For context, research participants’ demographic information is provided in Table 1. The country or countries (for informants who moved during their childhood or adolescence) where informants grew up is included, due to the influence of geographical location on social norms around weight. In some geographical contexts, fatness may be preferable to thinness [63]. We did not formally collect additional demographic details, like race, sexual orientation, and (dis)ability, from informants, although we did discuss them if/when they surfaced spontaneously during interviews. These characteristics are not reported to protect informants’ anonymity and to align with IE’s core tenets. Smith contends that in taking abstract categories like race for granted, we jeopardize our ability to examine how people enter the social relations embedded in those categories [64]. Unless otherwise stated, all quotes below are derived from our individual interviews.
Figure 1 maps out this study’s findings. Youth weight work was broadly divided into two categories: learning work and performance work. We begin by describing how informants learned about weight work, and then explain how they acted on this knowledge, whether that was aligning with or resisting it.
Learning about weight work
From media
Seeking, but not finding, body size diversity in media
From the moment informants were exposed to images of people on screens or print media, they noticed that only thin women’s bodies were displayed. It was difficult to find heavier characters to relate to in television or movies. Maria said:
Mostly every show I grew up with, the people are usually skinny. I can think of Raven from That’s So Raven that wasn’t stereotypically skinny. Or maybe from Grey’s Anatomy, the earlier seasons, Callie, she wasn’t stereotypically skinny. It’s just recent that you’re seeing more plus size characters like This is Us, especially as lead characters. And romantic interests, that’s not something you usually see. … It’s almost like they don’t allow for women who are plus size to, I guess not exist, but say that they do exist.
Jasmine felt there was a gender double standard: men could be heavier on-screen, but women could not: “There’s not that many heavier people [on television]. On top of that, I feel you’ll still see heavier men in shows, but you won’t really see a heavier girl, unless she’s supposed to be the butt of a joke.” Amy further explained these gendered norms: “I think women are more influenced by their body. Like their body influences their experiences more than men’s bodies influence their experiences.”
Similarly, our YouTube investigation reflected the notion that women faced stricter norms than men which led to greater emotional work on their behalf. Thirty-six of 45 videos reviewed exclusively depicted girls and/or women sharing conversation and concern around weight, whereas only seven of 45 videos reviewed exclusively portrayed boys and/or men. In this way, weight management was the work of girls and women; it was their responsibility to fit in socially. Through the YouTube videos and comments reviewed, it became apparent that users fostered community around how to cope with this “problem” through performance work discussed later in this manuscript.
Recognizing fat stereotypes
On the rare occasion that fat people were on screen, they were presented in a stereotypical manner. Sharmeen said, “you look at movies and the main characters are always gonna be thin, always gonna be pretty. They’ll have the weird character as fat, … eating McDonald’s every single day.” Emma furthered this: “When they do portray a bigger person, they’re always a specific weight, they’re always really loud. … If you’re fat, you kind of have only one choice. Like you have to be the funny friend if you’re fat.”
The “obesity epidemic” pictured on newscasts perpetuated these stereotypes. Angela expressed her concerns with the portrayal of fatness in health-related media:
If you ever see on the news like Health Matters, they talk about the obesity epidemic and they film random people on the street without showing their faces. … It absolutely terrifies me because I’m always worried I’ll be one of those people. I don’t like the way that it’s talked about as if this is pathological.
Feeling ashamed
Interacting with popular culture through media commonly left informants feeling inadequate. Christine said, “you just wanna look like the Instagram model or like the girl that you just look up to. Like she’s just better than you. At everything.” Maria described how observing her friends’ Facebook photos made her feel ashamed of her own body: “Growing up, [I couldn’t] help compare, especially to my female classmates. Who’ve been skinny as long as I knew them. … Especially since like in Mexico it’s hot, so you always see them posting pictures in swimsuits.”
