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It's widely acknowledged that overweight individuals often face harsh treatment. Beyond the health risks like diabetes and heart disease, they also endure cruel actions, such as being secretly filmed in public spaces like Walmart and having the footage mocked and shared on platforms like YouTube. However, the issue of anti-fat discrimination extends far beyond just ridicule and reaches deeply into darker, more alarming territories.
10. Healthcare Bias
Most healthcare professionals enter the field to help people. They aspire to make a meaningful impact, not to control others. But unfortunately, their compassion tends to vanish when it comes to treating overweight patients.
Earlier this year, two independent studies revealed that medical students exhibit a significant subconscious bias against overweight individuals. The research indicated that fat patients are treated with less respect, become the target of jokes, and, not surprisingly, are more likely to change their primary care provider compared to their slimmer counterparts. To make matters worse, certain hospitals in the UK have started denying routine surgeries to patients with a BMI over 30. These excluded surgeries include knee and hip operations, procedures that seem unrelated to body weight. When asked about this clear breach of the Hippocratic oath, 54 percent of doctors expressed no qualms about denying care to overweight individuals—suggesting that their bias is anything but subconscious.
9. Systemic Legal Bias
Here’s a tip: if you’re ever on trial, try not to be both overweight and female. A study conducted by Yale last year found that male jurors were more likely to convict a fat woman of the same crime than a thinner woman. The bias goes beyond just superficial judgments—male jurors facing an overweight woman were faster to label her a ‘repeat offender’ with an ‘awareness of her crimes.’ In essence, there’s a disturbing tendency for men to subconsciously associate fatness with criminality in women, regardless of the actual evidence, a sentiment that makes little sense but persists nonetheless. Combine that with other studies showing that juries tend to be more lenient with slim, attractive people, and it paints a grim picture for the overweight.
8. Career Destroying Bias
Unless you’re aiming for a role as a firefighter, professional athlete, or Playboy model, your weight shouldn’t have any impact on your ability to perform at work. However, numerous studies show that hiring managers and company leaders harbor strong biases against overweight individuals. In one study, HR professionals were given identical resumes with before-and-after weight-loss surgery photos attached. They discovered that the resumes with the 'before' photos were rated significantly lower in areas like leadership potential and starting salary, even though they belonged to the same person.
As illogical as that may be, it leads to real-life challenges for overweight individuals. Statistics show that fat women, on average, earn up to $19,000 less than their equally qualified slimmer counterparts. That’s a year’s worth of salary lost, all because society tends to look down on overweight women.
7. Social Assistance Bias
Given how difficult we make it for overweight people to succeed in the workplace, you'd think we’d show a little more understanding when it comes to distributing welfare. But it turns out that government agencies have just as much disdain for obesity as society does—and that can lead to some absurd outcomes.
Earlier this year, the UK government unveiled plans to reduce welfare benefits for overweight individuals who don’t work out. In other words, for those struggling at the lowest economic levels, their ability to pay rent may soon depend on how much they exercise—unless, of course, they’re slim, in which case no one cares if they spend their days gaming. The most ridiculous part? Studies show that up to 60 percent of individuals at a ‘normal weight’ are just as unhealthy as their heavier counterparts and equally prone to early mortality. So, a truly fair system would encourage everyone to hit the gym—but fairness and discrimination rarely go hand in hand.
6. The Homeless Epidemic
Here’s a surprising statistic: if you’re overweight, you’re more likely to experience homelessness. It’s true. Despite our typical image of poverty involving gaunt, starving individuals, the reality is that homelessness and obesity often go hand in hand.
A two-year study of Boston’s homeless population revealed that just 1.6 percent of those living on the streets were underweight. In contrast, nearly 66 percent were overweight, with 32 percent classified as obese. Thanks to capitalism’s knack for producing cheap, unhealthy food, our society is breaking with all historical norms by making it likely that you’ll gain weight after losing your home. And this trend is visible across all socioeconomic levels—wealthy individuals tend to be slimmer, while those with lower incomes are more likely to be overweight.
5. Society's Mistreatment of Overweight Kids
We’ve all heard the saying ‘only a mother could love that face,’ which plays on the cultural idea that parents will love their children no matter what. While that might be true for a kid with an unusual face, it doesn’t seem to apply to an overweight child.
In 2010, *Time* reported on a study showing that parents may subconsciously penalize their children for being overweight. The study, which looked at students purchasing their first cars, found that obese children were less likely to receive financial support from their parents compared to their slimmer peers. This suggests that even parents buy into the cultural myth that fat people are inherently lazy and need to ‘learn discipline.’
4. The Boy Scouts' Discriminatory Policy
For an organization already known for its associations with *child abuse* and *rampant homophobia*, you'd think the Boy Scouts would be looking to make as many allies as possible. But in June of this year, the Scouts decided to add overweight children to their list of targets by banning them from attending their regular Jamboree, a summer camp held every four years.
The most absurd part? This ban was based solely on the children’s BMI, despite BMI being an incredibly flawed way to measure health. A high BMI might indicate someone is heavy, but it doesn’t mean they’re unhealthy—just look at sumo wrestlers, who are heavy but in excellent physical condition and certainly not dying young. Yet, the Scouts excluded any child with a BMI over 32 from participating in their rare event, which makes absolutely no sense.
3. Worldwide Bias
In 2011, a *global study* revealed that anti-fat prejudice was becoming a widespread issue. Even cultures like American Samoa, where 95 percent of adults are obese, and Puerto Rico, once a place where fat was celebrated, now show bias against overweight people. In *every country surveyed*, obesity is linked to laziness and a lack of self-discipline, with the only exception being Tanzania, where being thin is still tied to the stigma of dying from HIV. Even in Tanzania, however, attitudes were deemed ‘neutral’ rather than ‘fat-friendly.’ In short, if you have a larger waistline, the whole world seems to be against you—and there's little you can do about it.
2. Healthcare Professional Bias
Before you get upset about unsympathetic doctors, consider this: patients are actually less likely to trust an overweight doctor and are more likely to ignore their advice than they would a slimmer doctor’s. The level of trust declines directly as a physician’s waistline expands.
It’s almost as if we think being overweight magically makes people forget everything they learned in medical school, or that all obese people are somehow on the intellectual level of Homer Simpson. And yet, we continue to believe this even when those same doctors are trying to save our lives.
1. The Endless Cycle of Bullying
Let’s imagine for a moment that the Scouts allowed those heavier kids to join. What would happen? Bullying. Relentless, cruel, and ugly bullying. While kids picking on each other is hardly a new phenomenon, the sheer level of hatred directed at overweight children is staggering—obese kids are 65 percent more likely to be bullied at school than their peers with average weight, a gap so wide it’s hard to comprehend. And the situation is only getting worse.
In 2003, researchers replicated a 1961 study in which children were shown pictures of six other kids, one of whom was obese, and asked to rank how much they disliked them. In the 1960s, kids tended to dislike the obese child the most, but by 2003, there was no competition. Modern kids expressed a shocking 41 percent more dislike for the overweight child, with no reason other than their weight. Another study showed that overweight individuals who are bullied are more likely to remain overweight compared to those who aren’t bullied. In other words, that bullied fat kid, who’s despised by everyone, is likely to stay fat, bullied, and hated for the rest of their life.
