Virginia Sole-Smith published an article about studies which show that fat women are discriminated against when it comes to promotions and raises. She also stated that she is sick of these studies. I am too, mostly because the tone of them is an excuse to tell heavy people to lose weight.
Where I work (in a retirement community/long term care facility) this sort of nonsense does not even come into play. We have a truly diverse community of workers. I think that some individuals like to use these statistics as an excuse to treat heavy people poorly. There is no excuse for sizeism any more than there is an excuse for racism, sexism, or ageism. Hate is hate, and it needs to stop
Yes, I agree. It's very hard to do but not impossible.
ReplyDeleteIt's not clear to me that the correlation between weight and low pay is due to discrimination against fat women. Isn't it more likely that women who are in or fall into a lower socioeconomic bracket tend to be overweight because healthy food and exercise are more expensive and time-consuming, and because being poor is stressful, and in some cases because of ignorance of nutritional issues?
ReplyDeleteweirsdo
Amanda: I think a lot of people spend a lot of energy hating other people. I think it's actually much easier to be accepting. But maybe that's just me.
ReplyDeleteWeirdso: Those are valid points but there is discrimination in hiring and promotion where heavy people, particularly women, are concerned. There was even an article in Reader's Digest where one H.R. crotch--that is to say, manager, said that yes, she discriminates against fat people in her hiring practices and she's proud to do so. It's startling to me that businesses seem to want eye candy rather than capable people, but the ageism has been there for years. The sizeism is something that is just starting to surface, only unlike the ageism, because of the prejudices in this society, it tends to be excused.