Like Maria, Jasmine described the work of body size comparison, but in relation to celebrities rather than peers:
I was talking to my friend ‘cause this [K-pop] group just had a comeback this morning. So they put out a new album and first comment out of her mouth, she’s like “I’m not eating ever again.” ... There’s an unspoken rule in Korean society where if you’re over 50kg, you’re considered fat. I’m like, are you kidding me? [laughing] Am I a whale? … I read this thing recently like Miss Korea she was 68kg and people are like “can she be considered beautiful then?”
Weight norms differ across geographies, with thinness being an even stricter requirement for social conformity in Korea than Canada [65]. One YouTube video reviewed, “Women’s Ideal Body Types Around the World,” showcased these variations [66].
For many informants, interacting with social media was so stressful that they avoided it altogether, deleting social media apps from their phones, or selectively following accounts that would not make them feel badly about their bodies. For example, Angela said, “I just follow cats [on Instagram]”.
From fashion
Mirroring the lack of representation in media, informants explained how bigger people were socially excluded in the context of fashion talk and shopping among their peers. Fashionable clothes were not available for their body types. Emma explained how disheartening this was: “It’s not a great feeling, where all your friends are wearing the same things. My friends would talk about shopping at Lululemon or Gucci or something—like I can’t fit in any of that.” Bree echoed these frustrations: “When someone is like ‘oh you’re not fat, you’re perfect,’ you know what? I want to be able to go into a store and find clothes that I like, instead of clothes that actually fit me.” Angela described the emotional work of clothes shopping:
For bigger people there are not a lot of clothing options. And if there are, they just don’t look good. I would always hate clothes shopping, because I would need to try on five different things to find something that fit me. I have done a lot of crying in trying rooms because nothing would fit me.
Maria elaborated:
I don’t like shopping usually ‘cause they don’t have my sizes. Or if I go to a plus-size store like Torrid, it’s a really nice store. But the clothes don’t fit me ‘cause my boobs are smaller. Which is good they have that for plus size women with bigger boobs. But having pretty small boobs and being bigger, it’s hard to find clothes that look good.
In Maria’s experience, designers made assumptions about the dimensions of a “normal woman body”, negating the possibility for variation within. Likewise, Bree shared her experience of not being able to fit into what stores labelled “children’s clothes”:
One girl used to tell me, “why do you wear adult clothes?” I didn’t know what to say to her ‘cause I was just like “oh, it’s just my style”. But I knew that’s the type of clothes that fit me. The little pretty Mickey Mouse clothes you’re wearing, those just don’t fit me. ... I have to buy this ‘cause I don’t really have the choice.
Again, societal assumptions delineated what size a child should be. Lauren also felt, as a child, it was embarrassing to be the same size as an adult—her aunt:
My aunt always gives me, you know, those hand me down clothes and stuff. And she’s as well a bigger size. So that was very discouraging. I’m like okay, so now I am matching her size. … When it gets to a point where oh no, my size is bigger than let’s say my friend. Or my mom. Or my sister. Then I start to question, okay, I guess I have a problem. I’m not blending in the norm.
Group interviews revealed informants’ insight into the challenges of selling plus-sized clothing:
Sarah: Nike had their first plus size mannequin and it got a lot of backlash. Calvin Klein had their first plus size model, got a lot of backlash. Victoria’s Secret also had their plus size model, got a lot of backlash. So there is backlash from the public itself. Even if companies are trying to change as well.
Angela: In those cases, I mean I don’t know about all of those kinds, but in at least one of them I think, the plus size model was literally just a normal woman.
Christine: It’s a double-edged sword ‘cause it’s like, oh she’s not big enough, but they’re also like, if you make her bigger then you’re just promoting obesity. So there’s no winning. … If you don’t put a plus size model then you get shamed for being sizeist because you’re not inclusive to bigger people.
The group also discussed discrimination in terms of plus-size clothing costs:
Bree: One day at Walmart I noticed a sign being like, I don’t remember how many dollars more being a bigger size was, I was just like why do people have to pay more for a bigger size? That was the first time I saw that. I was like, I don’t get it. If you don’t have to pay more from small to medium, why does someone have to pay more from an XL to XXL?
