Research suggests that weight prejudice and favoritism can take to long-run negative physical, emotional, societal, and educational effects for fat persons. Racist and homophobic attitudes and behaviours have been modified through the usage of storytelling teaching methods, yet research on using similar schemes to turn to weight prejudice has proved inconclusive or debatable. This paper explores the potency of storytelling as a tool to stop weight prejudice and argues that auto-ethnographic storytelling may be a more effectual manner to assist scholars dispute predominating anti-fat cultural narrations.

Can biased attitudes against fat persons be challenged in Western society? Is there a manner to assist grownups larn to oppugn stereotypes and stop discriminatory patterns against fat persons? In this paper, I will research storytelling as a possible tool in the battle against bias. Research suggests that storytelling through a assortment of mediums, including written narrative and non-broadcast telecasting scheduling, has the possible to transform racialist and homophobic beliefs among scholars. Research on the usage of storytelling and narrative acquisition as a tool to alter weight prejudice among scholars is still in the early phases, but it presently appears debatable as a method to assist alter learnersi?? anti-fat attitudes. However, the instruction methodological analysiss employed in these efforts have failings. In peculiar, they do non efficaciously integrate the lived experience of the narrator into the teaching method or supply the relationships between narrator, hearer, and narrative required for meaningful acquisition ( Palmer as cited in Rossiter & A ; Clark, 2007, p. 165 ) . As a consequence, I argue that storytelling by fat and fat-positive pedagogues and, in peculiar, auto-ethnographic storytelling may be an effectual, if ambitious, manner to convey about a alteration in colored attitudes against fat persons.

Weight Bias and Its Effectss

I want to state you a narrative. For my occupation, I spend most of my clip speaking with bookmans about planing their research programs. I have learned so much from my interactions with them and acquire reasonably good at cognizing what method is appropriate in a given state of affairs. However, in seeking to develop my ain program for my ain research on fat misss and their academic experiences, I have struggled. I know my subject is controversial, and I know I need to make my research absolutely because it is a controversial subject. In the research methods category I took in the spring of 2010, we were supposed to discourse our subjects and methods with our schoolmates and the professor so that we can get down planing our thesiss. When I started to discourse my subject in category, several of my schoolmates became hostile toward me. At one point, I said something about Foucault and the construct of biopower that sparked a unit of ammunition of laughter and a twit from one pupil that my encephalon evidently had been affected by my weight. The instructor said nil. In fact, whenever I spoke in category, his face became smooth and his organic structure still, as if my really presence was that of a marauder animate being. Possibly he was afraid that I was hungry and might eat him. When I attempted to talk to him in private, he steered the conversation onto the failures of school tiffin plans, which have nil to make with my subject of research except that educational installations are involved. When the semester ended, I felt like I had non learned anything new. I feel like my really presence was unwelcome, and I earnestly began believing of either discontinuing wholly or reassigning to another school.

To be honest, I can non state you if my intervention in that category was a consequence of weight or of some other factor. What I can state you is that weight favoritism is epidemic in this state. Puhl and Heuer ( 2009 ) , in their meta-analysis of the literature on weight prejudice over the last 10 old ages, concluded that the i??prevalence of weight favoritism in the United States has increased by 66 % over the past decennary, and is comparable to the rates of racial favoritism, particularly among womeni?? ( p. 941 ) . I besides know that bias against the corpulence and corpulent is prevailing among both traditional age and grownup scholars. For illustration, medical pupils i??did non see derogative wit directed toward corpulent patients to be inappropriatei?? and exercising scientific discipline pupils i??endorsed expressed attitudes that fat people are lazy, physically unattractive, purchase excessively much debris nutrient, and could lose weight is they truly wanted to make soi?? ( Puhl & A ; Heuer, 2009, p. 945 ) .

There is besides limited grounds, mostly because this country of enquiry remains understudied, that fat grownup scholars feel that pedagogues actively endorse anti-fat stereotypes in and out of the schoolroom and pattern favoritism against them in rating and in letters of recommendations ( Puhl & A ; Heuer, 2009 ) . Whether pedagogues really are prejudiced against the fat or non has non been tested. However, colleges and other educational establishments are at the head of the anti-obesity campaign in the United States ( Heinen & A ; Darling, 2009 ) . For illustration, anti-obesity advocators promote the thought that colleges and universities should be i??early adoptersi?? of anti-obesity scheduling because, as i??high exposure scenes, i?? they can act upon i??thousands of peoplei?? ( Yancey, 2007, p.77 ) .

