Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

If you feel like you’ve been treated poorly because of your weight, you’re probably not wrong. When my local morning news reported that two studies on weight discrimination had been recently published, I did a little quick googling.

One of the studies reported a dramatic increase in workplace weight discrimination in the past decade alone (a 66% increase, actually). The other suggested that weight discrimination is as high as either gender or race discrimination. At least one of the studies seems to have come from Yale. (More here, here and here.)

I’ve been extremely lucky, and have experienced a high level of success in my life in spite of my morbidly obese frame. In fact, I’d say that the only social domain where I have really felt the sting of size discrimination is in the dating scene. (YOU try searching on match.com for an average, 30-something-year-old male who is willing to date a “full-figured” woman.)

A little clicking around led me to a Harvard research tool called the Implicit Association Test. You can scroll down to the “Weight IAT” and then decide if it accurately reflects your implicit beliefs or not. I mean, being a Harvard tool doesn’t necessarily make it reliable, but it’s certainly not being hosted on MySpace.

If you take the test, please let me know how you feel about your results.

More information on weight discrimination at:

• NAAFA (of course)
  
• Tolerance.org (God bless ‘em)
  
• Council on Size and Weight Discrimination (hate to use a David and Goliath metaphor but…)
  
• Largesse.net (if you’re in the mood to get sue-y)
  
• National Organization for Women (love ‘em or hate ‘em)
  

This entry was posted Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 5:22 am and is filed under Uncategorical. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.