Alexa: Was that here in Canada?
Sarah: Yeah it was in Edmonton actually.
Christine: Really? I felt that there’s a law on that. ‘Cause that’s discriminatory.
Bree: I know!
Christine: Even though you’re spending more money on fabrics because you’re paying more for a bigger size, you shouldn’t discriminate. …
Sarah: I think that happens at H&M too … when there’s one size left, it’s [cost] usually higher if the size left is bigger than if the size left is smaller.
Lauren reflected on the dehumanizing aspect of clothing size categories:
I find it really annoying with those clothing sizes, you know like zero … double zero, XXL, wow. … You are the S size. You are the medium size. You know. We are categorized in these sizes—that’s all we are.
Sarah noted her frustrations with size variations between brands, particularly when her clothing size was not available at all:
I don’t like how you always have to check the sizing chart. … I’m gonna shop at Ardene and I check the sizing chart and I’m like, I don’t fit anywhere. Not even an XL. In another clothing store I would but like here, I’m just like, okay goodbye now.
With her postsecondary background in textiles, Christine offered unique insight into the fashion industry’s approach to sizing: “Some brands have different size zeros or smalls are mediums. You know, there’s no standardized thing. A lot of the time, it’s there to make you feel worse about yourself.” Because participants grew up in countries around the world (Table 1), they knew sizing systems differed internationally. Group interview informants conceded that in Canada, clothing sizes were more generous than in their home countries. Bree elaborated:
Back in Mauritius, the sizes are smaller ‘cause I think a lot is from China and stuff. So I was a large. Just saying back home, like oh a large, an extra-large made me feel bad because I’d feel the person would judge me. … But here, when I say I’m a medium, I feel normal.
The notion of “feeling normal” correlated with having a body size conforming to social standards. Christine enlightened fellow group interviewees of fashion design protocol which perpetuated unrealistic body size standards:
When you’re sketching models, you don’t sketch bigger people. The standard is eight heads, so one head and you have to do it eight times. Or no, actually it’s nine heads. You make it absolutely proportional to everything. So your waist is three heads down. And then your legs are five heads. … These women I’m drawing are disgustingly skinny. … Designers and stuff like that [thinness], so of course they’re not having good designers making plus-size clothing.
Overall, through text-mediated discourses permeating fashion and media, informants learned the importance of and strategies for performing weight work—whether that be aligning with or rejecting dominant discourses around what it means to have a normal woman body.
Performing weight work: aligning with dominant discourses
Trying to lose weight
All informants expressed and acted upon a desire to lose weight to achieve the normal woman body. Many commercial industries have capitalized on this desire, including the diet, exercise, pharmaceutical, and “miscellaneous gimmicks” industries. We examine how informants interacted with these industries below.
Dieting
Eating practices are regularly cited as a “lifestyle risk factor” in public health discourse. It follows that dieting was the most common approach to weight loss among informants, understood as something that all girls and women should do, regardless of their body size. Angela began dieting in elementary school:
Starting from when I was eight, I would try and go a whole day without eating. It was very, very unhealthy. Because my only input of weight was from people that I would talk to and then TV would have like “oh try this new diet”. When I was nine it was my dream to go on Jenny Craig. Very sad.
Sharmeen felt most diets were unsustainable. She did not label or offer detail about the diets she tried, but referred to dieting generally, implying eating healthfully was common sense:
I’ve definitely tried to eat healthier. Like I will eat salad and I still do. If there’s chicken right, I’ll just eat that. But then also I’ll be like ‘kay, I’m only gonna eat a salad after school. But then I get home and I’m like, I’m hungry. You know? And not for a salad! … So I’ll start it but I’ll never follow through with it.
Informants pointed out that the evidence behind many diets was flawed. Christine joked about the weight loss myths circulating in her household.
