Alexandra A Brewis
Biographic Data
| ID | 81801 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alexandra A Brewis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alexandra A |
| FAMILY NAME | Brewis |
| SIGNATURE | BREWIS A A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Auckland |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 236 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Fat talk: A citizen sociolinguistic approach
Fat talk, or self-disparaging talk about the body, is common among US women and increasingly reported for men. Despite its commonality, this unique genre of talk is difficult to access using traditional sociolinguistic methods both because it is brief and because it arises spontaneously in casual conversation. Here we present a new method of data collection accomplished by collaborating with citizen sociolinguists to collect spontaneous fat talk …
Influence of weight concerns on breastfeeding: Evidence from the Norwegian mother and child cohort study
OBJECTIVES: High body mass index (BMI) often predicts truncated breastfeeding, although why is unclear. We test a proposed mediating role of body concerns on breastfeeding initiation and child's age at weaning using longitudinal data for 55,522 mothers from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa). METHODS: A linear regression-based mediation analysis with bootstrapping estimates the indirect effects of BMI on breastfeeding decisions (e…
Weight Shame, Social Connection, and Depressive Symptoms in Late Adolescence
Child and adolescent obesity is increasingly the focus of interventions, because it predicts serious disease morbidity later in life. However, social environments that permit weight-related stigma and body shame may make weight control and loss more difficult. Rarely do youth obesity interventions address these complexities. Drawing on repeated measures in a large sample ( N = 1443) of first-year (freshman), campus-resident university students ac…
Employment and weight status: The extreme case of body concern in South Korea
Moral Biocitizenship: Discursively Managing Food and the Body after Bariatric Surgery
In the U.S. large bodies are associated with disorder and lack of control. Reclaiming control can take various forms. Drawing on interviews with eight men who have undergone bariatric surgery, we analyze the specific ways in which they discursively retake control of food, their eating habits, and ultimately their bodies. They accomplish this in two ways: 1) by both (re)categorizing food and transforming the way they consume food, the men linguist…
Weight, gender, and depressive symptoms in S outh K orea
OBJECTIVES: Obesity consistently predicts depression risk, but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Body concerns are proposed as key. South Korean society is characterized by extremely high levels of explicit weight stigma, possibly the highest globally. Using cross-sectional Korean 2014 National Health Examination Survey (KNHANES) data, we test this proposition in a nationally representative sample of South Korean adults (N = 5,632)…
Body image mediates the depressive effects of weight gain in new mothers, particularly for women already obese: Evidence from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study
These findings support a role for body image concerns in the etiology of depressive symptoms during the transition to motherhood. The findings suggest body image interventions before or during pregnancy could help reduce risks of depression in the early postpartum period and well beyond
Weight-related stigma is a significant psychosocial stressor in developing countries: Evidence from Guatemala
Obesity: Cultural and Biological Factors
Translating human biology (introduction to special issue)
OBJECTIVES: Introducing a special issue on "Translating Human Biology," we pose two basic questions: Is human biology addressing the most critical challenges facing our species? How can the processes of translating our science be improved and innovated? METHODS: We analyze articles published in American Journal of Human Biology from 2004-2013, and find there is very little human biological consideration of issues related to most of the core human…
Stigma and the perpetuation of obesity
A World of Suffering? Biocultural Approaches to Fat Stigma in the Global Contexts of the Obesity Epidemic
Even as obesity rates rise, weight-related stigma remains widespread in the United States and leads to many documented social, economic, and health disparities. These include lower wages, less academic achievement, social exclusion as early as childhood, psychosocial stress, depression, and additional weight gain. Recent research documents the proliferation of antifat beliefs across the globe, but we know little about how this fat stigma varies a…
Population differences in the relationship between height, weight, and adiposity: An application of burton's model
The study of human variation in adiposity and lean mass is important for understanding core processes in human evolution, and is increasingly a public health concern as the “obesity epidemic” expands globally. The dominant measure of population differences in adiposity is Body Mass Index (BMI), which suffers from systematic biases across populations due to variation in the relationship between true body fat, height and weight. Here we develop sim…
