire are also likely to receive better evaluations. Stylish clothing is often not available in larger sizes, resulting in an institutional barrier to large-sized faculty. In addition, fat is considered unattractive in this culture (Allon, 1982; Crandall, 1984). This being the case, a fat professor is going to be considered unattractive, and will likely see the impact of this cultural value in their evaluations. In a recent course that I taught in Health Psychology, a student of mine made a comment that was much more subtle. The student said, “She talks too much about weight and disability, which have nothing to do with Health Psychology.” Although I spent no more time on weight and disability than any other subject, and considerably less on the topic than on stress and cancer, this student was distressed that a fat disabled person was teaching about health. If this distress can be better understood, perhaps there are ways to diffuse student reactivity that can result in discriminatory behavior. 206 Elena Andrea Escalera Stigma Threat and Anti-fat Bias Anti-fat bias is not a new phenomenon (Allon, 1982). Because anti-fat bias is at its heart a bias, we can assume that the psychological processes involved are similar to other types of prejudice. People who have strong anti-fat bias have also been found to express more racism (in an overarching tendency toward intolerance for deviation from the norm). In a study using the Modern Racism Scale, Crandall (1994) found a correlation between anti-fat bias and racism, and demonstrated that the same processes were at work in anti-fat bias as in symbolic prejudice. Stigma is not a characteristic of a person in the stigmatized group. It is a socially constructed phenomenon that shifts and changes over time. Stigma is the product of others’ reactions to a person who is a member of a low-status or rejected group rather than anything essential to that person (Archer, 1985). Nevertheless, stigmatized people commonly blame themselves for the discrimination that they experience. In an experiment by Crocker, Cornwell, and Major (1993), women who experienced discrimination were more likely to blame their weight for the discrimination instead of blaming the person discriminating against them. This resulted in more negative emotional states and self-esteem problems than for other groups, which may put fat women at greater emotional and social risk. Stigmas can cause people who perceive a stigmatized person to feel anxious and threatened. This idea, called stigma threat (Crocker, Major, & Steele, 1998), is especially relevant to classroom interactions because the presence of an instructor who is a member of a stigmatized group can create anxiety and distress in the students. A fat professor who is teaching a class about health has a stigma salient to the course material . A fat disabled professor teaching about health has multiple stigmas relevant to the subject matter. Having these kinds of “double whammy” collected stigmas creates an even greater risk for discrimination (Solovay, 2000). Stigma threat can also interfere with the learning process and the professor’s productivity and effectiveness (Hamermesh & Parker, 2005). Lower attractiveness (as defined by the students) of fat professors may actually be interfering with the learning process through the increased...

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