Yes, I can see the day when the market is flooded with weight gain products. Instead of stomach stapling, there will be stomach expanding surgeries. Instead of a Journal Of Obesity, there will be a Journal Of Emaciation. The saying, "You can never be too rich or too thin" will be replaced by the saying, "You can never be too rich or too fat." The word "diet," which is now almost universally taken to mean, "Changing what you eat to lose weight," will mean in the future, "Changing what you eat to gain weight."

What's the opposite of anorexia?


The ultimate: you run into someone you haven't seen in a while and hear those wonderful words: "Wow, you look great! Have you been gaining weight?"

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Kwik, Your name is well deserved. Drive it to the point cut, dry and quick!

All You Can Eat Buffet.

Well, I've been both (slim and obese) and I've never lacked self-esteem, have always presented well, etc., and I have definitely noticed a difference in how people behave towards me depending on which side of the spectrum I was.

You should check out:
http://reason.com/9807/col.olson.shtml

Not quite blind taxi drivers, but close.

The hard part is what qualifies as "irrational and arbitrary?" Who gets to decide? I'd think it obvious that discriminating against a firefighters who can only see out of one eye is rational, but apparently not.

You don't seem to like the hairy ears example. Is discrimination based on an extremely large nose ok (a coworker had this problem)? Would your answer change if it was for a receptionist position at a plastic surgery company? Similar question for an obese receptionist.

It's not obvious to me that anyone other than the company in question can best decide what will make a worker more productive. Keep in mind that productive means "generate revenue" not just "complete tasks." If they think a receptionist who is a petite 18 year old with supermodel looks will make them more money since the clients will be impressed--fine. If they feel someone with hairy ears, a large nose, or who has too much junk in the trunk will cost them business--fine.

Oddly the above discrimination is probably legal, while refusing to hire one-eyed fire fighters is illegal. Can you see why some people get nervous about trying to prevent "stupidity" through legal means?

That's a very lucid argument, Joe, but...

what constitutes disability can also be arbitrary and there are many, many people that are given the "disabled" label without really being so, just as there are many not labeled even though they are obviously so.

The unfortunate circumstance is that we live in a society where looks are important and people judge based on looks.

And most of us are guilty of it. How many times have you seen someone, whether on TV or real and said, "He/SHe looks like they are ________." Fill in the word. Anorexic, lazy, slob, druggy, at death's door, fit, sleepy, etc.

You have an immediate perception of that person. It's not cool...but looks do make a difference and most of us are guilty of it.

Lisa I looked at a couple of your links and came away relatively unimpressed. Its about what I would expect from the medical establishment, throw out common sense and come up with something unexpected to generate some publicity and more research funds.

I will admit that what we consider overweight or obese, and how we measure it, is a subjective matter.

But I refuse to believe that someone who is carrying around a lot of extra body fat (common symptom of IR) and is insulin-resistant due to a lifetime of poor eating habits, is not at elevated risk for extensive and expensive health problems. Yes they can stay alive for a long time, thanks to the disease maintenance system. I'mnot going to get caught in that trap though. Fortunately, I'm also not involved in personnel decisions where I work so my opinion means squat as a practical matter. I think I know more about what being obese means than the average person though, thanks to this site and the information that people like you bring to my attention.

Odd, no one has yet mentioned that obesity is more likely to occur in people who can't afford to eat good food. I've noticed that I usually gain between five and ten pounds every time I'm unemployed. For people that gain weight easily, which is probably most people reading this, the situation is worse as our interview clothes stop fitting well, but we don't have another $300-$400 to spend on another suit.

The test to take on your own perceptions is to recollect how you treat others. Are you instinctively more attentive to attractive people? When you see an extremely fat person, what is your reaction? Are you more likely to have faith in someone who is in good shape as opposed to someone who isn't?

I suspect that at least for some of us, and probably for most of us if we are being honest, we treat the attractive better than we treat others. And that goes to the heart of why employers shortchange fat people. We argue about the liabilities, and that's a factor, but my guess is that it's more about the perceptions of how we react to fatness.

All things considered, I think most people want to "buy into" appealing people. And we know fat isn't appealing to many, in fact, to most people, probably including us fat people. And we are way, way more sensitive and sympathetic to it than the average person.

Given the choice between a fat person and a thin person of equal qualifications, for a job that doesn't require thin-ness, the average personnel director probably chooses thin. He probably chooses it because he wants to buy into a physically appealing person, because that's what he wants to be around. He might choose it because he's got an ingrained bigotry that fat people are flawed, lazy, self-indulgent. He might choose it from an analytical standpoint that fat people might have more health problems.

But that is, sadly, the choice he'll make most likely. Even if he's fat himself.

Actually, I think I have a little natural distrust of people who are too pretty or handsome. I figure they probably milk their looks for everything they can. I used to work with a guy that was always tan, always thin, always doing all the superficial things he thought made him great, but he was a slick salesman and looked down on everyone else that didn't meet his standards of superficiality.

