make one feel better about one's own physical appearance. Weight discrimination Weight stigma is present in multiple settings including healthcare, education, interpersonal situations, multiple media forms and outlets, and across many levels of employment. In the media Media, in general, overrepresents underweight individuals and underrepresents overweight individuals. One-third of women in television are classified as underweight, while only 5% of the general population falls into that category. Conversely, a study on over a thousand major television characters from 2003 identified 14% of female characters and 24% of male characters to be overweight, despite the real-world percentages being more than double those reported numbers. Even when overweight people are included in television, they often play minor, stereotyped roles. Nearly two thirds of the most popular children's movies contain negative portrayals of fat people, stereotyping them to be unintelligent, lazy, and evil. Fat television characters are more commonly seen eating and are less likely to be involved in romantic relationships compared to average weight television characters. Male characters are less commonly portrayed as having close friendships. In 2007, another analysis sampled 135 scenes featuring overweight individuals from popular television programs and movies and coded for anti-fat humor. The majority of anti-fat humor found was verbal and directed at the individual in their presence. Additionally, a relationship was found between audience laughter and a male character poking fun at a female character's body, but that same relationship wasn't there when it was a female character ridiculing a fat male. There is a great deal of empirical research to support the idea of thin ideal media, or the idea that the media tends to glorify and focus on thin actors and actresses, models, and other public figures while avoiding the use of overweight individuals. Puhl et al. (2009) also reviewed how in entertainment, news reporting, and advertising, media is a particularly potent source of weight stigma. News reports have blamed individuals who are overweight and obese for various societal issues including prices of fuel, global temperature trends, and precipitating weight gain among their peers. The news media repeatedly engages in the "Headless Fatties" phenomenon, coined by Charlotte Cooper, in which images and videos only depict overweight individuals as bodies by cropping out their heads. This objectification happens in 72% of all news reports on obesity. The University of California, Los Angeles, conducted a study that analyzed scientific research on weight and the news reports