ABSTRACT
Weight discrimination is not only a social problem and a challenge for individual and public health, but at least as much a matter of (human) rights. Many victims of weight discrimination no longer consider the situation their private problem, but increasingly take to court, not only in the US, but also in a number of other countries worldwide. This is in stark contrast to the fact that “weight” does not belong to a class protected by anti-discrimination legislation in any country in the world. A general and explicit inclusion of weight in anti-discrimination legislation has so far only been realized in individual cities (and one state) in the US. A number of other countries, as well as the Icelandic capital Rejkjavik, include “physical appearance” or “body type and build” as protected classes in their anti-discrimination laws, among these France, Belgium and Russia. For fat people, however, most of those laws have so far been unable to offer much protection, since “physical appearance” is commonly interpreted by courts as “innate” or “immutable” physical characteristics not including weight above a certain threshold. Occasionally, “weight” can be subsumed under another protected class, for example “disability”. However, even in the very few countries in which a high BMI is accepted as a disability without proof of further physical limitations, fat people below BMI 40 (EU) or at a weight of “less than 100% above the norm” (USA), cannot invoke “disability” at all; thus, a substantial number of fat people are de facto excluded from weight discrimination protection. The non-inclusion of weight as protected class, however, is at odds with the perception of large parts of the population: 65 percent of US-American men and 81 percent of women endorse anti-discrimination legislation for fat people; consent rates are increasing over the years. International approval rates for the protection of “weight” as a discrimination category are similarly high, especially when it comes to employment discrimination. Efforts to introduce weight as a protected class into anti-discrimination legislation or Human Rights Code exist in several countries, among these Canada, Israel and Germany. The major impediment for defining weight as a protected class in many countries is its apparent lack of “immutability”: weight still is largely perceived as being under the control of the individual and thus open to change. The mutability of weight, then, brings with it a package of individual responsibility for a perceived “problem” and thus the question of who is to blame. Furthermore, advocates of a “lean” anti-discrimination law worry that inclusion of an additional protected class will put private autonomy at stake. Considering the relatively high international approval rates for fat anti-discrimination protection, however, it may very well be argued that many countries in the world are in fact ready to provide greater protection against weight discrimination. Weight discrimination as a serious issue has entered the political sphere. Legislation may well follow suit.