Explicit versus implicit fat‐stigma
OBJECTIVES: Human biologists are increasingly engaging with current global trends toward obesity. However, little is considered about how variation in cultural views of "fat" might shape the biology of obesity, such as through pathways related to socially induced stress. Recent research indicates elevated levels of explicit fat-stigma in middle income nations, suggesting potentially high levels of psychosocial stress around "being fat." We use th…
Obesity and human biology: Toward a global perspective
Overweight bodies will soon be the modal human form. In this special issue of American Journal of Human Biology , authors use varied approaches to examine the expansion of obesity globally, particularly what shape variability in people's vulnerability to weight gain and its negative effects. The contributions together highlight how complex pathways between biology and health related to excess weight are strongly medicated, at multiple levels, by …
Hruschka et al. Respond
We thank Dr. Bartle for pointing out that clustering of obesity in families would be expected given shared genetics. Of course, we would also expect that common home environment plays a role.1 Our key finding that shared social norms only weakly account for shared body size in a sample including both family and friends leaves room for developing a number of plausible alternative hypotheses for the social bases of obesity clustering, including som…
Shared Norms and Their Explanation for the Social Clustering of Obesity
Objectives. We aimed to test the hypothesized role of shared body size norms in the social contagion of body size and obesity. Methods. Using data collected in 2009 from 101 women and 812 of their social ties in Phoenix, Arizona, we assessed the indirect effect of social norms on shared body mass index (BMI) measured in 3 different ways. Results. We confirmed Christakis and Fowler's basic finding that BMI and obesity do indeed cluster socially, b…
Vulnerability to fat-stigma in women's everyday relationships
Body Norms and Fat Stigma in Global Perspective
While slim-body ideals have spread globally in the last several decades, we know comparatively little of any concurrent proliferation of fat-stigmatizing beliefs. Using cultural surveys and body mass estimates collected from 680 adults from urban areas in 10 countries and territories, we test for cultural variation in how people conceptualize and stigmatize excess weight and obesity. Using consensus analysis of belief statements about obese and f…
Nonprescription Antibiotic Therapy: Cultural Models on Both Sides of the Counter and Both Sides of the Border
Antibiotic resistance is a global public health threat exacerbated by medically unwarranted or improper antibiotic use. Pharmacy counters at the U.S.-Mexico border provide an example of where lay decisions to use antibiotics in ways considered "risky" may be initiated and negotiated. We test how cultural and public health knowledge of antibiotics is distributed among pharmacy staff, local Mexican clients, and U.S. medical tourists in the borderto…
Does School, Compared to Home, Provide a Unique Adaptive Context for Children's ADHD-Associated Behaviors? A Cross-Cultural Test
Adaptive explanations of the high frequency of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in contemporary settings propose that the disorder represents otherwise normal behavioral strategies that become maladaptive in such evolutionarily novel environments as the formal school classroom. The authors use cross-cultural testing to assess whether classrooms are a uniquely maladaptive context for these behaviors when compared to home. The sample…
Population variation in children's behavioral symptomatology
Previous anthropological studies identified significant interpopulation consistencies in the frequency and symptoms of adult depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia. Tests of the degree of variation of such behavioral phenomena across contemporary populations are significant for the study of human evolution because universality or near universality suggests specific evolved aspects of human behavior. The aim of this research was to provide a preli…
Body image, body size, and Samoan ecological and individual modernization
Idealization of slim bodies is a powerful cultural value in economically advantaged Western societies, and this value appears to be taking global dimensions. To examine the relationship between increasing ecological and individual modernity and acculturation to slim ideals, Samoans living in three environments with different degrees of modernization (Samoa, American Samoa, Auckland) were compared on actual and perceptual measures of body size. Wo…
Sambia Sexual Culture: Essays from the Field
Sambia Sexual Culture: Essays from the Field. Gilbert Herdt. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1999. 327 pp
Population Dynamics of a Philippine Rain Forest People: The San Ildefonso Agta
Population Dynamics of. Philippine Rain Forest People: The San Ildefonso Agta. John D. Early and Thomas N. Headland. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.208 pp
Stigma and the perpetuation of obesity
Body Norms and Fat Stigma in Global Perspective