I'd rather do business with the someone who comes across as a REAL person, not someone who obviously puts so much effort into appearances. Someone with the interesting tattoo, a few pounds, the uncolored grey, the extra chins, the not-all-together-smooth or fast talk.

I have a mistrust of "slickness", but not of attractiveness. Being thin or attractive doesn't signal superficiality to me. That really goes to personality, which maybe I could have phrased my question better on "all things being equal." Rather than just qualifications, it might also be that personnel director's sense of his applicants. I have known some really superficial fat people, as well as genuine ones. It's not exclusive to fat to be genuine.

I suspect a good personnel manager has a pretty developed sense of people, so she might detect that in an applicant. Say, both the fat person and the thin person come across as genuine to her. Both are well qualified. Everything is more or less equal.

Who does she hire?



I don't know that I see fatness as a signal of a genuine person, though. I think that's an entirely separate issue. I am trying to look great. I want to look great. I don't think that's superficial in and of itself.

There are other reasons I do what I'm doing, but yeah. I want to look good, and I don't think that's a superficial desire.

Nothing in those examples was even close to blind taxi drivers.





The courts, just as the courts decide every other discrimination case.



I made my position clear: if a feature interferes with a person's ability to do the job, then it isn't discriminatory.



Isn't it? For over a century, companies argued that blacks were inferior workers to whites; for nearly the entirety of the industrialized age, they argued that women were inferior workers to men, and were only fit for menial jobs. Were the companies, then, correct? After all, the company knows best, and you "can't legislate stupidity"...

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On edit, I should add that I've learned the hard way over the years to be suspicious about free market/libertarian/conservative articles and commentators that argue by ridicule and finding extreme examples to make a point. For example, the infamous McDonald's spilled coffee lawsuit that was all over the radio shows for months turned out to be a way different case than the way it played out in the media. So I took a look at some of the suits in your Reason link. Here's what I found:

The UPS one-eyed suit was won by UPS on appeal. Here is an excerpt from the decision:



The company was able to prove one-eyed drivers were more dangerous that fully-sighted drivers, and they won their case. Gasp! The system worked! Imagine that.

The Omaha police suit also becomes interesting -- when you don't, sheeplike, believe the bleatings of something like Reason magazine, and instead look at the case yourself.

It turns out that the person bringing the suit had been a police officer, one eye and all, for nine years, and had performed normally, including maintaining qualifications on the firing range. Contrary to the claim of the Reason article, he wasn't "losing peripheral vision" in his one good eye. In other words, the author made some stuff up and slopped it in to make the story sound more ridiculous, but he knew what he was doing -- he knew he was writing to a "credible," shall, we say, audience, an audience that just loves reading about how dumb the gov'ment is, how stupid the court system is, so they won't bother to check his distorted claims. If the ADA had a section covering gullible suckers who lap up hype, I know a whole lot of people who could sue publications like Reason and make millions.

You've got me cracking up over here!!

NANCY, im with you. When someone's appearance is too polished, I instantly put on defenses and start looking for the underlying agenda. Maybe its my recent years in California doing that to me, or my aging years making me expect that everyone has a "face" covering their real self.

Even when fat, I look at other fat people, especially the really REALLY BIG folks, with the utmost sympathy. For whatever condition that got them there, and the years of hard work to ever get healthy again, and how terribly uncomfortable they must be trying to be integrated into a fat-phobic society. But were all damaged goods, and find amusement in our shared matching sets of emotional luggage. Its no mistake that most of my freinds are heavy!

Both of these feelings are probably just as prejudiced as thinking fat people are worthless, and would only be a burden in the workplace. Im aware of it, though and sincerely try to give the individual a chance. But its rare that Ive been TOTALLY wrong.

More so than someone who has managed to maintain a normal or near normal body weight but has also had a lifetime of bad eating habits (including lots of foods containing transfats) and never exercises? If we're going to argue liability solely based on health risk, then employers are justified (according to commonly accepted standards of health) in not hiring anyone presenting with a health condition such as hypertension or high cholesterol since those with those conditions are known health risks regardless of their current age or weight. But since the Americans with Disabilities act prevents that, they pick out a group that they think will be the biggest liability and discriminate against them instead.

What I find really interesting (and somewhat depressing) is that many of those responding seem to feel that not only is it unavoidable and okay to discriminate against those who are overweight when it comes to employment, it's completely justifiable all the time, no matter how qualified the overweight individual may be for the job. After all, we're all just a bunch of sick, unproductive individuals that nobody should have to look at, right? And since being overweight is a choice, that means those who are don't deserve the right to earn a decent living and support themselves and their families until they attain a 'healthy' weight and become more socially acceptable.

Call me what you will, but I personally think that's a bunch of bovine excrement.