‘How can you be friends with that fatty?’: The othered body in narratives on weight‐based bullying

Abstract

Weight bias in educational settings can lead to bullying and have a severe negative impact on the mental well‐being and educational experiences of school children. Indeed, extensive research has shown that children who are labelled overweight are more likely to be victims of school bullying and that weight‐based bullying can lead to loss of self‐esteem, lower self‐confidence, social isolation, higher levels of anxiety and the development of psychosomatic issues. In this article, we utilise Butler's concepts of performativity and othering to analyse three written narrative accounts of weight‐based bullying in schools, published in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. In doing so, we adopt a narrative approach to not only investigate how the narrators depict the bullying they were subjected to in their childhood and the effects it had on them, but also how they position themselves in their narratives. Two themes, ‘performative othering’ and ‘a changeable body’, are identified in the narratives. These demonstrate how the narrators were co‐constructed as different, othered and dehumanised, and how the normative cruelties to which they were subjected as children served to police their corporeality in line with societal ideals. Taken together, our findings point to the importance of listening to the stories of those subjected to bullying and not only addressing bullying in terms of the negative actions taken, but also in relation to broader societal norms.