Fight Back!
Size discrimination is a very real threat. It's something that most of us are so accustomed to that we hardly even take note of it. It's one of the few forms of prejudice which is still entirely acceptable in the United States. People are denied jobs, health insurance, love, and self-respect because of their size.
This prejudice is particularly dangerous for this reason: hardly anybody fights back. There isn't a Martin Luther King Jr. of fat acceptance rights. Nobody is picketing. There's such a small movement that it goes almost entirely unnoticed. The totality of the brain-washing within our culture is so intense that the people who are discriminated against actually believe that they deserve the treatment. In psychology and sociology this is call internalization of prejudice (like a homosexual who hates homosexuals, or a black person who degrades African Americans who "act too black.) Not only this, but fat people are just as likely to discriminate against other fat people as thin people are. If you don't believe me, many of you can easily conjure up a memory of a parent (either your own, or your friend's) who berated their child for being fat when the parent themself was three times their offspring's size.
Try to fully wrap your mind around the scope of the situation. This is one of the few prejudices in history which have been so deeply ingrained in a culture that the persecuted party is almost entirely just as self-hating as the outside world is. A fat person can be blatantly insulted by commercials that call their bodies disgusting and deem their character to be "lazy" and "unmotivated," and they offended individual never experiences the slightest inclination to be angry. They will instead buy the advertised product that's supposed to make all their fat melt away, thus making them finally good and upstanding members of society. They will sit at a table with their girlfriends and order the salad, proclaiming themselves disgustingly fat.
Part of this attitude is based in the belief that fat is fixable. It isn't considered a form of prejudice because it's the big person's own fault that they are fat after all, unlike ones skin color. Fat opponents also say that if being a person of size in our culture is really that excruciatingly painful socially, then it's only more motivation to change. Now, aside from the fact that statistics show diets fail 98% of the time, it is not acceptable to conform to a societal standard simply because it's possible to change the offending characteristic.
Would we even consider it a viable option for an ethnic minority to make themselves white to avoid discrimination if it were possible? If every African American, Asian American, and Latino American could suddenly be a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, light-skinned person, would we encourage them to do so? I recommend sitting down and watching three hours worth of television (most Americans do anyway.) Take every fat/size/shape related joke, commercial, or reference and replace the key words with phrases like "black skin." You'll be horrified to find statements like these:
"Today in the news: have doctors found a new miracle pill to cure that ugly epidemic of black skin? We'll have details at 6:00!"
"Are you plagued by unsightly slanted Oriental eyes? It's okay, we here at Jenny Cracker can help you reach your goals!"
“I was concerned that being gay was setting a bad example for my daughter. So now I drink Straight Fast to keep that unattractive homosexuality away, and she looks up to me so much!”
"Here's a picture of me before I joined Mexican Watchers. I wouldn't leave my house because of my golden skin and black hair, and forget wearing a bathing suit. Now my husband finds me more attractive, I'm excelling at work, and I have more energy! I feel happy, healthy, and white!"
Starting to get the picture?
Considered the following link. Weight Watchers This is an article written by Weight Watchers titled "Could Losing Weight Affect Your Career?" In this article, size discrimination is addressed. But there is much less mention of changing this prejudice than there is of changing one's body to gain respect. One Weight Watcher proclaims "Before I joined Weight Watchers, I had a job performance review that said I lacked initiative. That wasn't true, but society views overweight people as lazy - 'why else don't they take care of themselves?'" But now the trim new employee is surrounded by coworkers who "regularly proffer praise at her slimmed-down physique and beefed-up job performance."
Weight Watchers warns at the end of the article that there is no law to protect people from size discrimination. For once, the bastards are telling the truth. It is entirely acceptable to refuse to hire or continue to employ a fat person. It doesn't matter if the person's job in no way relates to physical performance or if the job is simply sitting at a desk and typing. It is considered perfectly legitimate to discriminate against a person because their fat supposedly reflects a "lazy and unmotivated" personality or is not visually pleasing to the customers.
So what are you going to do about it? Admittedly, it's daunting to take on an entire culture. But you're not alone! There are not a great many fat activists, but we're loud! Every time you tell your children that they are gorgeous at any size, every time you tell a friend that they're moronic for wanting to lose weight, every time you shoot back at somebody to state "This is just more cushion for the pushin", you're changing the world.
I also suggest writing to diet companies. Realistically, these are multi-billion dollar industries who might not give a crap what you think as long as they’re raking in the dough. But if there's a suggestion from the customer base that we're TIRED of being insulted and degraded, they might at least change their marketing tactics.
It's fairly simple to find these diet companies. Typing in slimfast.com, weightwatchers.com, and the like will usually usher you right to their website, where you can find contact information. By the way, they rarely have a link for email specifically to deal with angry mail, so you can go ahead and write to all of the other email addresses provided for all other customer service related issues.
If this seems futile, consider that these companies have to pay a customer relations specialist to sit down and write back to you. If you figure it takes half an hour to read and reply to your email, you're talkin' probably $4 or more the company has to pay that employee for the time it took. If they don't have enough specialists to handle the load, they'll have to hire new employees, thus costing them even more money. That stuff adds up. It's a way to make the diet industry indirectly pay you back for all the wasted mula you spent on miracle shakes. Make 'em suffer, baby.
In regards to how these letters should be formatted: I suggest avoiding cursing. It's tempting, I know, but your complaint will be taken more seriously if the company is aware that it's educated and intelligent clientele are pissed, because we’re the people who are in powerful positions within society. Use spell check. Nothing is as embarrassing as bitching out a company, only to note later that your grammar, vocabulary and spelling is so atrocious that you sounded as if you were borderline illiterate.
Happy hunting!
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Email: ericaherron@hotmail.com