THE DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC RELATIONS AT a major East Coast medical center didn't expect the kind of reception she got from her new boss when she arrived for her first day of work. "My God, you've put on a lot of weight since we interviewed you," she blurted out. "I'm not sure this is the image we want for the hospital." From that day on, the woman (who asked that her name not be used) remained under close scrutiny for her size -- she weighed over 230 pounds -- and was constantly pressured to diet. At 40, she had successfully held several managerial positions, and she found the treatment demeaning. She felt set apart from others and was subjected to humiliating comments. Although she had an expensive professional wardrobe, her boss told her that she should wear only black or navy clothes to work; she knew that meant ones that would hide her size. "Every time I walked into the office, I got a quick Once-over to see what I was wearing and whether I'd lost weight," she remembers.
To keep her job, she had to promise to go on a diet and get counseling. "It cost me a great deal of money," she recalls. "They checked up on me -- but didn't pay for the treatment." At a staff meeting, her boss asked her to announce to everyone that she was starting a liquid diet. As with every other very-low-calorie diet she had tried -- she had been heavy since she was a child, and obesity ran in her family -- she lost a little weight at first but then felt starved and tired and gained it all back, an experience typical of almost all women who try to lose weight by dieting, according to a 1992 National Institutes of Health report on weight loss. "I felt tremendous disapproval," she says. "I dreaded going to work."
In previous jobs, her weight had
never interfered with her effectiveness.
"My ability to do my job isn't impaired
because I'm heavy," she says. "People
know through my performance and abilities that I'm a person whose work they
value." At the hospital, too, she was
successful, raising large sums, garnering
national publicity and developing award-winning programs for over a year. Despite
this success, one Friday afternoon she was
called into her boss's office and fired. The
woman didn't mention her weight directly. She only said, "Things that should have
changed didn't change."
The PR director decided not to file a lawsuit; besides her fears that it would hurt her prospects for finding another job, the experience had taken a toll on her confidence and made it hard to fight back. "People who are very heavy can't help feeling there's something wrong with them," she says. "We allow ourselves to be dumped on because we have such low self-esteem."
"Weight is the last bastion of acceptable discrimination," says Sally Smith, executive director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), a 4,500-member group devoted to improving the self-esteem and ensuring the civil rights of obese people. Even if the PR director had sued, she probably wouldn't have won: Michigan is the only state in the country with a law that protects the employment rights of fat people.
That may be changing. In November, a federal appeals court, backed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for the first and, thus far, only time, ruled that someone who is "morbidly obese," or twice the normal weight for one's height -- a category that an estimated one to two million Americans fall into -- may be protected from job discrimination under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). In the case, Bonnie Cook, a 320-pound Rhode Island woman, was refused a job as an attendant at a center for developmentally disabled people because of her weight, even though she had held the job before at the same weight. Similar state cases, however, have been less successful. The California Supreme Court recently ruled against a morbidly obese Santa Cruz woman who was denied a job at a health-food store because of her weight, on the basis that it was not a medical disorder but a condition under her control. The case is being appealed.
Discrimination attorneys say there are no precedents for protecting the rights of the vast majority of overweight Americans -- by government standards, at least a quarter to a third of the population are over their ideal weight -- because they aren't fat enough to be considered disabled. "People who are moderately overweight fall through the cracks," says Mary Dryovage, a San Francisco attorney who handles sex- discrimination and disability-rights cases. "It would be very tough to prove discrimination." For instance, few restaurant owners, she says, would come out and tell a 150-pound applicant that she was too fat for the job. "But if she looked around, she'd realize all the other waitresses weighed 110 pounds, and she'd never be hired." Likewise, says an interviewer at a major personnel agency, employers do not explicitly instruct her not to send along interviewees who are fat. "They use code words. They say, ÎWe'd like to have people who match our culture.' All things being equal," she adds, "the thin person is in."
