Date of Award

Spring 5-4-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Expressive Therapies

Major

Expressive Therapies

First Advisor

Meg Chang

Second Advisor

Anna Hazen

Abstract

The pervasiveness of anti-fat bias within American culture is growing due to the rise in popularity of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1s) and the current United States administration’s discriminatory views towards minority groups. With Dance/Movement Therapy (DMT) being a body-based modality, it is necessary to examine the available literature to discover the theoretical orientations that are being used when working with fat populations. Quantitative and qualitative studies from both international and United States-based sources were reviewed, and findings indicated that while both the medicalized view of fatness and the body acceptance-based view of fatness were employed, United States-based research most often used a body acceptance framework when working with fat populations while internationally based research mainly used a medicalized framework. There was limited literature available on DMT with fat populations specifically, so more research is needed to further uncover the theoretical orientations used by dance/movement therapists when working with this population.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

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