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

Unfortunately, obesity discrimination is especially common to a group of people who are already frequently discriminated against: women. While it’s quite rare for obese men to be mocked or treated poorly, obese women are quite frequent targets of ridicule and nasty comments. It’s been reported by women that they are sometimes “rated” according to their body size and shape by groups of men they happen to walk past.

A common but often unrecognized type of obesity discrimination is public scolding. It’s quite common to hear people criticizing and offering opinions of the food selections which overweight people make. These opinions and scoldings are , the vast majority of the time, completely unsolicited and are quite offensive to the obese person who is the target of such comments. It’s never pleasant or helpful to hear “are you sure you should eat that? It’s fattening!”.

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.

Discrimination in Healthcare

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 applicants 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.

While the law protects people from discrimination based on age, sex, race, religion, and often sexual orientation, it does not protect obese people at all. The simple fact that obesity discrimination is technically not illegal allows it to take place far too often in today’s world.

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