For that reason, members of NAAFA and other fat activists -- who have reclaimed the label "fat" much as some gays have "queer" -- are calling for legislation against discrimination. As has been done in Michigan, they propose to add height and weight to civil-rights laws that currently prohibit discrimination on the basis of age, race, creed, color, gender, national origin and, in some states and cities, marital status and sexual orientation. Activists are starting small -- the cities of Santa Cruz, Calif, and Washington, D.C., are among the few local governments to have added the clause to their civil-rights laws -- and working toward the state and national levels. Already, Massachusetts and New York are considering legislation that would add height and weight to civil-rights statutes covering employment and housing (a similar bill recently failed in Texas). Eventually, advocates hope to expand the federal Civil Rights Act to cover fat people.
In the meantime, it's likely that attorneys will try new ways to argue cases concerning fat discrimination, an area that is at "the frontier of the law," says Dryovage. Some will use the ADA or constitutional avenues, such as the right to privacy (the logic being that one's personal eating or exercise habits should not affect how one is judged at the office). Many cases, however, will be argued as sex-discrimination cases: Several studies, including a recent one conducted at Harvard University, show that fat women are much more likely than fat men to experience job discrimination because of their weight. "Being fat and being a woman is a double whammy," says Jennifer Coleman, an attorney in Buffalo. "Being heavy is kind of a chummy thing with guys, and it's tolerated." Coleman says she's seen several fat male colleagues with less experience move ahead of her in law firms. "They say women have to be twice as good as men to get paid half as much," declares another fat woman. "Well, fat women have to be four times as good."
The consequences of being a fat working woman are becoming increasingly obvious. In the Harvard study, which included women of all weights, sociologist Steven Gortmaker and his colleagues at the School of Public Health found that the overweight women -- in the study, they averaged five feet three inches and 200 pounds -- had household incomes that averaged $6,710 below those of the thinner women and that they were 10% more likely to live in poverty. Women don't get fat because they are poor, the study showed, they get poor because they are fat. In the seven-year survey of over 5,000 women, the researchers found that the fat women were likelier to lose socioeconomic status over the course of their adolescence and young adulthood, the period studied, than the thin ones, no matter how well they did on achievement tests taken at the beginning of the study or whether they came from well-to-do families.
In a survey of 445 NAAFA members, 80% of whom were at least 20% over the average weight for their height, psychologist Esther Rothblum and her colleagues at the University of Vermont found that over 60% of the women and 40% of the men believed that they had been denied a job because of their weight. Of those who were employed, a third believed they hadn't been given promotions or raises because of their weight. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents said they were subjected to questions and comments about their size at work, or urged to lose weight. "The heavier somebody was, the more experiences of job discrimination they reported," says Rothblum. But even women who are average in size or only slightly heavy, she says, are often encouraged to lose weight or passed over for promotion. "There's a glass ceiling for overweight people," she says, "and it's a lot lower for women than men."
IN TRUTH, THE FAT-RIGHTS MOVEMENT is in its infancy, with scattered organizations -- besides NAAFA, there are the Maryland-based Council on Size and Weight Discrimination and the Virginia-based Association for the Health Enrichment of Large People -- and fewer than 10,000 members across the country. And in a society that looks on being overweight as a personal flaw, akin to being lazy, sloppy or greedy, fat people have a long way to go to change attitudes and laws. Even people who profess no prejudice against fat people say that passing special legislation to protect them is going too far.
"We're regulating ourselves to death," says Mart Halpern, a management lawyer with New York-based Jackson Lewis. He argues that the courts could be clogged with people who claim they were discriminated against because they gained a few pounds. Halpern also believes that employers should have some leeway in choosing the people they hire. "Employers want a professional look or image, and they have a right to that choice," Halpern says, pointing out that many are reluctant to hire sloppy dressers or people with unkempt hair. "You could come up with hundreds of characteristics that make people less likely to get the job than someone who doesn't have them. That doesn't mean they have to be afforded legal protection." The social preference for thinness, like that for attractiveness, maybe unfair and unfortunate, critics say, but it's too intractable to be legislated away.
