Posts Tagged ‘weight discrimination’

Employers who want to impose wellness on their employees received a setback last week. A federal judge ruled that if employees lose money unless they participate, it’s not voluntary. AARP Victory on Privacy Rights This ruling came in a lawsuit filed by AARP to contest EEOC rules about protecting privacy. By law, employers are not […]

Bill Maher has discovered the absurdity of blowhards. Friday on his show, Real Time, he started with the idea that extremes of both the left and the right push some absurd ideas. But then took his sport of public ridicule further. He hurled a rant at people who don’t look like him: These colors don’t […]

“I know all about you.” Those can be scary words, especially when someone says them out loud. And when they go unspoken, they can become a tremendous burden. For those of us living with obesity, those unspoken words become a dead weight that no scale can measure. That weight is stigma. Preparing to open YWM2017 […]

There’s a cone of silence. When policymakers and experts sit down to discuss obesity, everything’s abstract. It’s theoretical. People who are actually living with obesity are either absent or silent about it. But OAC’s Your Weight Matters Convention, starting today in New Orleans, is an important exception. YWM 2017 is a place where people living […]

More and more, respectful language in health and wellness puts people first. Now, the new edition of the AP Stylebook includes guidance on writing about addiction that advises writers to use people-first language. Addiction is a disease. AP cautions against labeling people as addicts, alcoholics, users, and abusers. Language for Writing About Chronic Diseases This […]

Jessamyn Stanley, author of the Every Body Yoga, deals gracefully with passive aggressive trolls who ask, “what about your health?” What about your health? Why are you asking such an intimate question? I can google. I know about heart disease and diabetes. And so Stanley has more than 300,000 devoted Instagram followers and a book […]

Wonder blob. Lindsay Averill received that nickname from middle school frenemies. They even made up a little song about it. Averill, now a women’s studies scholar and activist, has grown to be a closer friend with the woman who made up that song. And new research tells us that her experience is pretty common.  Having […]

Today’s question crops up in many ways. We see research papers expressing fear that obesity is “becoming the new normal” or that parents are insufficiently concerned about their children’s weight. In this weight and fitness obsessed culture is it possible that people are not worrying enough about obesity? Fewer People Trying to Lose Weight Both […]

Obesity has become a global phenomenon. The environment is pushing both people and animals all over the world to store more fat. In data we presented at the Canadian Obesity Summit and at the European Congress on Obesity, we see that different cultures have different ideas about obesity and the people who have it. Providing […]

Roxane Gay has given us a fabulous gift: the memoir of her body, titled Hunger. It took her through some difficult memories, just as it will take you there if you choose to read it. Gay told the Washington Post: I’d wanted to write about fat for a while, and I didn’t quite know how. […]