PhD: Small desks cause 'hostile' environment for fat students | Campus Reform

Photo: Toni Airaksinen

• Heather Brown interviewed 13 fat women in college, finding that “classroom design and furniture,” especially “too-small desks,” not only make fat women feel “unwanted,” but also perpetuate “thin privilege and fat hatred.”
•  Brown argues that colleges “must make attempts to alleviate the damage a hostile physical environment causes to fat women learners,” suggesting renovating classrooms with “differently sized chairs and tables.”

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Toni Airaksinen, New York Campus Correspondent reports, "The executive director of a research institute at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte (UNCC) recently argued that small desks cause a “hostile physical environment” to fat students."

Photo: Campus Reform

Heather Brown, who heads the Women and Girls Research Alliance at UNCC, published an article in the new issue of the Fat Studies journal titled “There’s always stomach on the table and I gotta write! Physical space and learning in fat college women.”

For her research, Brown interviewed 13 fat women in college, ultimately finding that “classroom design and furniture,” especially “too-small desks,” not only make fat women feel “unwanted,” but also perpetuate “thin privilege and fat hatred.”

Kari, one student that Brown interviewed, lamented that she felt “self-conscious” in classes because of the size of the desks, saying, “I can’t help thinking about it, and then it would turn into, like,‘Maybe if I lose ten pounds then I wouldn’t look so fat in this desk…’” 

Later, Kari told Brown that she was too distracted in her classes to focus. 

“Sometimes, it’s just, like, ‘Do I look okay in this shirt? What if someone’s looking at me weird? What if I don’t look good in this shirt? What if this shirt makes my arms look fat?’” Kari told Brown.
 
The fact that many fat students feel “fat stigma” on their campus may explain why they tend to get worse grades, Brown suggests, arguing that it “is not body weight but rather weight stigma that is a key barrier in learning.”
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Source: Campus Reform