The Biggest Legal Loser
Popsquire loves NBC’s The Biggest Loser, Season 5. If you didn’t watch tonight’s premiere, you should catch up here. It has everything you can want from reality tv: competition, emotion, and inspiration.
Most importantly, it also presents a collision between pop culture and law. According to the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination (CSWD), discrimination against larger people is rampant. For example, CSWD claims that heavier workers are paid $1.25 less an hour and, over a 40-year career, they will earn up to $100,000 less before taxes than their thinner counterparts.
Do larger people have legal protections against discrimination in the workplace?
Not really.
Michigan is the only state with a law that specifically protects overweight people from discrimination in the workplace. Everyone else is pretty much out of luck, unless you are disabled or perceived as being disabled due to weight. This disability exception, however, likely applies to a very limited number of people.
I think this is terrible. What do you think? Have you ever witnessed or experienced discrimination based on weight?
[digg=http://www.digg.com/television/The_Biggest_Legal_Loser]
January 2nd, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Thanks for shedding some light on this form of discrimination. And I agree with you popsquire - the premier of The Biggest Loser was reality TV at it’s best!
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:47 am
Michigan may be the only place that has a statewide law, but there’s at least one city (San Francisco) that includes weight discrimination in its city ordinances.
I haven’t watched “The Biggest Loser” enough to make a confident assessment of how poorly the contestants are treated. I will say that just its premise reinforces the idea that thinner is inherently better. While that may be true for a variety of personal and health reasons for the actual people on the show, the overall cultural message that fat people are losers who need to change their entire lives overlooks the reality that just as many thin(ner) people are losers who need to change their entire lives, too. Weight loss can be transformative, but so can inheriting money, or starting a new career, or falling in love with someone, or coming out, or making a religious conversion. The only difference is that TV is a visual medium and fat people are an easy target because the visual transformation is so dramatic. Does that make for good television? Absolutely. But just like any other group that is underrepresented on television, when fat people are only shown in one way (they are desperately unhappy until they lose weight), the full diversity of the human experience is not being represented.
But, hey, at least the biggest losers are all actually fat people! Cuz a) if I see one more celeb in a fat suit I’m going to scream (I’m talking to you, John Travolta) and b) Celebrity Fit Club sometimes has people on there who are so cute and really not that damn fat (I’m talking to you, Countess Vaughn).
January 9th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
At my workplace, about 30 or so staff (out of 100) were psyched to hold our own biggest loser competition to help support each other and tackle those holiday pounds. our evil HR dept (Dilbert and the Office have it right!) said no because of liability, discrimination concerns. We live in a ridiculous world. If you’re fat, own it. Sue your fridge.