Weight Discrimination As Prevalent as Racial Discrimination

I was going to ask, “This is news to whom?” Then I real­ized that it’s per­fect­ly like­ly that peo­ple who aren’t fat real­ly don’t real­ize how much size dis­crim­i­na­tion there is, while it’s impos­si­ble for the rest of us to avoid it.

From the Inter­na­tion­al Jour­nal of Obe­si­ty, 4 March 2008:
¹Repost­ed in Med­ical News Today

Dis­crim­i­na­tion against over­weight people—particularly women—is as com­mon as racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, accord­ing to a study by the Rudd Cen­ter for Food Pol­i­cy & Obe­si­ty at Yale University.
“These results show the need to treat weight dis­crim­i­na­tion as a legit­i­mate form of prej­u­dice, com­pa­ra­ble to oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics like race or gen­der that already receive legal pro­tec­tion,” said Rebec­ca Puhl, research sci­en­tist and lead author.
(…)
The study also revealed that women are twice as like­ly as men to report weight dis­crim­i­na­tion and that weight dis­crim­i­na­tion in the work­place and inter­per­son­al mis­treat­ment due to obe­si­ty is common.
(…)
Co-author Tatiana Andreya­va of Yale said weight dis­crim­i­na­tion is more preva­lent than dis­crim­i­na­tion based on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, nationality/ethnicity, phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ty, and reli­gious beliefs. “How­ev­er, despite its high preva­lence, it con­tin­ues to remain social­ly accept­able,” she said.

I’ll prob­a­bly be slammed for this, but I hon­est­ly think that weight/size dis­crim­i­na­tion may be even more preva­lent in the U.S. than racial dis­crim­i­na­tion because it’s social­ly acceptable.