Following up on other related posts, this just in from NPR: “A Fresh Cry Of Pain: Fat-Shaming In Science.”
From an interview for a lab position:
“She told me that her team did a lot of collaborative work in this lab, and she didn’t need someone who was going to ‘eat more than their fair share of the pizza, if you know what I mean.’ ”
“I didn’t know how to respond. I offered a weak smile and said I didn’t really know what she meant.”
“She looked up abruptly (she had been staring at my stomach) and said, ‘I think we’re done here.’ I sent her three follow-up emails, but she never wrote back.”
Now I have some reservations about doctors who smoke, but they should know that weight is way more complicated and that such discrimination is totally unacceptable. Yet, another anecdote: I wrote a friend in med school about helping to promote the blog, to which he happily assented, but he also remarked in his response how surprised he was about all of the fat-positive content. The message he’s getting in school is that obesity is unequivocally evil.
I would be especially curious for a legal perspective: that scientist’s remark seems actionable!
