Fat is feminine: A qualitative study of how weight stigma is constructed among sexual minority men who use Grindr

Abstract

Why is weight stigma so potent among sexual minority men? We propose that sexual minority men may be more vulnerable to weight stigma because of factors not captured by existing measures – for instance, men's perception of fatness as less masculine and/or more feminine. To investigate, we qualitatively examined how 17 sexual minority men (Mage = 28.52, SDage = 1.63, range: 18–49) described fatness in their discussions of body ideals and appearance pressures. We generated two themes: (i) Masculinity is a currency that fat men have less of and (ii) Fatness is stigmatized or fetishized. Participants described appearing masculine (i.e., lean, muscular) as particularly valuable within the gay com..