Personal account:

When I was a young child, I was medically overweight. I ate a diet made up of mostly

mashed potatoes, bologna, and cereal with ice cream on top. My diet consisted of very few

vegetables. I was a picky eater as a child, and I grew up with overweight parents. I remember my

dad would always have a can of Coke in his hand and the smell of recess peanut butter cups on

his breath. Currently, my dad has been diagnosed with diverticulitis and diabetes. he is no longer

allowed to eat the same way, but he tries to. When I was a child, every time I would go to the

pediatrician, I was told I had gained weight. I always got a lecture from my doctor about how I

needed to be eating more vegetables and that I would inevitably get a lot of health complications

later in life if I did not.

Growing up as an overweight child, many adults felt the need to have what I liked to call

sit-down-talks with me about how I needed to eat healthily and lose weight. I was nutritionally

and physically unhealthy at the time, and they thought I did not know that. In my experience, I

have concluded that adults are ashamed of overweight children. This is because they know that

young children are only ever seen as overweight as I was because their parents let them get that

way. As a child, you can not supply your own food and if the adults that raise you are

nutritionally uneducated, you have no one to really teach you about nutrition.

My parents, my dad especially, really liked to tell me I was fat, and that I was going to

get diabetes before I was 12. My school friends, my relatives, my cousin who was my age and

normal weight, my friend's parents, teachers, everybody seemed to think it was their

responsibility to tell me I was ‘fat’ and only getting ‘fatter’. People do say some messed up stuff

to overweight people, the mindset behind this is that they are a savior and they are helping
someone to be healthy. Fat shaming is real, and people try to justify some awful comments

because they "just want to help".

I think this left me as an unreasonably anxious adult. I get so stressed out now when

talking about anything surrounding my weight.

I did also do stuff later in life to lose weight unhealthily, it could be considered an eating

disorder and this was definitely influenced by the comments of the people around me. When I

did this people also had sit-down-talks with me about how I was losing too much weight too fast

so that did not help.

Now I'm just as anxious about the concept of wanting to lose weight because it’s like, it

feels like, admitting that I am trying to lose weight is admitting I know that I am 'fat'. I'm

ashamed and embarrassed in the weirdest way. I know I am not overweight / ‘fat’ in the same

way I was as a child and I am so much healthier, but the trauma and the memories and the stuff

people say still are in my brain.

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Interview Questions Plan / unconducted interview

Areas I want to address in my interview are diet culture/body shaming, positive and negative

aspects, misbeliefs, misconceptions, personal experience, cause and effect, eating disorders,

diets, dieter mentality

Types of eating disorders compared to diet/lifestyle mental frameworks

 What is the reason someone may body shame?

 What do they want to accomplish?

  What do they say they want to accomplish?

 What did they accomplish?

 How has someone been body shamed?

 Did it do what body shamers wanted?

 What did it do to the ashamed?

 Expose what happens in this exchange

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 How do people grow up?

 Believing in diet culture?

 Believing in fitness culture?

 Gym atmosphere?

 Gym bro mentality?

 People growing up with big body?

 Told every day they are killing themselves slowly with food?

 How did they grow up?

 Who do they hang out with?

 People with small bodies?

 Always assumed to be healthy and shamed for feeling bad about themselves?

 Large people are shamed for feeling good about themselves?

 Small people are dismissed when they feel bad about themselves?

 What causes eating disorders scientifically?

  What causes the interviewee's eating disorder?

 Why don't people just eat?

 Or why don't people just eat healthy.

 Why don't people just work out?

 Why don't people just themselves?

 Negative positivity, positive negativity?

 Doctor mentality?

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 Does weight = respect?

 Does your weight determine your value?

 does it affect your quality of life?

 does society's perception of how you should be treated according to your weight affect

your life more?

 Who do you hang out with?

 When throne into a culture where people are more talkative about stuff shocks you?

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Header.

Introrduction to the research problem/research question:

My reasurch problem is focusingon exposeing diet culture and body shameing. My reasurch

question is: is body shameing

Research interest and theoretical/analytical framework of my paper:

The interest of my paper is to bring awareness to unintentional and disguised body shaming.

Many people have body-shamed someone and may not have even known it, Diet culture has

normalized starvation idealization and positive body shaming to the point where many people

Method, sources, data.

The methods in which I will answer my question is to recall my personal account of experiencing

body shaming, I will also be conducting interviews to expose the matter more thoroughly.

Time frame and working process.

Preliminary structure of your term paper.

References/bibliography.

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Abandond material for old idea:

Critical Race Theory is best defined as an academic lens or theoretical framework. Using this

framework entails acknowledging racial disparities and imbalances while also questioning how

racial hierarchies are formed and sustained. In my research I interviewed with a former teacher

of mine, in this interview I proposed the question what is Critical Race Theory? According to my

source, “critical race theory is an understanding of how racism affects the current curriculum …

it is acknowledging our history of discrimination and considering that before [taking] in any

[new] information.” This essentially means it is a way of being aware of racism when addressing

a concept or topic. In a classroom setting, this may look like learning something in a textbook

and then questioning how the information that it presents may benefit a group of people or
exclude another group of people and may bring into question what information is missing.

