Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 15, 1993 TAG: 9305150060
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
A survey of obese people and studies done about them turn up a staggering array of examples, including complaints of not being hired or promoted or of being fired because of weight, having more problems with college admissions and being the target of endless rude comments.
"I've heard stories from members about how they're grocery shopping and total strangers come up and take things out of their cart and say, `You don't need this,' " said Donna Marie Ryan of Chicago, a board member of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, a 4,000-member organization devoted to improving the quality of life for the obese.
The topic is just beginning to be written into laws.
Michigan is the only state with a law forbidding employment discrimination on the basis of size. A similar measure has been introduced in Texas but has little chance of coming to a vote this session.
Some municipalities, such as Santa Cruz, Calif., have comparable laws. The Santa Cruz ordinance, which took effect in April 1992, forbids discrimination based on physical characteristics in such areas as housing, employment, education and city services. So far, no complaints have been filed, said city administrative analyst Siobhan O'Neill.
Art Stine, executive assistant to the director of the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, said the Michigan law, which went into effect in 1975, originally was used by women seeking to bypass minimum weight requirements for a traditional "man's job," such as the 120-pound minimum for police officers. Later, the obese made use of it as well.
The Michigan law's value lies in "training employers," Stine said. "It's helpful for employers to understand you can't do that [discriminate]."
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, nearly 30 percent of the U.S. population is obese, defined as more than 20 percent above ideal body weight.
Esther Rothblum, a clinical psychologist at the University of Vermont who specializes in weight and employment as well as the social consequences of weight, conducted a study five years ago in which members of teh national association were asked a variety of questions involving discrimination; 367 women and 78 men responded.
Rothblum found that more than 40 percent of fat men and 60 percent of fat women (she defined fat as 50 percent over average weight on insurance tables) said they hadn't been hired for a job because of their weight. More than 30 percent of fat men and women said they had been denied promotions or raises, and more than 25 percent said they had been denied such benefits as health and life insurance.
Comments by respondents included, "I was told by upper management I would never be promoted until I lost weight" and, "The prospective employer assumed I would lack energy." Respondents also reported being excluded from company functions and being told not to sit on new office furniture because it might break.
To put into perspective where the obese are ranked in society, a 1982 psychology study asked college students who they would be least inclined to marry. The obese ranked right near the bottom, with the students preferring to marry an embezzler, an ex-mental patient, a cocaine user or a shoplifter.
Said Sally Smith of Sacramento, the association's executive director: "I think there are a lot of myths and stereotypes" about the overweight. "The central myth is that if you wanted to, you could be thin. It's the `blame the victim' myth. The view people have is that if you're being discriminated against, just lose weight and you won't have that problem. This when it's been shown that 95 percent to 98 percent of diets fail within three years.
"And out of that come stereotypes, that we're lazy, that we're stupid, that we're out of control."
Smith, 34, is 5 feet 5 and weighs 325 pounds. She said her parents put her on her first diet when she was 7 years old. Growing up fat, she said, means "being told we don't deserve the same opportunities thin people do, that there's something wrong with us because we can't get our bodies to conform to what society says we should look like."
To help the non-obese understand what that kind of discrimination is like, the Ladies' Home Journal, in this month's issue, published the account of an average-sized, attractive woman padded by a special effects expert to appear 150 pounds heavier.
Leslie Lampert described how no one would sit next to her on a commuter train, how passersby laughed out loud when they saw her walking down the sidewalk eating an ice cream cone and how teen-agers made faces at her.
The crowning incident was when she went to dinner in a fancy restaurant with an attractive man. After Lampert excused herself to go to the ladies room, the acquaintance later reported, two women at an adjoining table asked him, "What are you doing with that fat pig?" When he replied that she was his girlfriend, one woman said: "That's not possible. You must be a hustler."
by CNB