‘Medical Fatphobia Is Not Something We Invent’: Weight Stigma in Healthcare Experienced by Women in the Antifatphobia Movement in Brazil and Spain

Abstract

Fatphobia, defined as the stigma and discrimination against fat individuals, is a pervasive phenomenon in contemporary societies, embedded in various social contexts, including healthcare. This qualitative, cross-sectional and descriptive study explores the experiences of medical fatphobia among women involved in the antifatphobia movement in Brazil and Spain, drawing on 14 individual semi-structured interviews. In both countries, biomedical field was identified as a central agent in the construction and perpetuation of fatphobic discourses. Participants described multiple forms of discrimination: structural discrimination at the macrosocial level, rooted in biomedical discourses that pathologise fatness and individual discrimination at the interpersonal level, encountered in healthcare settings where moral judgements shape professional attitudes and practices. This situation positioned the interviewees as inferior subjects, presumed to lack self-awareness, rationality and self-control. It perpetuates a form of symbolic violence—justified under the guise of promoting ‘health’—with wide-ranging consequences. However, involvement in the antifatphobia movement and the development of a political and collective discourse around the body fostered mechanisms of resistance grounded in empowerment. This enabled interviewees to challenge stigma, critically engage with biomedical discourses and practices and cultivate a more nuanced, socially situated understanding of health and the body.