| The first rumblings of a 'fat rights' campaign are being heard in the United States, where several | ||
| heavy-weights have been suing employers for discriminating against them because of their excess | ||
| poundage. | ||
| In Connecticut, a 24-stone policeman, Richard Chaffee, is preparing a case against the police | ||
| 5 | authority for wages lost when he failed to comply with a weight-loss schedule. In Pittsburgh, | |
| 17-stone Belle Luna, who was sacked from her post at the city jail for failing to meet her employers' | ||
| orders to slim, has won a court order for reinstatement. With the support of the National Association | ||
| to Aid Fat Americans, Luna is preparing to widen her case into a 'class-action suit' on behalf of | ||
| other overweight Americans who claim job discrimination. | ||
| 10 | The association's secretary, Lisbeth Fisher, told us from New York: 'There's a lot of medical | |
| research now to show that obesity is not always in a person's conscious area of control. So it's a | ||
| matter of employers and everyone accepting us as we are.' | ||
| The slimming organization Weight Watchers has plenty of evidence from members that fatness | ||
| can hamper career prospects. In some cases, bodily bulk became a practical hindrance. 'Our | ||
| 15 | members have included a fireman who became too heavy to climb a ladder,' said a Weight | |
| Watchers' spokesman, 'professional drivers who couldn't get behind the wheel, and machineminders | ||
| too obese to fit the work-space.' | ||
| In other cases, the hindrance has been psychological: 'Badly overweight people in office work | ||
| and a wide range of other jobs tell us that obesity has been such an embarrassing preoccupation | ||
| 20 | that it must have affected their prospects.' They are usually too immersed in miserable guilt to | |
| make the most of their chances of promotion. | ||
| Among top management, where paunches once betokened importance, the lean, tennis-playing | ||
| look is nowadays in favour. Or Hugh Pentney, of the Institute of Oirectors' health centre and | ||
| clinic, who examines many candidates for senior board-room positions, says: 'Obesity by itself is | ||
| 25 | not the handicap. The point is that it may indicate unsuitability on other grounds. If a person is | |
| more than 10 per cent over the appropriate limit on the weight-and-height scale, then it does raise | ||
| questions of self-management and balanced outlook.' | ||
| 'I think much depends on how a person carries the weight,' says A.E. 'Tubby' Pitcher, who | ||
| carries his 15 stones well enough within his 5ft. 8in. frame to be president of the leading advertising | ||
| 30 | agency Ogilvy, Benson and Mather. Early on, he says, he grasped the secret of feeling comfortable, | |
| which is that there is no standard human shape: 'In hiring people we look for talent, whether it | ||
| comes fat or thin.' He manages a 16-hour working day and occasionally uses the Scarsdale diet to | ||
| shed a few pounds. 'But it's all a matter of self-acceptance, I think.' | ||
| The Sunday Times, September 6, 1981 |