All combined, weight prejudice and prejudiced patterns against the fat person can go forth the person i??vulnerable to societal unfairness, unjust intervention, and impaired quality of life as a consequence of significant disadvantages and stigmai?? ( Puhl & A ; Heuer, 2009, p. 941 ) . Some research workers have argued that the best manner to antagonize weight prejudice is to stop fleshiness ( Puhl & A ; Brownell, 2003 ) . I wonder, nevertheless, if a better manner to stop weight prejudice isni??t to work toward altering peoplei??s anti-fat beliefs. Is it possible that stating the narratives of fat peoplei??s lives can alter this state of affairs?

Storytelling and Narrative Learning

i??Most merely, narrative acquisition agencies larning through narratives i?? narratives heard, narratives told, and narratives recognizedi?? ( Rossiter & A ; Clark, 2007, p. 70 ) . Stating narratives and listening to narratives are among the most basic edifice blocks of instruction and acquisition. For pedagogues, the narrative can be used to learn grownup pupils lessons that will be meaningful, prosecuting non merely the mind but besides the emotions and the experiences of the scholar. i??i?? it is clear that grownup pedagogues have a agency of easing larning that all grownups can associate to i?? narratives that surround us, that define us, that we can build, analyse, reflect upon, and larn fromi?? ( Merriam, Caffarella, & A ; Baumgartner, 2007, p. 215 ) . Hearing a narrative can assist us i??i??make significance in our livesi?? ( Merriam et al. , 2007, p. 208 ) . Making significance of our lives has to make with more than merely holding some basic apprehension that specific events have occurred and, hence, average something in their very happening. Rossiter and Clark ( 2007 ) argue that narrative larning through intending doing involves values, beliefs, societal and personal context, and reading. The procedure of doing significance, of acquisition, through storytelling i??is of import because it guides and influences our universe position, our sense of what affairs in life, and our premises about cognition, instruction, and learningi?? ( Rossiter & A ; Clark, 2007, p. 15 ) .

Clark ( 2010 ) argues that this significance doing happens on three degrees. First, larning happens when the scholar listens to the narratives of others. In many ways, hearing the narrative improves larning by doing the lesson come alive. It is one thing to read a dull academic text that dissects an issue and presents its constituent parts to be memorized and analyzed ; it is wholly another to derive existent, in-depth apprehension of issues, challenges, and experiences from the lived and expressed experiences of an person who has gone through them ( Baumgartner & A ; Merriam, 2000 ) . Learning besides happens when we tell narratives ; in stating a narrative, the Teller engages with the lessons of their ain narratives, while the hearer works to understand the implicit in message of the Teller ( Clark, 2010 ) .

Most significantly, nevertheless, storytelling has the potency for the transmutation of both the narrator and the hearer when the narrative told leads to reflection on and oppugning of the sociocultural position quo ( Clark, 2010 ) . This is particularly true when the narrative provides a contradictory illustration to the cultural narration that has guided the hearer for most of his or her life. Those contradictory narratives i??become portion of the conversation now created between us, our experience, and the narrative itself. That conversation is partially witting, partially non, but iti??s where the acquisition is happeningi?? ( Rossiter & A ; Clark, 2007, p. 70 ) . It is this type of larning that makes storytelling an of import tool in the conflict against bias and favoritism.

Storytelling as an Anti-Prejudice Teaching Tool

Dictionary.com ( n.d. ) defines i??prejudicei?? as an i??unreasonable feelings, sentiments, or attitudes, clairvoyance. of a hostile nature.i?? Wlodkowski ( 1985 ) discusses attitudes as a cardinal constituent in scholar motive. i??Attitudes are powerful influences on human behaviour and acquisition because they help people make sense of their universe and give cues as to what behavior will be most helpful in covering with that worldi?? ( Wlodkowski, 1985, p. 46 ) . Prejudice, hence, can be seen as an attitude that influences behaviour ( i.e. , leads to discriminatory behavior ) . Fortunately, nevertheless, attitudes, including damaging attitudes, are learned and, hence, can be changed through instruction. i??Because they are learned, they can besides be modified and changed. New experiences invariably affect our attitudes, doing them switch, escalate, weaken, or reversei?? ( Wlodkowski, 1985, p. 46 ) . Storytelling can function as an anti-prejudice instruction tool by supplying the single hearing the narrative with an chance to alter their attitudes and beliefs.

