PHILADELPHIA – Perceptions about body weight don’t stop at the scales anymore.

“Fat studies” is a growing interdisciplinary area of study at universities across the country, devoted to examining discrimination and stereotypes against the fat body and studying the collective experience of fat people in society.

And while no specific field of study exists at the University of Pennsylvania, both professors and graduate students have been exploring related issues.

Andrew Geier, a graduate student in experimental psychology, has done extensive research on existing biases against overweight people.

Penn’s Anthropology Department also offers a class, “Fat and Society,” that examines psychological and sociological issues concerning body image.

The study of these issues will hopefully “bring a balance back to an academic curriculum” that has traditionally lacked the overweight perspective, said Miriam Berg, president of the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination.

Berg said discrimination against fat people is a real issue in society, causing people to lose jobs, spots at universities and opportunities for health insurance.

“It needs to be combated,” she said.

The reason for the discrimination stems from the common belief that weight status is easily changeable, Geiers aid, adding that this is an “erroneous belief.”

And the number of people interested in fat studies is growing by the year.

The Popular Culture Association, a group that studies trends in media pop culture, opened an official section for fat studies at their national conference three years ago; the section has since served as a forum for presentations on relevant issues.

Stefanie Snider, a graduate student at the University of Southern California and the fat-studies area chair for PCA’s 2007 conference, said there will be more fat-studies panels than in the past.

“The number of people interested in fat studies is obviously expanding, and the work they are doing is incredibly diverse,” she wrote in an e-mail, adding that presenters come from fields such as sociology, psychology and literature.

And in a society “preoccupied with size,” fat studies is probably only going to continue to grow in popularity, said Lynn Bartholome, former president of the PCA.

But Geier said he hopes if fat studies becomes institutionalized, it will not “look to further policy rather than do academic research,” which he said is often the fate of “newer, less-traditional departments.”