She’s [mother] believed that you know putting all these fruit scraps together … if you make a tea out of it, you’ll lose weight. It’s disgusting. It’ll be banana peels, onion stuff, strawberry scraps, all this stuff. … She goes on the internet all the time to find these things and watches a lot of TV, that’s like “oh yeah, this is so healthy”. She has a little book and writes all this stuff down.
While Christine mocked her mother’s reliance on unfounded weight loss strategies, she too went on crash (i.e., severely calorie restricted) diets. Apparently, the social push to be thin superseded logic. Ready access to the internet and mobile apps (such as MyFitnessPal™, a calorie tracking app) enabled the diet industry to pervade young people’s lives.
The marketing and sales of diet products were prominent in conversations with informants. Eden recounted the body weight surveillance she endured as a child by her friend’s mother at swimming practice. This mother, feigning concern for Eden’s health, repeatedly offered her unsolicited advice, encouraging her to buy products from Isagenix, for which she was a sales representative. Isagenix is a nutrition company selling diet products, ranging from pills, to shakes, to supplements.
She’s [mother] very pushy about it. Even as I was swimming, she would always go to my mom and be like “oh she shouldn’t be drinking Gatorade, she should try this Isagenix thing.” … Every time she talked to me, she was like “you should be doing this, oh this will help you lose weight”.
Altogether, there were two forms of dieting marketed to informants: 1) food, macronutrient, and/or calorie restriction; 2) dieting gimmicks, like metabolism-boosting, fat-burning supplements.
Exercising
Exercise goes hand in hand with dieting in public health discourse as a conventional weight loss approach. When we asked Jasmine why she kept going to the gym when she disliked it, she responded: “well my mom keeps telling me to go”. Lauren’s parents too encouraged her to exercise to lose weight, which she described as: “typical traditional thinking, you know. Do more exercise.”
Although exercise was cited in dominant discourses as a means of achieving weight loss, informants felt unwelcome in fitness venues, fearing surveillance. Bree said she was not “comfortable enough to go where the Instagram fitness models go”. Many informants felt exercise should be confined to their bedrooms or basements where they would not be seen, relying on at-home spin bikes and YouTube exercise videos to achieve thinness. Maria elaborated: “I hated gym class. I don’t like going to the gym; it makes me really self-conscious. I get really sweaty and really hot and red when I exercise. I don’t like doing that in front of people.” Informants felt especially uncomfortable exercising in the vicinity of men, who commented on their supposedly incorrect use of equipment, improper form, and so on. Bree explained:
A lot of people don’t want to go to the gym because they feel scared people are gonna judge them there. Especially the weights by the guys and stuff. It’s already hard for girls to go there ‘cause there’s so many guys. … You feel like this is not my place to be.
For these reasons, Lauren exclusively attended a women’s only gym.
Combining diet and exercise
Many weight loss programs informants referred to drew upon some combination of diet and exercise. For example, Christine described participating in a fitness challenge accompanied by a “crazy strict diet” in our group interviews. This six-week weight loss challenge was advertised on Facebook, promoted by XTherapy. Lauren also told us about the weight loss regimens she had tried while simultaneously managing Type 1 diabetes:
I sought out YouTube and started watching exercising videos and seeing what their diet plans are … These low carb diets, Atkins diet, paleo. … With the diabetes, I thought this way I could also reduce my insulin intake. … Of course, if you have too low carb, breaks down your muscles, so you’re just getting fat again. … I just felt I’m so unhealthy, I got to make some changes. But I don’t think you know following those low carb diets or any of those trendy diets are the way, definitely not.
Evidently Lauren faced a disjuncture: despite stating that these strategies were not “the way” to lose weight, she still felt obliged to engage in them.
Jessica’s account of attending a weight loss summer camp epitomized just how grueling these regimens can be. She flew to the United States from Canada for a weight loss summer camp lasting several weeks when she was 14. This camp cost her family several thousand dollars, when they had scarce financial resources to begin with. She reported experiencing “endless exhaustion” at camp, but enjoyed it because she lost 50 pounds that summer, and hoped to return the follow summer to “get back on track”.
