Conceptualising Fatness within HCI: A Call for Fat Liberation

Title of the Paper

Conceptualising Fatness within HCI: A Call for Fat Liberation

Paper Information

• Subject Area: Interaction between Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and anti-fat bias
• Keywords: Anti-Fat Bias, Design Justice, Fat Liberation, Digital Harms, Literature Review

Research Background and Issues

• Identified Problems and Challenges

  1. Anti-fat bias is a pervasive and deeply ingrained issue in Western societies, characterized by stereotypes such as laziness, unhealthiness, and greed, which impact various domains including healthcare, law, employment, and social welfare.
  2. Digital systems and HCI design may inadvertently or intentionally reproduce, exacerbate, and repurpose these biases through data-driven mechanisms, such as the widespread use of Body Mass Index (BMI). Existing research primarily focuses on the impact of social media on individual self-image, with limited attention to systemic biases.
  3. Mainstream design approaches often prioritize legally protected characteristics (e.g., race, gender, age) while neglecting the systemic and culturally embedded discrimination of anti-fat bias.

• Significance of the Research

  1. The stigmatization of obesity within the dominant medical framework exacerbates social inequalities and reinforces biases in mainstream health perspectives.
  2. Fat Liberation offers a perspective to resist anti-fat bias and introduces a new dimension to design justice.

• Motivation and Related Work The authors note that while existing HCI research addresses issues such as gender, colonial design justice, and aging, it has largely overlooked design challenges related to fat bodies. This study aims to integrate "Fat Studies" with HCI to establish an agenda for reducing anti-fat bias in digital environments.

Proposed Solutions

• Proposed Solutions

  1. Introduce an interdisciplinary research framework that incorporates the concept of "Fat Liberation" into HCI to examine implicit mechanisms of fat stigmatization in existing digital technologies.
  2. Include the voices of fat-bodied users in design processes, redefine the relationship between weight and health, and challenge the health-centric design paradigm.
  3. Advocate for inclusive expansive design that transcends singular goal-oriented approaches and accommodates diverse user needs.

• Innovative Contributions

  1. Establish a novel connection between Fat Liberation and Design Justice, pioneering the integration of Fat Studies into HCI.
  2. Provide a multidisciplinary perspective on the interaction between obesity and technology, utilizing an anti-fat bias evaluation framework to challenge BMI-based health paradigms.
  3. Define the concept of "expansive design," which emphasizes personalized and feedback-driven design approaches.

• Implementation Steps

  1. Conduct narrative and scoping literature reviews to explore existing HCI and Fat Studies research, categorizing primary interaction mechanisms.
  2. Use weight-related keywords (e.g., BMI, obesity, fat stigma) to search the ACM Digital Library and analyze how fat bodies are conceptualized.
  3. Develop an interdisciplinary collaboration framework that integrates the perspectives of fat-bodied users and HCI researchers into design processes.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Outcomes

  1. Through progressive literature research, it was found that HCI design predominantly views fat bodies as problems to be solved, with limited focus on addressing anti-fat bias.
  2. Proposed an academic research agenda that categorizes digital technology domains potentially affected by anti-fat bias and outlines a framework for potential harms, including representational harm, distributive harm, service quality harm, interpersonal harm, and systemic societal harm.

• Comparison with Existing Solutions

  • Existing research tends to focus on health optimization, reinforcing weight stigmatization, whereas this paper advocates for dignity and diversity, moving away from the limitations of health/weight-loss-oriented approaches.
  • This paper enriches the broader framework of design justice by decoupling weight from health definitions and improving existing user participation mechanisms.

• Experimental or Evaluation Results

  1. Literature review reveals that current HCI research on weight predominantly centers around BMI or weight control.
  2. Apart from a few studies describing weight stigma or non-mainstream bodies, most literature does not reconsider fat body issues from the perspectives of systemic bias or design justice.

• Limitations and Future Directions

  1. Limitations: The study lacks empirical experimental data, relying primarily on literature reviews and theoretical analysis; Fat Liberation remains underexplored in academic discourse, with limited foundational research available.
  2. Future Directions:
     • Develop participatory design methods involving fat-bodied users to advance design justice practices towards diversity and interdisciplinarity;
     • Expand research on mechanisms of anti-fat bias reproduction in AI-generated technologies (e.g., generative AI and large language models);
     • Investigate how Western biases are extended to other cultures through technology in a global context.