…When students come into her courses, Bacon says they’re full of typical societal judgments about eating, shape and size: Thinner is better, thinner is healthier, thinner is morally superior. “This is just ‘reality’ to them,” she notes, “they don’t even see this as bias.” Her first job is to make student become aware of the weight bias they’ve absorbed from our culture, to show that “everybody has got their bias, their belief system, and if they’re not seeing bias in a teacher or textbook, that means that the teacher or textbook is expressing views of the status quo—which in itself is a bias.” Once students begin to recognize weight bias, they can help those who are its victims by telling the bullied child or teen that losing weight is not the solution to the problem, “show compassion for her situation,” and reinforce that it was the bullying, not the fatness, that was not okay.
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