Life is fair, if you are lucky enough to be thin

The impres­sion we make by our phys­i­cal appear­ance may or may not be by choice. People observe some phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tic and then, either know­ingly or not, asso­ciate per­son­al­ity traits with the ones they can see.

Neon hair and facial pierc­ings com­monly con­vey non-conformity. Those who wear glasses are asso­ci­ated with the char­ac­ter­is­tic of intel­li­gence. There are other bla­tant aspects of appear­ance though that are not cos­metic and can­not be so eas­ily changed.

Height, skin color, and gen­der are accepted as unchange­able aspects of a person’s phys­i­cal appear­ance, and, as such, soci­ety has deemed it unac­cept­able to attribute per­son­al­ity traits based on these fea­tures. Unfortunately, body weight is not included on this list.

Body weight seems to be the last phys­i­cal aspect against which our soci­ety and laws deem it per­mis­si­ble to be discriminatory.

Currently, there is no fed­eral law mak­ing it ille­gal for employ­ers to dis­crim­i­nate on the basis of weight. Only one state, Michigan, has laws against this.

These laws, or rather lack thereof, do not strictly con­cern occu­pa­tions where size could affect per­for­mance. This means that it is entirely legal in any state besides Michigan for employ­ers to deny an appli­cant because they don’t like fat people.

If body weight was indica­tive of job per­for­mance, I sup­pose that I could not fault an employer for doing what is in the company’s best inter­est. However, a recent study out of Michigan State University found that, con­trary to social stig­mas, over­weight work­ers were not lazier, more emo­tion­ally unsta­ble or harder to get along with than their “nor­mal weight” colleagues.

“Previous research has demon­strated that many employ­ers hold neg­a­tive stereo­types about obese work­ers, and those beliefs con­tribute to dis­crim­i­na­tion against over­weight work­ers at vir­tu­ally every stage of the employ­ment process, from hir­ing to pro­mo­tion to fir­ing,” said Mark Roehling, the scholar who headed the research.

With the past year serv­ing as an excep­tion, I had been obese my entire life. As I began to lose weight, I noticed changes in the way I was treated by oth­ers. The minor things are the ones that I have noticed the most, like more pass­ing smiles on the side­walk and more doors being held open for me. I have to won­der though, why I am sud­denly now more deserv­ing of social niceties.

I can say from expe­ri­ence, that with every pound I lost, I was treated with more kind­ness and respect from peo­ple I did not know.

What I have come to think is that the main­te­nance of social stig­mas regard­ing weight has to do with the idea of fault. Most peo­ple would agree that los­ing weight is dif­fi­cult and some may even rec­og­nize that there may be a genetic pre­dis­po­si­tion to obe­sity. Many of these same peo­ple would still find a per­son “at fault” for being above the ideal weight.

This then leads to a line of thought that since a per­son is at fault, or they “choose” to be over­weight, then it is accept­able to judge them for a choice because it is some­thing that they could con­trol or change.

I can say defin­i­tively that no one wants or chooses to be obese. No one would ever choose to be treated with less dig­nity, respect and love by their fel­low human beings on a daily basis.

Losing weight is one of the hard­est things a per­son can do and is there­fore not some­thing one can read­ily or sim­ply change. It is unfair that neg­a­tive stig­mas are still asso­ci­ated with body weight. Personal atti­tudes toward body weight being allowed to affect one’s right to fair treat­ment how­ever, is far, far beyond unfair.

The legal­ity of dis­crim­i­na­tion based on weight is unciv­i­lized, une­d­u­cated, uncom­pas­sion­ate and unjust.