Obesity Discrimination: Some Scary Statistics

Obesity discrimination has been called the last acceptable form of prejudice. Although eight out of ten Americans are overweight and 43 million are either obese or morbidly obese, people continue to make fat jokes, wear offensive t-shirts (“No Fat Chicks!”), and worse, discriminate against obese people in public, in healthcare, and on the job.

Public Obesity Discrimination

Obesity discrimination and sex discrimination often go hand in hand. Not too many people shout rude things at very large men, probably because they’ve discovered that it can be hazardous to their health. But let an obese woman walk by a group of men, and all too often they’ll start making comments about the shape and size of the woman’s body. Several women have reported being “rated” on a scale of one to ten as they walked past fraternity houses or construction sites.

Another subtle form of obesity discrimination is public scolding. Although it’s never well-mannered to correct a stranger’s behavior in public (unless the stranger is behaving illegally, in which case it’s best to leave the correction to the police), it’s especially offensive to tell someone how many calories or in a food or whether or not the food is good for them. I once had a woman tell me, “You’d have such a pretty face if you could just lose a few pounds.” I considered saying, “And you’d have such a great personality if you’d only keep your mouth shut,” but self control won out. Darn it.

Both male and female children report obesity discrimination in schools often starting as early as kindergarten. As one of my friends’ kids explained to me, one of the worst insults you can offer a classmate is to tease them about being in love with the fattest kid of the opposite sex.

Healthcare Obesity Discrimination

Obesity can put you at risk for other conditions such as diabetes, arthritis, etc. Certainly, doctors have an obligation to discuss risk factors for serious diseases with their patients. However, considering that 90 to 95% of dieters gain back all the weight they lose and more, how responsible is it for physicians to suggest patients go on a diet?

To put it another way, how would you feel if your doctor gave you an expensive pill that you knew would cause nasty side effects and then mentioned the pill had only a 5% success rate?

Additionally, most private insurance companies refuse to offer insurance to obese patients.

Employment Obesity Discrimination

Obesity discrimination is probably worse on the job than it is anywhere else. The American Obesity Association cited the following, alarming, statistics:

All other factors among candidates being equal, employers overwhelmingly described fat job applicatns in negative terms such as “socially inept” or “emotionally impaired.”

In another study, researchers found that weight played a greater part than any other factor—including age, sex, or race—in deciding whether or not a candidate would get a job.

Finally, asked to rate a list of potential employees, employers rated fat candidates more negatively than they rated mental patients or ex-felons.

And while there are laws to protect people who experience job discrimination based on sex, age, race, religion, and increasingly, sexual orientation, there are no laws in place to protect people who suffer obesity discrimination.

Whatever your weight, why not stop and make a promise now? Obesity discrimination ends with me. See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?