This post originally appeared on LinkedIn and Medium, published in early 2020.
15.6%
Read that again. 15.6% — that’s how many hiring managers would consider hiring a fat woman according to a 2017 study. I’m a fat woman.
21% of the original pool of hiring managers would think I’m lazy. The same amount thinks I’m unprofessional.
Only 18% think I have leadership potential.
My first taste of workplace fatphobia stretches back to my retail days. Knowing the job at the vitamin store was a waste of time. Next, it was getting pulled into HR multiple times for discussions on “how to dress correctly for my body type,” because my clothes, while my skirts were longer and cuts more conservative than thin coworkers, made people uncomfortable. My body wasn’t right for their own dress code. My body was not right for their world.
I quickly learned that I had to dress twice as nice and know twice as much as thin counterparts to be taken seriously by my superiors. I interviewed for jobs almost constantly for three years. Phone interviews went stunningly well, but hiring managers’ faces fell when I walked through their doors and reached out a soft, fat arm for a handshake. I worked with and paid for professional resume rewrites and interview coaching. I worked with contract agencies, and placement specialists. I had experience, drive, potential. I was hungry for the chance to prove my worth. But time after time my reality was template rejection letters, or even more annoying, never a callback.
After I deleted my LinkedIn photo, I received three phone calls in the first two days. A steady stream poured in with interview offers. But, as I stepped through their doors, and waited in their lobbies, faces turned sour as eyes looked me up and down.
During this near-constant job search, I engaged in raise negotiations, as well as discussing pay with interviewers. I was offered less than I was worth consistently, in part due to the devaluation of social media and content marketing positions, but also because I was a woman. And I was a fat woman. Fat people on average earn $2,512 less than their “healthy” BMI coworkers (by the way, BMI is bogus). As a fat woman, I earn on average $11,547 less than my fat male coworkers.
The “fat tax” is real. Clothes (especially business clothes) cost more for me, and I have a lot fewer options (currently, there are *two* brick and mortar stores I can maybe find clothes at, and they average $60+/item). I’ve had to turn down multiple work trips due to the cost of flying while fat, not to mention the outward hostility to fat people on airplanes. I have to hope my new offices will have office chairs, bathrooms, spaces that are accessible to me. Once at an interview at a trendy social media firm they had a puppy gate up for their puppy play day, I was too wide through their step-through door and pulled the gate down with me on the way to the interview room.
My wage gap means it’s harder for me to fund job searches (clothes, gas, time off work all cost money), it means my family has to work harder to be equal. It means my livelihood is directly impacted by people’s prejudice. I’m lucky to still have the privilege of being white, cisgender, and (now) middle class, as people of color have to deal with additional wage gaps and hiring discrimination.
I know that popular misconceptions on weight and health are prevalent (even if they’re wrong), and I know that they impact how people view me. I don’t care if you think being fat is some moral failing (it’s not, but okay). I don’t care if you think that the body I live in is your worst nightmare.
I do care that you think I am unworthy of equality and equity. I do care that fatphobic bias impacts my livelihood, health, and healthcare. I do care that it’s only illegal in one state to discriminate against fat people in the workplace. I do care that a lot of folks will shrug this off as the whining of a fat girl who “did this to herself.”
Next time you consider a fat person for a job, I encourage you to think critically about your “cons” list. Which items are impacted by their looks, not their personality? Really, think again. Which items are generalizations based on your beliefs about fat folks? If a thin person were saying this to you, were interviewing at your company, how would you treat them? That is all I’m asking for.