Overweight Discrimination In Society Essay

Are overweight individuals discriminated against in past and modern society? According to historian Hillel Schwartz overweight people have and are continuously being discriminated against in our society and he uses numerous examples to back up his belief of overweight discrimination. For instance, Schwartz mentions the use of stickers like, “No Fat Chicks,” or the use of posters such as, “It’s in to be thin. It’s out to be stout,” (Schwartz 179). He also points his finger at professionals like teachers, coaches, friends, and physicians which he claims are people “who goad fat people into a maze of diets from which they may never return” (Schwartz 180). As the article progresses Schwartz discusses how ninety-nine percent of people, if “left …show more content…
Schwartz would agree with an article published in 2012 by Huffington Post journalist Christina Wilkie in which she interviews an overweight woman whose employer had told her that her obesity was a result of her bad lifestyle and was fired in the process (Christina Wilkie). This example and the examples provided by Schwartz are more than likely designated for the audience of non-overweight people in order to get the attention of the readers and raise alarm to the discrimination of overweight people in the workplace. The examples he uses are excellent because of the cases given where employers give overweight employees a two to sixth month period to lose weight or they are fired, and to read that kind of ultimatum from an employer is out of the ordinary and against many labor law regulations. This would be where the satirical element comes in because in order to gain the target audience of non-overweight people, the use of an overly exaggerated example would be highly effective. This is where Schwartz is spot on in his article, but he completely falls short of seeing the negatives of obesity and the health risks that come with