Finish The McFlurry Before You Shop
An examination of discrimination against overweight shoppers.
"In the second phase, seven women acted as either obese or healthy-weight shoppers. They also carried either a diet cola or an ice cream drink and told store employees whether or not they were trying to lose weight. Obese shoppers with the ice-cream drink reported the greatest amount of discrimination, King said."
I sort of wonder how much of this is percieving offense where there really isn't any, just due to higher sensitivity. But maybe I'm just saying that because I don't notice this myself, and I always go shopping in casual clothes, with an iced coffee in my hand or what have you.
"In the second phase, seven women acted as either obese or healthy-weight shoppers. They also carried either a diet cola or an ice cream drink and told store employees whether or not they were trying to lose weight. Obese shoppers with the ice-cream drink reported the greatest amount of discrimination, King said."
I sort of wonder how much of this is percieving offense where there really isn't any, just due to higher sensitivity. But maybe I'm just saying that because I don't notice this myself, and I always go shopping in casual clothes, with an iced coffee in my hand or what have you.
posted by mo pie at 4:29 PM
4 Comments:
Gaah!
""To reduce anti-fat prejudice, we have to tell people how much the problem is due to genetics and physiology and how it has less to do with willpower," he said. "But that flies against the American way of thinking about things.""
Apparently it's ok to be fat if you have a bad thyroid or something.
I think this study missed something too, there have been studies about a link between obesity and poverty.
Just an example:
http://www.sirc.org/articles/poverty_and_obesity.shtml
It's possible that sales people are reacting to a subconscious perception about economic factors as well as a general distaste for all who are fat.
I don't personally recall being discriminated against while shopping, but I'm usually not paying attention either :)
Clearly there is the odd snarky salesperson out there, but I think increased sensitivity does have something to do with it.
Just from personal experience, I do tend to feel rather unwanted in shops which I know don't carry my size (such as French Connection). I'm not that big and don't feel that way in any other shops, so it must be my own perception that's causing this.
Oh, and I'm having some difficulty imagining shopping with a drink in your hand. Maybe the salespeople were negative because they thought it might get spilt on the goods?
The use of prothestics in this study troubles me. I saw a similar experiment on a TV news program years ago (I can't recall which one) and the effect of the prothestic was unsettling. I'm not saying clerks should not be helpful to people who don't look "normal", but I recall having an uncomfortable reaction to the lumpy, slightly disfigured face of the model once she was wearing the prosthetic. It's not that I found the face repulsive, but it just didn't look real and was strangely off-putting. I've never had this kind of reaction to overweight people in real life, or people with deformities for that matter. Unless the prosthetics were very good, the clerks may have been responding to a "this just doesn't look right/real" feeling.
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