Activists point out that these are the very arguments once used to sanction discrimination on the basis of race, gender and sexual preference. "It's the same as saying you don't want to hire blacks because the customers won't like it, or that you don't want to hire women because they can't handle sales," says Art Stine, executive assistant to the director of Michigan's Department of Civil Rights, which handles the dozen or so weight-discrimination cases that the state investigates each year. Stine feels that the small number of cases reflects people's consciousness of the issue or the law, not the level of discrimination. Most complaints are found to be valid and are usually settled during the investigation; the employee is reinstated or given back pay. And most of the companies involved in the complaints end up developing policies against fat discrimination.
"People say government keeps adding more protected classes and we don't need another category of victims," says Daniel Feldman, the Brooklyn legislator who introduced the New York bill that would add body size to the state's civil-rights laws. "But government intervention is justified when there's a widespread pattern of discrimination. If blondes were discriminated against in the same way fat people are, we'd have to add blondes to the list."
Legal issues aside, there is little question that feelings about fat people run deep in this culture. "We're tremendous moralizers when it comes to fat," says Susan Bordo, a philosopher and the author of Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. In a competitive workplace, where a premium is placed on achievement and efficiency, the antagonism is magnified. One manager of a West Coast employment agency went so far as to liken fat people to drug addicts. In other words, says Bordo, a fat person is seen as one who can't control herself. "The logic," she says, "is that if fat people can't control their own lives, they can't control other people. Employers don't want to hire someone like that to be a manager."
Recent research, however, shows that discipline has very little to do with obesity. The vast majority of studies have shown that, on average, obese people eat no more than average-size people; their bodies are simply predisposed to burn food at a different rate. David Garner, an eating-disorders specialist at the Center for Cognitive Therapy in Philadelphia, says that genetics accounts for about 70% of the differences among people's body sizes. And regardless of how a person got fat, he says, the notion that people can achieve permanent weight loss through dieting is wrong: According to the 1992 NIH report and various studies, only a small percentage of dieters maintain their weight loss after five years, and many gain back the weight and more.
Garner says that the notion that a fat employee will automatically be sicker than other employees is also a fallacy. Psychologist Rothblum says research shows that half of all employers believe they can reject an obese job candidate for medical reasons. But Garner points out that while being more than 30% overweight does increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease, many people may have medical conditions that are simply less conspicuous. Companies don't conduct genetic screenings for potential cancer risks, and they don't refuse to hire minorities at risk for sickle-cell anemia, says Garner. Even smokers, who are at a much greater health risk, encounter less prejudice. Ironically, people who are underweight face just as great a risk of illness as those who are overweight, says Garner, yet "we don't go around insisting people gain weight or refusing to hire thin people. There's an underlying assumption that it's more desirable and healthy to be thin, and the evidence doesn't bear that out."
Advocates for civil-rights laws for fat people admit that there are some jobs that are inappropriate for them; no one is arguing that ballet companies or chimney-sweep businesses have to hire obese people. Sally Smith of NAAFA, who weighs over 300 pounds, says it's just that fat people deserve the same chance to meet job qualifications as thin people. "If you need to run around a football field to do a job, make everyone applying run around," she says. (In Michigan, if physical fitness is a real qualification for a job, then a fat person must be given the same opportunity to pass a performance test as a thin person.) "I could never be a flight attendant because I couldn't fit down the aisle," Smith adds. "I don't think they should have to hire me. But if I wanted a job as a reservation agent or a gate agent, that doesn't require me to be thin."
