NEW YORK — In 1961, at age 37, Jean Nidetch, who had struggled with her weight for most of her life, signed up for a 10-week program offered by the New York City Board of Health called the “Prudent Diet “. Nidetch lost 20 pounds, but became disillusioned – to keep going she would need the kind of motivation she felt could only come from the community. Borrowing the central tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous, she began inviting friends in a similar situation to weekly meetings at her Queens apartment, where they talked about the emotional roots of overeating and generally strengthened each other in a shared commitment to what was then so often pitifully called “reduce”.
The band grew and grew; the result was Weight Watchers, which in 1968 could have 5 million members worldwide.
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Half a century later, the notion of watch your weight, of subjecting your body to daily metrical surveillance for the sole purpose of getting lean, had gone retrograde – a capitulation to the degraded mandates of patriarchy, another unnecessary foray into self-reprimand. In 2018, in an effort to face the moment, Weight Watchers rebranded as WW, with the tagline “Wellness that Works”.
Although this decision did not deceive anyone, she claimed that standards and ideals had changed. In 2004, Dove launched its Real Beauty campaign, featuring women in a wide range of shapes and sizes in its advertising. Three years ago, Lizzo appeared on the cover of Vogue. It is now inconceivable that a fashion magazine editor would be caught talking about her own eating habits the way Helen Gurley Brown did decades ago when she said that dinner when she was not the diet usually consisted of “muesli with chopped prunes, dried apricots, six unsalted almonds, a dusting of Equal, and a cup of whole milk”.
But had we really swung far enough in the other direction, towards genuine acceptance, away from the idea that a low body mass index was something to be revered? Big activists think that’s not the case, which is why there are proposed laws in the New York City Council and state legislature that would make it illegal to discriminate based on weight (and size), particularly with regard to employment and housing (exceptions would be made for certain occupations).
No matter how much progress is made, the prejudices against being overweight are barely eliminated. Four years ago, Harvard researchers published a study in the journal Psychological Science that looked at data from 4 million tests performed between 2004 and 2016 examining long-term changes in attitudes toward historically marginalized groups. The study found that while explicit prejudice against being overweight had decreased by 15%, this was a much slower decline than similar changes in attitudes towards gays and lesbians, where the figure was 49%. This may be because, unlike race or sexual orientation, weight is considered variable. The only obstacle to loss, presumably, is a weakness of will.
Business leaders, who point to higher healthcare costs for obese workers, have predictably expressed concern that legislation of the type under consideration would unduly burden the courts because of any resulting disputes. In truth, these cases are very difficult to move forward. We know this because Michigan has had a weight discrimination law since the mid-1970s. (Washington State, the only one to follow, added one a few years ago.)
Recently, Jon Marko, a civil rights attorney in Detroit, laid out the odds. Most of the time, there is no direct evidence of bias, and although Michigan law also permits the introduction of circumstantial evidence, this is a much more difficult route to building a case. “Direct evidence could be an employer saying, ‘Oh, honey, you have to lose weight before you can get that promotion,'” Marko told me. “It’s rare.” Sometimes a weighty case can be integrated with a harassment case, and those are more promising. Marko gave the example of a boss who used to squeeze a subordinate’s love handles.
Under federal law, weight is not a protected category. Yet in 1992, flight attendants sued United Airlines on the grounds that its weight requirements were too restrictive — the maximum weight for a 30-year-old woman who was 5-foot-7, for example, was 142 pounds. United ended up abandoning those rules altogether two years later as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit agreed the complaint violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination. employment based on race, religion and gender. . Men working in the same capacity at United were held to more lenient standards.
If it’s colleagues who make fun of your body – calling you “Pepa Pig”, which happened in a case Marko once had – the employer can only be held liable if it can be shown that the boss knew the work environment was hostile. Marko gets many calls from people looking to sue for weight discrimination and ends up only taking about one in 25 cases.
Legislation similar to what is being debated in New York has also come under scrutiny in Massachusetts and New Jersey. Ultimately, much of the value of anti-discrimination laws lies in their ability to send a message and deter and provide access to justice, however difficult that may be to secure. Weight bias primarily affects women and low-income women in particular. According to one study, obese men earn $2 less per hour than their average weight counterparts; obese women are half of their average weight counterparts.
Yet at the same time as the culture suddenly seems to realize that being thin at all costs is toxic, “wellness” has increasingly become a luxury item. The Starbucks barista is unlikely to “maintain her healthy BMI” on her $2,500 Peloton ($44 a month), or take the $30 bar course across the street, or whether she signs up for an app like Noom, which costs hundreds of dollars a year, or pay roughly the same amount out of pocket for Ozempic. To be able to access the wellness lifestyle, she could try opting for something higher paying, perhaps a front-desk position at a restaurant in TriBeCa with a $46 branzino — but if she doesn’t look like to Cara Delevingne, she’ll probably say she’s not what they’re looking for.
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