Does Size Matter? Anti-Fat Bias Role-Play Exercise

Although often denied or unnoticed, anti-fat bias exists in society and organizations. To battle anti-fat bias, educators must proactively address it in management education. Despite clear evidence of negative outcomes from stigma and stereotypes experienced by fat individuals, interventions remain limited. This experiential exercise uses role-play to challenge students’ explicit and implicit anti-fat biases, suitable for undergraduate, graduate, and executive education settings. Despite evidence of negative outcomes of the stigma and stereotypes experienced by fat persons, there has been little and nascent work done to disrupt the bias and reduce it. Our roles as management educators provide the opportunity to expand the notion of who deserves social justice and what it means to support body size equity. In this exercise, we present an experiential learning experience using role-play that educators can use to interrupt students’, undergraduate and graduate, explicit and implicit anti-fat biases.