Is Fat the New Black?
Jezebel has a recent post entitled "If You're Fat-Phobic, You're Also an Ignorant Bigoted Idiot." Ask yourself, are you fatist? Do you form negative views of someone if they are overweight? People today openly make disparaging comments about overweight people just as they once openly humiliated African Americans.
The Jezebel post starts with the definition of bigot:
big•ot (noun): A person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance
Admit it, many of us group all overweight people together and make unfounded assumptions about them. This is bigotry. We may assume they are fat because they are lazy and eat junk food. But, this is not accurate. Many people are overweight for other reasons. Jezebel points to Steven N. Blair who is one of the leading experts on the health benefits of exercise and who is an avid runner. But he is also a short fat guy. So there you go, you can't make assumptions about someone due to their weight. People are fat for different reasons including depression, medication, disease, eating disorders etc...
Statistics show that most people in America struggle with their weight. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) found that 32.7 percent of U.S. adults are overweight, 34.3 percent are obese and 5.9 percent are extremely obese. Since more a third of our population is obese, discrimination against the obese impacts millions of people.
Some states have employment discrimination laws that protect the obese and overweight. Years ago I handled a weight discrimination case that received world-wide attention. The case involved a woman who worked for a large milk company and the owner fired her for being too fat. The media went crazy over the case and articles appeared around the world and the case was featured on Court TV. In that case, we used a state law that prohibited disability discrimination and obesity was considered a disability under that state's law.
Discrimination against the obese is a serious problem but it is largely ignored. According to the Obesity Action Coalition, "obesity is highly stigmatized in our society. Overweight and obese individuals are vulnerable to negative bias, prejudice and discrimination in many different settings, including the workplace, educational institutions, health care facilities and even within interpersonal relationships."
Just as race discrimination was once socially acceptable in America, weight bias is now accepted. For more information of this subject see the Obesity Action Coalition site.