THE EXAMPLE OF FLIGHT attendants is apt because they were among the first to bring the issue to the public's attention: 116 attendants filed a successful class-action suit against Pan Am in 1984. Flight-attendant unions support fat-discrimination legislation -- and they say you can be over 130 pounds and make it down the aisle. At United Airlines, which reinstated its weight requirement in April 1993, stating that it ensured a "neat, professional appearance," flight attendants are suspended and subject to dismissal if they are 11 pounds over the maximum weight listed on a height/age/weight chart The weights, says Jeanne Heier-Donnellan of the Association of Flight Attendants, are not based on a person's ability to do the job but on her attractiveness. Currently, a five-foot five-inch woman 35 years old can weigh no more than 138 pounds; some women who work out weigh more because they have more muscle tissue, which is heavier than fat. "The policy is very demeaning and has nothing to do with safety," says Heier-Donnellan. "It's a relic from the days of advertising campaigns that featured stewardesses saying, ÎFly me.' " United flight attendants filed a complaint with the EEOC, claiming discrimination on the basis of sex, age and disability. The complaint is still pending.
But women don't have to be in a so-called glamour profession to find that their appearance figures significantly in their employment. At a recent conference of NAAFA members, most had stories to tell about blatant fat discrimination. "You send in a resume, get a phone call saying you're exactly who they're looking for, and then, when you walk in for the interview, they give you The Look," says Lynn Meletiche, a nurse in New York and vice president of NAAFA. "In three minutes, you're out the door." Karen Smith, a former real estate appraiser who is now a minister in Albuquerque, N.M., recalls an interview with an attorney who, impressed with her skills, told her he would hire her -- if she could show a loss of 10 pounds a month when he weighed her in his office. At another company, while she was completing a physical, the doctor called the personnel manager to berate him -- in front of her -- for having considered hiring a 300-pound woman, even though she had just passed all the tests.
Much of the prejudice against fat people at work, however, is subtler than outright hiring discrimination. It takes the form of coworkers staring disapprovingly while a fat person eats in the cafeteria, making inappropriately personal and insensitive remarks about her weight or guarding the doughnuts at a breakfast meeting. Little looks and comments, say many overweight women, can be more damaging than overt discrimination, wearing away at their pride and confidence and reinforcing a message they've heard since childhood: that they're inferior because they're fat. Jennifer Coleman recalls a male colleague who came up to her after an office party and said he was surprised that a person her size could dance. Frances White, president of NAAFA, who works at a public-television station in San Francisco, says thin co-workers at past jobs often obsessed about their weight in her presence: "There's always an exercise junkie who says, ÎI can't eat this -- I'll have to do 20 minutes on the StairMaster.' Then she'll say, ÎOh, Frances, you're lucky you don't have to worry about that.' " Sara Horowitz, a nurse in Miami, worked with a man who made her feel subhuman by constantly talking about other women's bodies in front of her. Often, she says, there is a kind of pack mentality against fat people at work, just as there was against the fat kid in elementary school. That makes it difficult to build coalitions and play office politics, further isolating the fat employee.
Some fat people have successfully changed co-workers' attitudes. Frances White has tried to meet stereotypes against fat people head-on in interviews. "Try to figure out what the interviewer is afraid of -- that you'll be sick all the time, absent or lazy," she advises. "You can say you're proud of the fact that in the past three years, you've never taken a day of sick leave. You can show you're a physically active person by saying you're very interested in the health-club benefits."
There are times, though, when it is impossible to counter the prejudice. "You've lost the job, so be fearless," she says. "Tell them, nicely, that they have a hostile environment to large people, and considering that a third of the population are large people, that it's reprehensible." Obviously, it will take more than laws, court cases, scientific evidence and gutsy attitudes to change a bias as ingrained as that against the overweight. Esther Rothblum says it may require a more widespread understanding that people naturally come in different shapes and sizes and that it's sexist to insist that women be smaller than size 12. "Once society becomes more aware that obesity is uncontrollable, we may stop blaming people so much for the weight," she says. But anti-fat sentiments are not going to be shed quickly in a country where thinness is an index of success. Laws that prohibit discrimination against fat people are only part of a longer struggle, signaling an attitude shift that may, along with the fight against discrimination on the basis of race, gender and sexual preference, take decades to accomplish. By slowly wearing down people's prejudices against fat, inch by inch, more people will be judged on their skills, not their size.
Laura Fraser is a contributing editor of Health magazine.