Phillip Jackson ( as cited in Rossiter & A ; Clark, 2007 ) described two ends of storytelling: providing information and transmutation. Most pedagogues believe that narratives supplying factual information that challenges damaging attitudes and beliefs are adequate to alter biass such as homophobia and racism. i??In other words, it is assumed that cognizing more, and deriving rational cognition, is non merely a necessary but besides a sufficient status for disputing racismi?? ( Srivastava & A ; Francis, 2006, p. 281 ) . However, supplying merely factual cognition through storytelling can really backlash. Srivastava and Francis ( 2006 ) found that such methods, particularly when employed by persons trying to conflict biass against populations that they embodied, frequently lead to the i??dismissal and denial of their narratives, i?? which puts the instructor in the i??position of defending, reasserting, and reenforcing their identitiesi?? ( p. 301 ) . Furthermore, such a tactic can go forth integral and undisputed i??racist and heterosexist cognitions already apparent in school course of study and many organisational policiesi?? ( Srivastava & A ; Francis, 2006, p. 301 ) .

The 2nd end of storytelling is to transform the hearer. Storytelling excels at this scheme because it exposes i??students to point of views that may be incompatible with their owni?? ( Cranton, 2002 ) . Paluck and Green ( 2009 ) found that storytelling via movie media and written narrative has proved to be an effectual method of transforming damaging attitudes against racism and homophobia exactly because it jumpstarts the transformative undertaking described by Cranton ( 2002 ) . i??i?? extended contact can cut down outgroup ill will, and narrations can pass on norms and animate empathy and position takingi?? ( Paluck & A ; Green, 2009, p.356 ) . The inquiry remains, nevertheless. Can narrative larning lead to a decrease in weight prejudice and prejudiced behaviour toward the fat?

Storytelling as a Tool to Change Weight Bias

I want to state you a narrative. Possibly the hardest portion about carry oning workshops and occupation preparations focused on weight prejudice is converting people that there is a job and that the job has nil to make with the alleged fleshiness epidemic. Most people express the belief that being biased against fat people is really a good thing because how else will flesh out people of all time learn that they are fat or understand that they ought to lose weight. If any instruction about blubber happens, it should be directed against fat people and take the signifier of forced exercising categories or the poster of Calorie counts on bill of fare. Keeping anti-fat attitudes is merely natural, kindred to being reflexively scared of a serpent in the tall grass. The colored person does non necessitate to alter their prejudice. Rather, the fat person should alter, because if the fat single alterations so the individual keeping the prejudice will no longer hold a ground to be biased.

The beliefs the scholars in my workshops have about fat people are beliefs they have learned to be appropriate in Western civilization. Rossiter and Clark ( 2007 ) name these beliefs the i??cultural narrativei?? that maps as i??an i??authorizedi?? universe position and shared apprehension of life, i?? giving the single i??a sense of security about who we are and how the universe worksi?? ( p. 21 ) . Submergence in this cultural narrative frequently means that the person does non acknowledge the fact that his or her beliefs are shaped by this cultural narrative. i??We do non see its boundaries and its bounds, and so we do non acknowledge an alternativei?? ( Rossiter & A ; Clark, 2007, p. 22 ) . As a consequence, disputing, allow entirely altering, the cultural narration is hard. i??It is besides true that cultural intending systems do non alter easy. They are strongly centered, with a gravitative pull towards keeping the position quoi?? ( Rossiter & A ; Clark, 2007, p. 22 ) . In a civilization in which fat people are seen as less desirable matrimony spouses than even drug users, boosters, and defalcators, altering anti-fat attitudes appears to be a dashing undertaking ( Tiggemann & A ; Rothblum, 1988 ) .