While slim-body ideals have spread globally in the last several decades, we know comparatively little of any concurrent proliferation of fat-stigmatizing beliefs. Using cultural surveys and body mass estimates collected from 680 adults from urban areas in 10 countries and territories, we test for cultural variation in how people conceptualize and stigmatize excess weight and obesity. Using consensus analysis of belief statements about obese and f…
Sambia Sexual Culture: Essays from the Field
Sambia Sexual Culture: Essays from the Field. Gilbert Herdt. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1999. 327 pp
Vulnerability to fat-stigma in women's everyday relationships
Shared Norms and Their Explanation for the Social Clustering of Obesity
Objectives. We aimed to test the hypothesized role of shared body size norms in the social contagion of body size and obesity. Methods. Using data collected in 2009 from 101 women and 812 of their social ties in Phoenix, Arizona, we assessed the indirect effect of social norms on shared body mass index (BMI) measured in 3 different ways. Results. We confirmed Christakis and Fowler's basic finding that BMI and obesity do indeed cluster socially, b…
Weight-related stigma is a significant psychosocial stressor in developing countries: Evidence from Guatemala
Population differences in the relationship between height, weight, and adiposity: An application of burton's model
The study of human variation in adiposity and lean mass is important for understanding core processes in human evolution, and is increasingly a public health concern as the “obesity epidemic” expands globally. The dominant measure of population differences in adiposity is Body Mass Index (BMI), which suffers from systematic biases across populations due to variation in the relationship between true body fat, height and weight. Here we develop sim…
Fat talk: A citizen sociolinguistic approach
Fat talk, or self-disparaging talk about the body, is common among US women and increasingly reported for men. Despite its commonality, this unique genre of talk is difficult to access using traditional sociolinguistic methods both because it is brief and because it arises spontaneously in casual conversation. Here we present a new method of data collection accomplished by collaborating with citizen sociolinguists to collect spontaneous fat talk …
A World of Suffering? Biocultural Approaches to Fat Stigma in the Global Contexts of the Obesity Epidemic
Even as obesity rates rise, weight-related stigma remains widespread in the United States and leads to many documented social, economic, and health disparities. These include lower wages, less academic achievement, social exclusion as early as childhood, psychosocial stress, depression, and additional weight gain. Recent research documents the proliferation of antifat beliefs across the globe, but we know little about how this fat stigma varies a…
Nonprescription Antibiotic Therapy: Cultural Models on Both Sides of the Counter and Both Sides of the Border
Antibiotic resistance is a global public health threat exacerbated by medically unwarranted or improper antibiotic use. Pharmacy counters at the U.S.-Mexico border provide an example of where lay decisions to use antibiotics in ways considered "risky" may be initiated and negotiated. We test how cultural and public health knowledge of antibiotics is distributed among pharmacy staff, local Mexican clients, and U.S. medical tourists in the borderto…
Moral Biocitizenship: Discursively Managing Food and the Body after Bariatric Surgery
In the U.S. large bodies are associated with disorder and lack of control. Reclaiming control can take various forms. Drawing on interviews with eight men who have undergone bariatric surgery, we analyze the specific ways in which they discursively retake control of food, their eating habits, and ultimately their bodies. They accomplish this in two ways: 1) by both (re)categorizing food and transforming the way they consume food, the men linguist…
Population Dynamics of a Philippine Rain Forest People: The San Ildefonso Agta
Population Dynamics of. Philippine Rain Forest People: The San Ildefonso Agta. John D. Early and Thomas N. Headland. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.208 pp
The Accuracy of Attractive-Body-Size Judgment
Modeling the prehistoric Maori population
Skeletal and comparative evidence of mortality is combined with fertility estimates for the precontact Maori population of New Zealand to determine the implied rate of precontact population growth. This rate is found to be too low to populate New Zealand within the time constraints of its prehistoric sequence, the probable founding population size, and the probable population size at contact. Rates of growth necessary to populate New Zealand with…
Does School, Compared to Home, Provide a Unique Adaptive Context for Children's ADHD-Associated Behaviors? A Cross-Cultural Test
Adaptive explanations of the high frequency of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in contemporary settings propose that the disorder represents otherwise normal behavioral strategies that become maladaptive in such evolutionarily novel environments as the formal school classroom. The authors use cross-cultural testing to assess whether classrooms are a uniquely maladaptive context for these behaviors when compared to home. The sample…
Sex ratios at birth in a Micronesian atoll population
