ABSTRACT
Frontline workers in hotels, restaurants, and bars share much with cabin crew on airlines. The service offer goes beyond staff performance in encouraging an emotional customer response in a setting that is unfamiliar and potentially threatening. In both cases, staff appearance is idealised to create a pleasing look to encourage positive customer emotions. Staff must be attractive and there is something of a tyranny of thinness. Overweight and obese frontline workers are deemed inconsistent with the brand image, reflecting prejudices about body shapes and discrimination against those who don’t fit the paragon model. Fatism as a form of prejudice and discrimination. Like racism or sexism, prejudiced ideas about weight involve sweeping assumptions about the causes of weight gain and obesity, as well as much victim blaming. Perhaps more so than some of the other isms, overweight and obese people are blamed for their own body.