What small empirical research has been done to day of the month seems to bespeak that transforming damaging attitudes and prejudiced behaviours against fat people will non be easy, and it surely is non traveling to go on rapidly. For illustration, Harris, Walters, and Waschull ( 2001 ) tried to alter learnersi?? anti-fat beliefs by trying to educate them with factual information about fleshiness and the relationship of personal behaviour to organic structure size. They found that, while this method led to scholars cognizing more about the causes of fleshiness and the trouble of losing weight and keeping weight loss over the long-run, scholars did non alter their negative sentiments about the corpulent. Reading narratives about high-status corpulent persons besides did non alter learnersi?? sentiments. Harris et Al. ( 2001 ) urge farther experimentation affecting:

extended instructional processs affecting professionally produced multimedia presentations, exposure to high-status but heavier theoretical accounts on telecasting and in the print media, and creative activity of a greater sense of empathy toward the corpulent by including people of all weights as theoretical accounts in telecasting shows, books, and magazines. ( p. 883 ) .

Following the suggestions of Harris et Al. ( 2001 ) , a few research workers have attempted to alter anti-fat attitudes through movie and written narrations. Unfortunately, these efforts have besides been unsuccessful in cut downing weight prejudice. For illustration, Gapinski, Schwartz, and Brownell ( 2006 ) found that telecasting programming specifically designed to arouse empathic responses towards fat people did non really cut down negative attitudes towards fat persons among scholars. In fact, programming that depicted fat persons in a negative visible radiation really provoked a more sympathetic reaction from the scholars than did programming designed to portray fat persons in a positive visible radiation ( Gapinski et al. , 2006 ) .

One failing in all the above described methods to cut down weight prejudice among scholars is that they were designed and implemented by persons who are non themselves fat or who do non themselves openly challenge damaging attitudes and behaviours against fat persons. As a consequence, there is a deficiency of connexion between the narrative, the storytelling medium, and the scholar. What happens when a fat pedagogue or an pedagogue who does dispute predominating cultural stereotypes and prejudiced behaviour against the fat, efforts to set up an environment in which the scholar can undergo a transmutation of their anti-fat attitudes? One pedagogue has attempted to make so and published the consequences of her pedagogical effort ( Guthman, 2009 ) . The consequence was a state of affairs that, while fraught with struggle and personally disputing to the pedagogue, at least sets the phase for scholars to alter their anti-fat attitudes.

Guthman ( 2009 ) taught an undergraduate degree category on the political relations of fleshiness that incorporated storytelling to both provide facts to and promote transmutation among scholars. Like other critical theoreticians, Guthman wanted to dispute what her pupils i??know is true by showing how it serves the involvements of certain persons and groups at the disbursal of other persons and groupsi?? ( Kilgore, p. 54 ) . While non a fat pedagogue herself, Guthman is an active opposition of weight prejudice and designed her category specifically to promote critical thought about fleshiness and to dispute the stereotypes she suspected most of her pupils held about fat persons. The consequence was that most of her pupils experienced the category as a disorienting quandary, one which was non resolved for them by the terminal of the academic term ( Merriam et al. , 2007 ) .

Guthman ( 2009 ) described how the tone of the category became about hostile from the really first category meeting. Many pupils refused to accept that their i??truthsi?? about fleshiness and its causes could be anything other than cold, scientific fact:

Issues about factualness took centre phase about instantly. The specific beginnings of the contention were in the first unit of the category, the point of which was to raise both epistemic and representational inquiries approximately fleshiness as a job. Many pupils took these reviews as open denial of what they call facts. Students were peculiarly taken aback by challenges to medical representations and the impression that the fleshiness epidemic was in any sense socially constructed. ( Guthman, 2009, p. 1119 ) .

The more pupils were challenged to inquiry and engage in argument with the position quo about fleshiness, the more aggressive and dissing they behaved. This behaviour was directed non merely at Guthman but besides at learning helpers every bit good as the fat pedagogues she invited to give invitee talks to the category. Students expressed confusion that the instruction helpers, both of whom were thin, refused to take part in derogative onslaughts against blubber. One invitee lector, noted fat militant and writer of Fat? So! Marilyn Wann, was attacked by pupils as an rational failure who had lost all hope in life because she refused to take part in dieting. Hearing Wanni??s narrative non merely did non look to alter studentsi?? anti-fat beliefs, it seemed to inflame them ( Guthman, 2009 ) .

