Portrayal of overweight characters in children´s picture books

Sammanfattning: Stereotyping and stigma of overweight people generate ostracism and also leads to health issues such as mental and/or physical illness. Earlier research shows that stereotypes in children´s books have a negative impact on children. The following study intends to analyze how overweight characters are portrayed in children's picture books. With a quantitative and qualitative content analysis this study presents what kind of characteristics and attributes the overweight characters obtain in the picture books. The picture book’s target group had an age range from three to nine years. The results show that there is an underrepresentation of overweight characters in children's picture books. Findings in the qualitative analysis indicated that overweight characters were predominantly portrayed with negative attributes such as being lazy, loud and unintelligent. Characters presented with positive attributes in the books were portrayed as humoristic, but at the same time also laughed at.