Compulsory Fitness and Nation Building: Anti-Fat Bias in Canadian Human Rights Law and Physical Education Curriculum

This Major Research Paper (MRP) investigates the roots of anti-fat bias in Physical Education. Divided into three distinct chapters, this MRP begins by outlining current themes and understanding related to fat-bias in Physical Education through a scoping review of available academic literature. With the consideration that the Canadian public education system is funded by and overseen by the provincial government, the second chapter considers how fat discrimination is understood in the context of legal discrimination in Canada in an effort to better understand the vulnerability that students are subjected to when discriminated against in an educational setting. The last chapter of this MRP explores the grade 9 Physical Education curriculum for the 10 Canadian provinces through open-coding of anti-fat bias and neoliberal/citizenship rhetoric.