Guthmani??s category on the political relations of fleshiness proved to be disorienting to her pupils. Some pupils, who had started to oppugn their ain anti-fat beliefs, began to draw back from category treatment, pass oning with Guthman through their diaries ( Guthman, 2009 ) . Students who were vocal about their choler in category proved more hard to analyse. They were an illustration in pattern of what Moore ( 2005 ) warns about as a effect of actively advancing transformative acquisition in the higher instruction schoolroom. i??Despite an educatori??s best purposes, a procedure of transformative acquisition can take to unpredictable and unwilled eventsi?? ( Moore, 2005, p. 83 ) . Many of them reacted negatively against her anti-bias teaching method by claiming she was seeking to brainwash them ( Guthman, 2009 ) .

Moore ( 2005 ) cautiousnesss pedagogues to believe carefully and implement with attention any teaching method that is designed to transform the scholar. i??Educators need to be cognizant of their ain ends and desires with regard to transformative acquisition to guarantee that it does non go brainwashing, coercion, or indoctrinationi?? ( Moore, 2005, p. 86 ) . Guthman ( 2009 ) had a specific end for her category, but even if implemented skilfully, it still had the potency for pupils to experience that they were being indoctrinated. Guthman ( 2009 ) found that many of her pupils could non even prosecute in a critical argument about blubber because they could non prosecute intellectually with the fact that blubber existed. i??The fact of othersi?? blubber proved extremely straitening for manyi?? ( Guthman, 2009, p. 1125 ) . Furthermore, disputing studentsi?? biased attitudes against fat persons was a direct challenge to the studentsi?? ain sense of ego because i??i??students seemed to experience that the category was sabotaging a batch of work they had done at self-reformation and, therefore, individuality creationi?? ( Guthman, 2009, p. 1127 ) . The learnersi?? individualities were so tied into the dominant cultural narration that blubber is bad that they could non even entertain treatment about alternate narrations. To make so would be to reject a portion of their nucleus kernel. Opening the ego to prosecuting with an alternate cultural narration is a awful journey. It is a journey that can be taken, nevertheless, and the attack that Guthman utilized put the phase for her scholars to get down to take that journey. It was a start, but is at that place a more effectual manner?

Battling Weight Bias: Auto-Ethnography

I want to state you a narrative. I spend a batch of clip educating grownup scholars about weight prejudice and favoritism against fat persons. In the last twelvemonth entirely, I have conducted two weight prejudice workshops for reding housemans and one workshop on weight prejudice for the community at big, written one newssheet article including narratives I use in a workshop I conduct about bias against fat people, and given several presentations on weight prejudice in academic scenes at regional and national conferences. I do this by stating my ain narrative and analysing it critically, with a position towards disputing the societal position quo and advancing critical thought about predominating anti-fat cultural norms. I do this by taking storytelling to another degree.

By turning an analytical oculus to my ain experience and locating it in a larger context, I can utilize experience to develop within myself new apprehensions about how society works and how we, as persons, are affected by our civilization. I so can portion non merely the narrative of my experience but besides my critical appraisal of that experience with scholars. This procedure is called public presentation descriptive anthropology or auto-ethnography ( Reed-Danahay, 1997 ; Sparkes, 2000 ) .

Clark ( 2010 ) argues that i??stories ever have work to doi?? and that the occupation of the scholar is i??to understand what the Teller is seeking to carry through through the storyi?? ( p. 4 ) . Auto-ethnography as a pedagogical technique argues that stating the narrative is non plenty, that the narrator can non anticipate the hearer to understand the contextual significance of the narrative without some counsel from the critical narrator. In other words, auto-ethnography allows the storyteller-educator to locate her or his experiences in the context of the dominant cultural narrative and critically analyze and challenge that narrative ( Dyson, 2007 ) . Auto-ethnography can so be used to develop tools to heighten the work of the person at the bosom of the auto-ethnography and to better acquisition among those exposed to the auto-ethnography.