Critical race theory when applied to education is seen as “employing multiple methods and

borrowing from diverse traditions in the law, sociology, ethnic studies, and other fields to

formulate a robust analysis of race and racism as a social, political, and economic system of

advantages and disadvantages accorded to social groups based on their skin color and status in a

clearly defined racial hierarchy.” according to Marvin Lynn and Laurence Parker in the article ‘

Critical Race Studies in Education: Examining a Decade of Research on U.S. Schools’, In this

article reference, the authors are making the point that critical race theory can apply to other

areas such as law and the economy but when applied to the k-12 education pipeline it furthers

understanding of historical and current events.

There is controversy surrounding the teaching and use of Critical Race Theory in classrooms

because in 2020 President Trump issued a prohibition of diversity and inclusion training that

consists of presumably misleading concepts, Critical Race Theory was believed to contribute.

This was when CRT started to become a popular conversation topic and misconceptions about

the theory began to spread. Many human rights associations opposed these campaigns. Although

the prohibition on diversity and inclusion training was lifted by President Biden, the resistance to

CRT has not ebbed; in America 5 republican states have implemented a ban on the teaching and

support of CRT in education, and one principal was fired due to his alleged support of CRT.

One reason “Some Republicans are opposed to CRT [is] because they believe it will cause White

children to feel guilty.” Said Hani Morgan in his article ‘Resisting the Movement to Ban Critical

Race Theory from Schools’, this has led to some bills being passed that ultimately mean that the

lessons taught in those schools will be altered.

 On one side of the argument of whether CRT should be taught in schools or not, there are

people who believe that critical race theory should not be banned from schools. The people that

think CRT should not be banned have an idea that “To ignore this reality is to belie the history of

this nation entirely. The development of a Critical Race Pedagogy in education demands that we

more thoroughly investigate this history while addressing the failure of our schools to adequately

educate racially subordinate youth in the United States”, as claimed by Marvin Lynn in the

article ‘Toward a Critical Race Pedagogy’. In this article, Marnin Lynn is saying that we need to

accept that historically our country’s leaders have not always been good people and our country

has not always been a good place for everyone to live in. he goes on to allude to the face that

schools don’t need the censorship that they have because it will bring up a blissfully ignorant

generation of people.

On the other side of this argument are people that say critical race theory should not be taught

in schools at all. Some of these people believe this because of their political affiliation. Critical

race theory “has been widely mischaracterized by conservative politicians as a movement to

indoctrinate white students with a liberal agenda”, said Eesha Pendharkar in the article ‘Do

Educators Think Critical Race Theory Should Be Taught in Class? We Asked’, explains that due

to what political party someone chooses, they may think critical race theory means something

other than what it does. Eesha Pendharkar included a poll in her article that gives statistics of

how educators responded to the question of if they think critical race theory should be taught in

schools, there were different responses when only an explanation of critical race theory was

given versus when the question only provided the term critical race theory with no explanation.

The results of this poll support the claim that educators are more likely to disagree with the

teaching of critical race theory when the term ‘critical race theory’ is connected to the ideas of
the theory and interestingly, educators were found more likely to agree that critical race theory

should be taught in schools when only given the ideas of the theory. In conclusion to this poll,

many people don’t really understand what critical race theory is and are mostly aware of it due to

the usage of the word in political debacles. According to my source Hani Morgan, “The fears

educators have about these new laws involve how they will distort history and punish teachers

for teaching the truth.” In this statement, Hani Morgan is saying teachers do not want to be

affiliated with critical race theory because they could face legal repercussions.

In one article by Spencer Lindquist, titled ‘L.A. Public Schools Host Critical Race Theorist to

'Challenge Whiteness'.’ Critical race theorists are addressed as having “simply constructed an

ideology around attributing some of the worst evils to whiteness”. In this article, the author

claims that critical race theory connects heinous historical events directly to white people, and

with the right context it could, but he implies future heinous events will automatically be

connected to white people no matter the actual correlation. This author expresses outrage at the

presence of critical race theorists teaching in public schools, as well as lesson plans that include

aspects derived from critical race theory. Spencer Lindquist describes critical race theory as

being corrosive and poses issues with presentations the school is associated with that in his own

words “teach [that] Thanksgiving is evil”. This shows the author’s fears of critical race theory

bringing up a generation that differs from the traditions he values, critical race theory could

support someone’s argument with this claim.

In comparison, both sides of the argument of whether critical race theory should be taught in

schools are scared for the future generation. The side of the argument that thinks critical race

theory should be taught in schools fears the future generation will be ignorant of the history of

their country. The side that argues critical race theory should not be taught in schools fears that
the next generation will grow up hating themselves and all white people. Both sides are mainly

concerned with how the future generation interprets the past. In my research, I conclude that

critical race theory should be taught in schools because it is a useful tool for exploring research.

Education should not be censored because it is not pleasant, and the future generation should

decide for themselves how to use critical race theory.