Motivational messages to lose weight through diet and exercise were common on YouTube. Thirteen of 45 videos reviewed explicitly or implicitly encouraged viewers to lose weight. Extreme weight loss was depicted as inspirational, with an emphasis on achieving it “naturally”. One of the most concerning examples was entitled “12 year old weight loss transformation: my weight loss journey” from the Daily Life of Lexie YouTube channel [67]. Lexie, the 12-year-old narrator, shows the audience how she hated her body (including images of her prodding her belly fat) and so began an intense diet and exercise regimen to lose weight. Video clips include Lexie wagging her finger “no” at a Pizza Hut box, while giving a thumbs up to strawberries and broccoli. After enduring rigorous workouts on gym equipment unsuitable for a 12-year-old, she steps on the scale at the video’s end, appearing elated to no longer have a “double chin”.
Taking the “easy way out”
Diet and exercise were deemed valiant weight loss tactics, representing willpower and hard work. But informants also shyly reported using a range of alternative weight loss products. The shame surrounding these products relates to how they reinforce stereotypes that heavier people are lazy. Perceived as taking the easy way out, such products are used by those who lack the moral fortitude to lose weight “properly” (i.e., “naturally”) through diet and exercise. At a young age with no personal income, informants relied on their parents to buy such products. Several years ago, Bree asked her mother to buy weight loss products, like body wraps to shed belly fat. Her mother bought them, but now, Bree felt embarrassed about having wasted money and time on these products.
While no informants used weight loss pharmaceuticals like Saxenda®, the topic arose during our group interviews:
Christine: My boyfriend’s mom, her doctor’s convinced her to do a thing where instead of actually working out or changing your diet, she just takes injections. … She was complaining she paid eight hundred dollars for these thirty injections that make her lose weight, and then she’s not losing as much weight as anticipated. …
Angela: I am gonna make a guess and tell me if I’m right. Those injections, were they marketed specifically by that clinic?
Christine: I don’t know … all around their clinic was like [ads], “are you overweight? Try talking to your doctor about these injections, see if they work for you”. So, maybe. I thought it was weird and you know, of course insurance does not cover that kinda stuff because it’s something you want, not something you need.
Bree: They make it this insecurity and just make money out of it. That’s pretty messed up ‘cause you trust your doctor to give you a solution that works.
This conversation touched on many facets of the ruling relations. Informants felt doctors promoted certain drugs as part of some money-making scheme. We were surprised by Christine’s remark of weight loss pharmaceuticals as “something you want, not something you need” given that she, and others in the group, had experienced firsthand the difficulty of weight loss. But they still interpreted taking medication as cheating. Bariatric surgery is also commonly seen as a dishonourable route to weight loss [68]. No informants had had bariatric surgery, but Emma was considering it after her family doctor had suggested it.
Trying to hide weight
Hiding the shape and size of informants’ bodies was primarily achieved through their clothing choices. Lauren described her tendency towards “loose clothing. Nothing tight that will just reveal fat. Or wear all black all the time because that’s what makes you look skinnier.” Larger people are taught to stick to black clothing, avoiding patterns or striking colors because those draw attention to their size. The ruling relations dictated that informants could not choose clothes freely. YouTube videos, such as “Curvy Outfits Dos & Don’ts! 10 Style Hacks for a Curvy Body!” [69], instructed bigger viewers how to dress in a socially acceptable manner.
Sharmeen described how she deflected attention from her body:
I started to wear not really baggy but clothes that weren’t formfitting. … My best friend, she’s very thin. And she always wears really nice and “out there” clothes. Formfitting and different styles. I wanna do that. But if I think of an outfit in my head … I’ll try it on and be like oh, no, never. So I just stick with my hoodies and things. It’s kinda sad ‘cause I feel like I can’t explore more.
Maria explained how her clothing preferences changed with her weight:
I stay towards a certain type of clothes … a baggy type I feel more comfortable in. But it does hide my body more. I used to like tighter clothes, like crop tops. I liked those until recently since I gained more weight.