The trouble with auto-ethnography is that making it can be slippery. Because auto-ethnography demands critical analysis as portion of the storytelling procedure, the auto-ethnographer must be of all time cautious to avoid merely stating a narrative as merely stating the narrative of onei??s life without contextualization can take to uneffective navel-gazing. i??Given that the research worker is confronted with self-related issues at every bend, the possible for self-absorption can loom largei?? ( Anderson, 2006, p. 385 ) . Far excessively frequently, even persons with the best of purposes end up making nil more than documenting their personal experiences or arousing an i??emotional resonancei?? with the audience ( Anderson, 2006 ) . To avoid this easy foreseeable yet hard to avoid trap, Anderson ( 2000 ) recommends that persons utilizing the auto-ethnographic method delve deep within themselves, lay bare the good and the bad of personal experiences, find the greater significance in experiences, seek out the ways in which those experiences reflect ( or doni??t reflect ) the experiences of others, and convey that contemplation into a public sphere, whether that be a talk hall, web log, newssheet, academic paper, or schoolroom.

Because I am a women’s rightist pedagogue, I have a particular involvement in how teaching method can be used to dispute the dominant cultural narrative and promote societal justness and equality among scholars i?? both indoors and out of the schoolroom. Auto-ethnography, because it combines the analysis of the personal with a review of the cultural context, can function as a tool in critical women’s rightist teaching method, assisting scholars make sense of their lives and their experiences within a broader societal context every bit good as fiting them with schemes to work towards alter in themselves and in their communities. i??Critical teaching method, folded into and through public presentation ( car ) descriptive anthropology efforts to interrupt and deconstruct these cultural and methodological patterns performatively in the name of a more merely, democratic, and classless societyi?? ( Denzin, 2006, p. 333 ) .

Indeed, auto-ethnography can be argued to be a critical constituent of critical teaching method with its ends of advancing societal justness and progressive alteration. Auto-ethnography, where the personal becomes the political in the public kingdom, can be seen as a signifier of i??moral discourse, i?? naming the broader civilization to acknowledge its weaknesss, its unearned privilege, and its immorality and inhuman treatment and to alter for the better ( Denzin, 2003, p. 258 ) . It is for these really grounds why auto-ethnography is an of import pedagogical tool for turn toing colored beliefs around weight and blubber ; auto-ethnography helps the storyteller-educator cut through the thin privilege, inhuman treatment in the name of i??concerns about your wellness, i?? and fatness as a mark of immorality discourse that are prevailing in the Western cultural narration.

Denzin ( 2003 ) has argued that as pedagogues i??it is our duty to do our voices heard, and we must make this for future generationsi?? ( p. 259 ) . This vision guides my usage of auto-ethnography in my educational patterns. While I have non yet conducted any formal research on my auto-ethnographic educational patterns, I believe they have the potency within them to take to alterations in how people view fat persons because i??stories of lived experience are particularly effectual because they are reliable, credible, and rememberablei?? ( Rossiter & A ; Clark, 2007, p. 165 ) .

Here, I will analyze one educational activity I use to assist scholars go toing my weight prejudice workshop make connexions between the personal narrative of person they know and ( hopefully ) regard and cultural narrations stating them it is appropriate to know apart against fat people. The scholars in this workshop, so far, have been members of my campus community and include undergraduate pupils, fellow module, and staff members. By sing the cognitive disagreement that this activity frequently produces, many of the scholars go on to at least inquiry why it is that fat people are treated negatively. I begin by set uping the social connexion:

I thought approximately supplying you with a batch of statistics and facts about how weight prejudice impacts fat work forces and adult females in the United States. But, truly who cares? It is all right in this state to be biased against fat people. After all, we as a society are merely concerned! I mean, being fat is bad for your wellness. Doni??t you know that? Why doni??t you merely halt eating? Bing fat besides looks bad. Fat people are sooooooo ugly. And smelly. How daring you be fat at me in public! How daring you sit following to me on an aeroplane! I doni??t care if you can set both place weaponries down ; you are still touching my leg, and fat is contagious. But truly, we are merely concerned about your wellness. ( Brown, 2010, p. 2 )

This gap provides a minute of embarrassment for many of the attendants ; several persons have told me after a workshop that they antecedently had thought many of the negative statements themselves. This is a disorienting quandary for many of the hearers, puting the phase so that they can hear an alternate narration to the social narrative that disparages fat people. In the workshop, I so challenge the perceptual experience that many people have that favoritism against fat people is non all that prevalent in society: i??The above might sound like exaggeration, but read the remarks subdivision of any article on fleshiness published at, say, the Chicago Tribune online or the Chronicle of Higher Education online, and you will read remarks similar to those abovei?? ( Brown, 2010, p. 2 ) .

