Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t: The Stigma of Weight Loss Surgery

ABSTRACT

Willpower, as demonstrated through diet and exercise, is constructed as the only acceptable strategy for losing weight. While weight loss surgery (WLS) is an option for morbidly obese individuals, like obesity itself, WLS carries stigma. Using a 40-item survey, we measured 101 participants’ experiences with WLS stigma. We examined whether WLS is stigmatizing, how that stigma is perceived by patients, and tendencies to hide their surgery status in order to manage stigma. Results indicated evidence of perceived stigma despite support from significant others as well as a tendency to hide surgery status from some people as a stigma management technique.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Magdalena Szaflarski, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham for comments on an earlier draft.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Barbara Hansen

BARBARA HANSEN is a Doctoral Candidate in Medical Sociology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, degree to be conferred April 2017. She is currently a research assistant for a CBD/Epilepsy study at the UAB School of Medicine. Her concentration is in the social determinants of health, mental health, and stigma. Her research currently focuses on stigma and caregiver burden in intractable epilepsy.

Meredith Huey Dye

MEREDITH HUEY DYE, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Middle Tennessee State University. She received her doctorate from the University of Georgia (2008) with a concentration in studies of crime, law, and deviance. Her research focuses primarily on deviant behavior in prisons, specifically, prison suicide. Her current research concerns women serving life sentences.