Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 14, 1993 TAG: 9312140077
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARY VOBORIL NEWSDAY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Fat people are slovenly, sickly, lazy and they smell. They lack energy. They suffer from high blood pressure. They take too much time off, so why hire them, especially when their out-there, in-your-face presence drives away customers?
"The same stereotypes you heard 20 or 30 years ago about blacks or Hispanics are being said about fat people today," says Sally Smith, executive director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, or NAAFA.
"The truth is, most fat people don't have any more control over the size of their bodies than somebody does over the color of their skin." She draws an analogy between the sport of fat-bashing and racial discrimination: "On one level, all oppression is the same. We're the last minority group."
That may be a bit of a stretch. But fat people, in fact, are starting to fight back with the righteous and crusading fervor of the newly converted.
In the workplace, they are making demands ranging from special furniture and special sensitivity training to an end to fat jokes. Some scrawl "not applicable" on employment forms requesting weight.
Bills pending in Texas and New York would bring fat people under the protective umbrella of civil rights laws, and an appellate court ruled recently that a Rhode Island mental health facility wrongly denied a job to Bonnie Cook for reasons related to her weight.
"In a society that all too often confuses `slim' with `beautiful' or `good,' morbid obesity can present formidable barriers to employment," wrote Judge Bruce Selya of the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "Where, as here, the barriers transgress federal law, those who erect and seek to preserve them must suffer the consequences." Research suggests many fat people are made miserable in the workplace.
At the University of Vermont, psychologist Esther Rothblum surveyed 367 fat women and 78 fat men on job-related issues, finding a close correlation between weight and discrimination. Many job interviews, respondents said, focused almost entirely on weight. If they were hired, humiliations continued: They were ordered to keep off new office furniture, lest it break, or forced to pay higher premiums for health insurance. One was told she would never be promoted until she lost weight. Her union took the side of management.
Rothblum found that more than 40 percent of fat men surveyed and 60 percent of fat women had not been hired for a job because of their weight.
In Michigan, the only state that affords civil rights protection to people of size, a weight harassment case is set to go to trial in February. Connie Soviak, a bank employee, said a co-worker poked, pinched and ridiculed her before customers, saying that fat people lie and stink. Complaints to management went nowhere.
As the fat rights movement surges ahead, says NAAFA's Smith, workplace disputes over such elemental matters as office furniture may end up in court.
"Companies need to have their consciousness raised that furniture they buy helps determine their hiring practices and can be de facto discrimination," Smith says.
Ideally, she adds, companies should buy furniture accessible to people of size; "It's not that big of a deal to buy armless chairs." She cites the case of Linda Karpenko, a 355-pound customer service representative for Hershey Foods Corp. who was forced to take along a special chair whenever she left her work station for meetings. The giant chocolatier could have bought her several chairs; instead, "she was singled out and made conspicuous in a way other employees were not."
Smith also believes employers eventually may be required to buy first-class or two coach seats for fat employees who travel on business, just as they make special provisions for the handicapped. For the fat, she says, flying "is a nightmare."
"I buy two seats, and I really resent having to do that," Smith says. "My pet peeve is that I don't get double frequent flyer miles. I wish we had the resources to challenge that."
Taking a page from the battle plan of other protest movements, fat advocates encourage the fat to speak out about size-insensitive problems.
Predictably, some scoff at the notion that fat people are a persecuted group that deserves statutory protection.
Matt Halpern, a New York lawyer who represents management, considers anti-fat comments and behavior "schoolyard stuff" that fails to rise to the level of discrimination.
"We're blurring the boundaries between what is unlawful behavior and what is distasteful behavior, and it seems like the government and the courts are leaning toward giving entitlements for distasteful behavior," Halpern says. "The equal employment laws were never meant to do that.
"I see plenty of obese people in the workplace," he continues. "And if they're not, it's not that they didn't get the job because they're obese. It's because they couldn't perform it."
Antidiscrimination laws, he says, are edging into the zone of the ridiculous.
"The way it's going, if you go into an environment where people are not like you, you're going to have a protected characteristic," he says.
Part of the challenge of empowering fat people to fight fat phobia, says NAAFA's Smith, is helping them shore up their self-esteem.
"We're up against a $33 billion-a-year diet industry that sells us on being dissatisfied with our bodies," Smith says. "So many of us have internalized the message that we don't deserve the same opportunities as thin people do. Some fat people hear things like this, say, `Well, yes, you're right' - and go home and hide."
When it comes to fat-bashing, she adds, women suffer more than men. In American culture, men enjoy a broad range of acceptable looks; fat men are described as "brawny" or "lumberjack types" or something with a positive spin. Fat women are . . . fat.
by CNB