Then I challenge the dominate cultural narration that supports the i??rightnessi?? of favoritism against fat people: i??And in some instances, such statements might be true. But that truly doesni??t affair. What matters is that being concerned about person, even if that concern is echt or that concern is warranted, does non give any of us the right to handle a fat individual like they are less than a human being.i??

Finally, I demonstrate that favoritism against fat people happens to person they are listening to at that exact minute:

I doni??t needfully want to alter your head about fat people. I merely want you to believe a spot. I want you to hear the experiences of a fat individual you know, a fat individual that some of you really like, and to hear how those experiences have impacted my life. After you have heard these narratives, I hope that you will believe about them. I hope that your thought will take you to waver a spot before you say something to a fat individual that could be construed as hurtful ( even if you have the best of purposes in stating it ) . I hope that you, if you are a fat individual yourself, will recognize that you are non entirely in experiencing as if the universe sometimes wants you to merely vanish. And if you are a fat individual who has thought negative things about themselves, I hope you realize that you are non entirely. It is difficult to believe about ourselves in a positive visible radiation in a universe that, honestly, hates us. For our ain good. ( Brown, 2010, p. 2 ) .

Finally, I tell a narrative:

I want to state you a narrative. The first twelvemonth of my masteri??s plan at Harvard, I was lucky to be assigned a college-owned flat to populate in. It was on the 3rd floor of a three-floor walk-up. But the 2nd twelvemonth, I didni??t win at the lodging lottery and sought out a roomie state of affairs. I looked at one topographic point near Davis Square, a location I adored. It was on the 2nd floor of a three-floor walk-up. I loved it. I even liked the roomie, but she called the following twenty-four hours and told me she had rented to person else. A month subsequently, I ran into her on the T and she wanted to cognize if I had found a topographic point. When I told her I had, she said, i??Oh, good. I truly liked you, but I merely couldni??t imagine that person like you could perchance desire to populate in a topographic point where you had to mount stairs.i?? ( Brown, 2010, p. 3 ) .

After listening to several different narratives such as the one described above, attendants at the workshop participate in a treatment session. The temper of the session is frequently drab. The narratives are hard to hear, and more hard to grok to the full, particularly since they frequently evoke an emotional response in the hearers in add-on to disputing their worldviews. Yet, the potency for larning through this workshop is great because i??i??meaningful acquisition requires a relationship among the scholar, the instructor, and the contenti?? ( Palmer as cited in Rossiter & A ; Clark, 2007, p. 165 ) . As the storyteller-teacher who has lived the content of the narrative she is stating and has a relationship with the listener-learners, I can utilize auto-ethnography to assist them through that intending doing procedure.

Decision

Storytelling and auto-ethnography provide potentially powerful educational tools that can supply a accelerator for transformational acquisition in hearers, assisting the scholar challenge the predominating anti-obesity cultural narration and, finally, shed their damaging attitudes against fat persons. While research on the ability of storytelling to alter weight prejudice among scholars is still in the early phases, the nucleus schemes of storytelling and auto-ethnography and my ain experiences utilizing them as anti- prejudice instruction tools make full me with a great sense of hope that if we tell adequate narratives and use those narratives to dispute the societal position quo, the universe will alter for the better. i??Hope, as a signifier of teaching method, confronts and interrogates cynicism, the belief that alteration is non possible, or is excessively dearly-won. Hope works from fury to lovei?? ( Denzin, 2003, p. 264 ) .

The narrative of how storytelling and auto-ethnography can be used as effectual tools to alter peoplei??s attitudes about fat persons is, basically, my ain narrative as a research worker and pedagogue. Before I learned about the power of storytelling and narrative acquisition, I was filled with a great trade of defeat: defeat that my lived experiences would ne’er be heard, that the significances I found in the experiences of my life would hold no value to anyone but myself. As a consequence of my ain acquisition, I can work from fury to love, and I can assist others walk that same way. Now that I have shared my narrative with you, the reader, what have you learned and how will you use it? The following chapter of the narrative belongs to you.