Sherill Cantrell-Brown of the Institute for Personal Growth pushes back against size discrimination:
When was the last time you were with a group of women where the issue of diet or weight didn’t come up in the first five minutes of conversation? We are a culture obsessed with weight.
Our sense of worth and self-esteem is so tightly wound up with our dress/pants size that we literally cannot stop talking, dreaming or thinking about weight. The word ‘overweight’ pisses me off; I would like to know: just whose weight am I over? I am a 42-year-old African-American woman who can honestly say that the hurtful and prejudicial remarks from people concerning my size over the years far outweigh (no pun intended) the issues I have had to deal with as a woman of color. Size Discrimination is the last acceptable prejudice. It is still okay to make fat jokes and hurtful remarks publicly without any repercussions from society. A great many people feel justified in their attitudes since ‘all fat people have to do is stop eating’. If it was that easy we would all be thin. It is much more complex than we have been led to believe.
Toward the end of the article, she advises her readers to stop dieting. I will leave any insensitive jokes about the name of the institution she’s writing for as an exercise for the reader.
The Last Acceptable Prejudice 