You write a lot about weight-based discrimination, particularly in the workplace. Do you feel like you've seen that issue improve or change at all since you started this work?
Well, when I started this work, I never had corporate clients. I did not have clients who were approaching me and saying, "How do we end weight discrimination? How do we make a more accessible workplace? Can we do literally an audit of the design of our office to make it more accessible to people in larger bodies?" Now, most of the clients who approach me are corporate clients. The awareness of this issue has gone through the roof from when I started doing this work.
When I started doing this work, the only groups of people who knew about it were the activists, the political people who were doing the work, and then academia, who was interested in it from a justice perspective, but specifically from a scholarly perspective. Those are the only people who were hiring me and who I saw having any interest in this issue.
What do you feel are still the biggest obstacles to dismantling weight-based discrimination?
The biggest one is the misunderstanding that this is a health issue and not a human rights issue. People get caught up in the concern or the rhetoric that being in a larger body is inherently unhealthy, which ... There's enough science that says that isn't true, but our culture believes that it is.
When you look at the argument for why weight discrimination is a human rights issue, it's very strong. When you look at the data on how people in larger bodies get treated, it's in line with any other type of discrimination. People in larger bodies make less money, are less likely to be hired, are less likely to be promoted. They're less likely to receive preventive medical care than people in thin bodies. They're more likely to experience romantic discrimination. They're less likely to be able to find clothing in their size.
There's a huge case to be made about why this is a human rights issue. People get stuck in, "If I am supporting this human rights issue, am I ignoring science? Am I ignoring what doctors say?" It's important to understand that the current medical position is not based in science. This is something that more and more people are proving. Anyway, it's a very long answer, but that's the most important thing that people understand. What we need to be focused on is: "Does everyone, regardless of their body size, have the same access to a meaningful life?" Right now, that is not available for many, many Americans who are in larger bodies.
