PHYSICAL EDUCATION, SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THE BODY IN ADOLESCENCE AND FATPHOBIC BULLYING

Abstract

This article is an excerpt from a dissertation for the Master's Degree in Education and Culture at the Federal University of Pará, whose objective is to investigate the relationship between the social representation of the body and  fatphobic bullying in Physical Education classes at the Rui Barbosa School in Tucuruí-PA. Obesity rates in children and adolescents have increased significantly and this makes us think that this public needs attention and care at school, since it is there that they spend part of their time and end up suffering from some prejudices. This is a research with a qualitative approach that aims to understand the subjective side of the object of study, analyzed from individual experiences, through semi-structured interviews, carried out with students from the school. According to the authors cited in the research, such as Merleau-Ponty (1992) and Moscovici (2003), society imposes beauty standards, resulting in the imperative of conforming human beings to these standards, and this directly affects the development of adolescents who do not conform to them. It is understood that there is a need to make the school curriculum more flexible to bodily differences, so education needs to be rethought, as prejudice and discrimination at school negatively affect the learning and development of these students.