Bias is one of those words that we may think we know the meaning of, like having a preference for something, but there is more to it than that. “Bias” hints that perhaps the judgment behind the relevant opinion is ill-informed, unfair, or just plain ignorant.
When people, including many professionals in medicine and psychology, use the term, they do not always seem aware that such prejudice is unfair and unjustified. And yet, we occasionally find writers who feel compelled to go to a great deal of trouble to explain the difference between informed opinion and ugly bias.
One of the major figures in this area has been Aubrey Gordon, a book author, podcaster, and advocate of fat acceptance, who for the first few years of her writing career used the pseudonym Your Fat Friend. A documentary film has been made about her.
Your Fat Friend zeroes in and names names
Early in 2020, Gordon published an article that severely criticized a popular TV series, “The Biggest Loser,” calling it one of the most harmful reality shows on the air. The host, Jillian Michaels (characterized as a celebrity fitness trainer), seemed to want to have things both ways, by insisting that her own attitude toward overweight people was “inclusive,” while at the same time accusing the popular entertainer Lizzo of glorifying obesity.
Gordon pointed out that the show actually popularized a logic of abuse, blaming the hopeful weight losers for their own sad situations. Michaels, she wrote, had a “lengthy history of publicly shaming, humiliating, and even publicly abusing fat people, and went on to say that,
The show promoted its trainers as providing “tough love” motivation, but many former contestants describe their experiences differently. In 2016, the Guardian compiled a list of Michaels’ most infamous insults, which range from demeaning to outright violent toward contestants… In the world of The Biggest Loser, its fat contestants were abject failures, wretched people who could be saved only by the trainers who humiliated them.
It was strongly suggested that rather than having good intentions, the TV series actually specialized in promoting the dirty four-letter word, bias. As an example of societal bias, in another essay Gordon brought up an unbelievably callous custom practiced by a Cornell University fraternity, the “pig roast, a contest that awarded points to fraternity members for sleeping with fat women.” With such a disgusting custom finding acceptance at one of the nation’s top providers of higher education, what hope could there ever be for the eradication of bias and the dawn of acceptance?
From Hastings Bioethics Forum
A couple of years back, endocrinologist Jody Dushay called out a seemingly harmless article about concerns in the ethical, policy, and public health areas, throughout which she nevertheless detected a strong undercurrent of bias.
Some experts claim that weight-loss meds should be prescribed sparingly because their use may divert patients from utilizing “good lifestyle choices” — an argument found inadequate by this medical weight management professional. To her ear, it sounded like unwarranted prejudice against people who live with obesity, eliciting the response,
When we elevate the bar for using pharmacotherapy to treat high body weight, we do so because, consciously or not, we are labeling obesity a disease of choice. My clinical experience informs my understanding that obesity is almost never entirely preventable, but bias against those with obesity certainly is.
It seems, in fact, entirely possible that the only truly reliably preventable aspects of obesity are personal bias and systemic bias.
Source: “Your Fat Friend,” IMDb.com, 2023
Source: “’The Biggest Loser’ Is One of the Most Harmful Reality Shows on Television,” Medium.com, 01/12/20
Source: “Why can’t we recognize fat anger?,” Medium.com, 02/26/18
Source: “What Is Preventable About Obesity?,” TheHastingsCenter.org, 09/16/24
Image by jobinscaria/Pixabay
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