Body Types, Appraisals of

The Emergence of Body Type Prejudice in Childhood

Interestingly, this aversion toward chubbiness has been shown to begin at a very young age. While there is a lack of research on appraisals of overweight children who are not yet of school age, the existence of negative attitudes toward overweight body builds has been detected in preschool-aged children. In a recent research study (Cramer & Steinwert, 1998), children between the ages of 3 and 5 demonstrated the use of body size to categorize figures of different body build as “nice” or “mean.” Consistent with America's cultural stereotype that maintains that “fat is bad,” 4- and 5-year-old children consistently labeled the chubby figure as “mean” and the thin figure as “nice.” While the aversion for chubbiness was stronger in children ages 4 and 5, preschool-aged children regardless of age ascribed more negative attributes to the chubby figure than to the thin figure. In addition, the children preferred the slender figures as playmates. Interestingly, these findings remained consistent, and in some cases were pronounced, among overweight preschool participants.

Studies on kindergarten-aged children show body build awareness among young children (Lerner & Gellert, 1969). In fact, many children as young as 5 years of age are generally not only able to distinguish between differing body types but also exhibit a clear dislike for chubby appearances, in accordance with their culture's values. In a series of early studies performed by Lerner and his colleagues (e.g., Lerner & Gellert, 1969), support was found for this phenomenon. Using three body build stimuli modeled after Sheldon's terms, “endomorphic,” “mesomorphic,” and “ectomorphic,” but adopted only to denote round and plump, muscular and triangular, and thin and streamlined bodies, respectively, Lerner and his colleagues were able to identify trends in children's aversion to the endomorphic body type. For example, Lerner and Gellert (1969) found that of the 46 children in the sample, 86% of subjects expressed an aversion toward the chubby figures in the photographs shown to them during the course of their interviews. In particular, the majority of girls chose the endomorphic stimulus picture as the “girl they would not like to look like at all.” Moreover, chubby children also displayed this negative opinion toward chubbiness such that, as a group, although they could accurately identify photographs of chubby girls their age, they failed to accurately match their own endomorphic body type with the correct “chubby” photograph. This result may reflect the chubby children's unwillingness to admit that they fit into the endomorphic category due their own adoption of the cultural aversion for fat figures.

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