The recent suggestion that typically masculinized sex ratios at birth in Micronesian populations may be related to a distinct "Micronesian pattern" of life-course coital behavior is applied to data on the sex ratio of livebirths on Butaritari Atoll in Kiribati. The data show that sex ratios on Butaritari are highly masculinized and do not vary significantly with changes in maternal age. However, there is a discernible relationship between the len…
Modeling the prehistoric Maori population
Skeletal and comparative evidence of mortality is combined with fertility estimates for the precontact Maori population of New Zealand to determine the implied rate of precontact population growth. This rate is found to be too low to populate New Zealand within the time constraints of its prehistoric sequence, the probable founding population size, and the probable population size at contact. Rates of growth necessary to populate New Zealand with…
Sex ratios at birth in a Micronesian atoll population
The recent suggestion that typically masculinized sex ratios at birth in Micronesian populations may be related to a distinct "Micronesian pattern" of life-course coital behavior is applied to data on the sex ratio of livebirths on Butaritari Atoll in Kiribati. The data show that sex ratios on Butaritari are highly masculinized and do not vary significantly with changes in maternal age. However, there is a discernible relationship between the len…
Sex ratios at birth in Micronesia: Reply to James
In response to comments of William H. James on the authors' articles, it is stated that Micronesian populations are now and have been in the past characteristically highly masculinized at birth (i.e., secondary sex ratios [SSR] of over 108-110). It is fascinating to examine how this finding may reflect microevolutionary change in this island setting. Aspects of reproductive behavior in Micronesia were examined for clues to proximate/remote mechan…
Coital rates, sex‐selective infanticide, and sex ratios at birth: A reply to James
In response to Jamess remarks concerning their article on sex ratios in Micronesia the authors reply that there is no evidence that sex-selective infanticide was ever practiced by the native populations of Butaritari and Guam. There is ample historical and ethnographic evidence to the contrary in the Mariana Islands and Butaritari. Historical accounts begin in 1602 with the comments of Fray Juan Pobre de Zamora who observed the exceptional affect…
Population Dynamics of a Philippine Rain Forest People: The San Ildefonso Agta
Population Dynamics of. Philippine Rain Forest People: The San Ildefonso Agta. John D. Early and Thomas N. Headland. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.208 pp
The Accuracy of Attractive-Body-Size Judgment
Body image, body size, and Samoan ecological and individual modernization
Idealization of slim bodies is a powerful cultural value in economically advantaged Western societies, and this value appears to be taking global dimensions. To examine the relationship between increasing ecological and individual modernity and acculturation to slim ideals, Samoans living in three environments with different degrees of modernization (Samoa, American Samoa, Auckland) were compared on actual and perceptual measures of body size. Wo…
Sambia Sexual Culture: Essays from the Field
Sambia Sexual Culture: Essays from the Field. Gilbert Herdt. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1999. 327 pp
Population variation in children's behavioral symptomatology
Previous anthropological studies identified significant interpopulation consistencies in the frequency and symptoms of adult depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia. Tests of the degree of variation of such behavioral phenomena across contemporary populations are significant for the study of human evolution because universality or near universality suggests specific evolved aspects of human behavior. The aim of this research was to provide a preli…
Does School, Compared to Home, Provide a Unique Adaptive Context for Children's ADHD-Associated Behaviors? A Cross-Cultural Test
Adaptive explanations of the high frequency of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in contemporary settings propose that the disorder represents otherwise normal behavioral strategies that become maladaptive in such evolutionarily novel environments as the formal school classroom. The authors use cross-cultural testing to assess whether classrooms are a uniquely maladaptive context for these behaviors when compared to home. The sample…
Nonprescription Antibiotic Therapy: Cultural Models on Both Sides of the Counter and Both Sides of the Border
Antibiotic resistance is a global public health threat exacerbated by medically unwarranted or improper antibiotic use. Pharmacy counters at the U.S.-Mexico border provide an example of where lay decisions to use antibiotics in ways considered "risky" may be initiated and negotiated. We test how cultural and public health knowledge of antibiotics is distributed among pharmacy staff, local Mexican clients, and U.S. medical tourists in the borderto…
Shared Norms and Their Explanation for the Social Clustering of Obesity