Garments required for sports influenced informants’ ability to participate. Christine explained how she felt like she was not allowed to swim:
I really hate wearing bathing suits because I’m exposing so much of my body. … I feel if you wear a shirt over yourself, you’re not confident with how you look and you don’t want other people to see. Which is exactly what I’m feeling. So I really don’t like going into the water.
Jessica dropped out of dance classes as a child due to a similar discomfort:
It’s a lot of body image issues with dance because of the costumes that are accentuating that sort of perfect body type … skin-tight body suits and everything.
Christine again shared her fashion design knowledge, this time around creating thin silhouettes.
You can always make the illusion of looking skinny but in the end it’s always like, you still wanna be as skinny as possible. … In high school that’s pretty much what I learned. How to either make yourself look skinnier, or if you’re too skinny, make yourself look a little bigger.
Here, Christine pointed out the difference between illusion and reality, noting that while feigning thinness was a good step, it was preferable to “actually” be thin.
Informants also attempted to hide their weight virtually. But when caught for doing so, it was embarrassing. For example, Sarah used face-slimming filters on social media apps like Snapchat and Instagram:
If I saw my face without a filter, I’d just make a joke about it. But there’d be times where I think people would see my Instagram profile and be like you know this is fake ‘cause of the filter. ‘Cause of how I look in real life.
Unfortunately, this event happened to Sarah. She overheard international students (young men) at university discussing (in a language they thought she didn’t know—but she did) how her Instagram profile looked fake. Humiliated, she took the picture down.
Performing weight work: resisting dominant discourses
While trying to lose weight and hide fatness were the most common modes of performance work, the final mode involved resisting this dogma altogether. Not only did informants disrupt media representations of the normal woman body, they also challenged contradictory media representations of body positivity. For example, Emma said:
Even though they’re trying now to make it more apparent that there are different weights and stuff, when it comes to portraying people on TV or in ads, first of all making them different sizes. And actually different sizes. Not just like they do like “everybody is beautiful,” but then they’re all the same size.
While 13 of 45 YouTube videos had a title or purported intent suggesting content around body love and acceptance, their overwhelming message was still to lose weight. Moreover, some videos depicting body love were of categorically thin women “learning to love their curves”, potentially excluding women at higher body weights from these conversations. Notably, pressure to love or accept your body imposes another form of work on women—it becomes their responsibility to be content with their bodies despite societal messaging suggesting otherwise [70].
However, there were positive aspects of social media, including its ability to create space for community. Thirteen of 45 YouTube videos involved people sharing their experiences of being overweight, helping informants to feel less alone (e.g., “Being the fat girl at the gym” [71]). Using social media also opened informants’ eyes to new ways of thinking about body weight. For example, Bree described how she learned about reclaiming the term “fat” as a neutral descriptor from a YouTuber named Sierra: “She really helped me to understand that being fat is not a bad word. It’s just like you’re short or you’re tall. Maybe you’re thin, maybe you’re fat, it’s fine. That doesn’t have to be an insult.” Maria shared how the media shaped her thoughts about bodies:
It was internet where I started seeing more body positive things and people who are large and they love themselves. … Recently I was thinking I have to support more women of plus size since they were so underrepresented. So, if I saw a woman of plus size that showed up in my [Instagram] explore page and I saw what they were doing and I liked it, then I’m like, I need to support her so more women that are plus size are represented and they have more opportunities.
In fashion, Christine felt there have been some positive shifts in representing larger bodies, albeit modest: “Nowadays people are starting to embrace the plus size model which is great. I really appreciate that. Like it’s starting to move standards from anorexic skinny white model to more diversity.”
Overall, this resistance work demonstrated that young people were not puppets of the ruling relations—they were working to change them. But should young people in bigger bodies alone be burdened with this titanic task? As public health researchers invested in youth health promotion, this seemed an issue worth exploring.