Objectives. We aimed to test the hypothesized role of shared body size norms in the social contagion of body size and obesity. Methods. Using data collected in 2009 from 101 women and 812 of their social ties in Phoenix, Arizona, we assessed the indirect effect of social norms on shared body mass index (BMI) measured in 3 different ways. Results. We confirmed Christakis and Fowler's basic finding that BMI and obesity do indeed cluster socially, b…
Vulnerability to fat-stigma in women's everyday relationships
Body Norms and Fat Stigma in Global Perspective
While slim-body ideals have spread globally in the last several decades, we know comparatively little of any concurrent proliferation of fat-stigmatizing beliefs. Using cultural surveys and body mass estimates collected from 680 adults from urban areas in 10 countries and territories, we test for cultural variation in how people conceptualize and stigmatize excess weight and obesity. Using consensus analysis of belief statements about obese and f…
Explicit versus implicit fat‐stigma
OBJECTIVES: Human biologists are increasingly engaging with current global trends toward obesity. However, little is considered about how variation in cultural views of "fat" might shape the biology of obesity, such as through pathways related to socially induced stress. Recent research indicates elevated levels of explicit fat-stigma in middle income nations, suggesting potentially high levels of psychosocial stress around "being fat." We use th…
Obesity and human biology: Toward a global perspective
Overweight bodies will soon be the modal human form. In this special issue of American Journal of Human Biology , authors use varied approaches to examine the expansion of obesity globally, particularly what shape variability in people's vulnerability to weight gain and its negative effects. The contributions together highlight how complex pathways between biology and health related to excess weight are strongly medicated, at multiple levels, by …
Hruschka et al. Respond
We thank Dr. Bartle for pointing out that clustering of obesity in families would be expected given shared genetics. Of course, we would also expect that common home environment plays a role.1 Our key finding that shared social norms only weakly account for shared body size in a sample including both family and friends leaves room for developing a number of plausible alternative hypotheses for the social bases of obesity clustering, including som…
Population differences in the relationship between height, weight, and adiposity: An application of burton's model
The study of human variation in adiposity and lean mass is important for understanding core processes in human evolution, and is increasingly a public health concern as the “obesity epidemic” expands globally. The dominant measure of population differences in adiposity is Body Mass Index (BMI), which suffers from systematic biases across populations due to variation in the relationship between true body fat, height and weight. Here we develop sim…
Stigma and the perpetuation of obesity
A World of Suffering? Biocultural Approaches to Fat Stigma in the Global Contexts of the Obesity Epidemic
Even as obesity rates rise, weight-related stigma remains widespread in the United States and leads to many documented social, economic, and health disparities. These include lower wages, less academic achievement, social exclusion as early as childhood, psychosocial stress, depression, and additional weight gain. Recent research documents the proliferation of antifat beliefs across the globe, but we know little about how this fat stigma varies a…
Obesity: Cultural and Biological Factors
Translating human biology (introduction to special issue)
OBJECTIVES: Introducing a special issue on "Translating Human Biology," we pose two basic questions: Is human biology addressing the most critical challenges facing our species? How can the processes of translating our science be improved and innovated? METHODS: We analyze articles published in American Journal of Human Biology from 2004-2013, and find there is very little human biological consideration of issues related to most of the core human…
Body image mediates the depressive effects of weight gain in new mothers, particularly for women already obese: Evidence from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study
These findings support a role for body image concerns in the etiology of depressive symptoms during the transition to motherhood. The findings suggest body image interventions before or during pregnancy could help reduce risks of depression in the early postpartum period and well beyond
Weight-related stigma is a significant psychosocial stressor in developing countries: Evidence from Guatemala
Weight, gender, and depressive symptoms in S outh K orea
OBJECTIVES: Obesity consistently predicts depression risk, but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Body concerns are proposed as key. South Korean society is characterized by extremely high levels of explicit weight stigma, possibly the highest globally. Using cross-sectional Korean 2014 National Health Examination Survey (KNHANES) data, we test this proposition in a nationally representative sample of South Korean adults (N = 5,632)…
Medicine (18 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Eating Disorders and Behaviors (13 works) · Demography (12 works) · Obesity and Health Practices (12 works) · Obesity (11 works) · Psychiatry (10 works) · Obesity, Physical Activity, Diet (8 works) · Population (8 works)