Action for Mental Health Means Weight-Inclusive Workplaces
This week marks Mental Health Action Day, a day that was created to shift the culture around mental health from awareness to action. The eating disorder field talks a lot about Fatphobia and its impact on our work. Systemically, many insurance companies and some treatment centers rely upon Body Mass Index (BMI) to determine medical necessity – an issue that U.S. states like Colorado are working to legally prohibit. Interpersonally, many Fat clinicians, advocates, and clients are looked down upon, trusted less, and forced to deal with more – more frustration, more hurt, more suffering. The awareness is there; the eating disorder field knows that weight stigma is a problem. It’s the action that’s missing.
As an employee at Project HEAL, I can say that I am lucky. My body size is not a burden in my workplace; I am celebrated. I have been given opportunity after opportunity to spread the word about anti-Fat bias and its impacts on eating disorders because of who I am and what I look like. But, I am the odd one out. The topic of weight-inclusive workplaces is a new one to most individuals and organizations, but it’s one of the most important. We know that people in larger bodies work, and they exist everywhere. Especially when we’re talking about eating disorders, weight inclusivity and equity must be considered. Let’s talk about how.
Anti-Fat Bias in the Workplace: The Basics
In its usual form, Fatphobia impacts workplaces (and always has). As employees begin returning to work in-person, Fatphobic work environments are flaring up again. Despite the interpersonal reprieve some larger-bodied employees may have experienced during the expansion of virtual work, the sad fact is that people in larger bodies are still systemically:
paid significantly less on average than their thinner counterparts with the same job;
consistently granted fewer promotions and raises than their thinner counterparts;
fired and hired at disproportionate rates; and
even incited to leave their jobs, like this plus-size woman.
If you’re wondering, there are many reasons why these systemic issues exist, going all the way back to anti-Black racism in Eighteenth Century Europe which was then exacerbated by Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century enslavement of Africans and the integration of diet culture in the United States.
You may be thinking that Fatphobia isn’t “that big of a deal;” it’s 2023 after all. On the contrary. In the past decade, weight discrimination has increased by 66 percent, and is one of the only forms of discrimination actively condoned by society (Source 1, Source 2).
So hopefully you get that this is a thing, right? Now let’s go deeper…
The Importance of Weight-Inclusive Workplaces
I’ve found in my work as an educator and activist on Fatphobia that many higher-weight individuals often experience Fatphobia in the workplace in covert and socially acceptable ways. For example, workplace “wellness” and weight loss competitions, some of which require participation by all employees, are detrimental to workplace culture and staff rapport. While in theory the competitions are meant to improve employees mental health and general fitness, in reality they reinforce the societal idea that people are only “well” if they are losing weight, thin, and able-bodied. Therefore, higher-weight employees are automatically a step behind in their professional work – whether their true wellness is recognized or not – because they are in larger bodies.
When judgment is placed on body-size in the workplace, employees' wellbeing does not improve. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, “research suggests that wellness programs focused only on physical health don’t produce better health outcomes or reduce spending over the long term.” In fact, I would argue that workplace wellness competitions decrease employee wellness as a whole, and at the same time encourages disordered eating.
Much of the Fatphobia higher-weight individuals experience at work also negatively impacts non-Fat and thin employees. For example, there is often an internalized belief that very thin female employees and very muscular male employees work harder and are more successful; in reality, work ethic and success is more accurately be determined based on a person’s skills and output – not on their body size. Additionally, focusing or commenting on what employees or peers eat, which impacts their relationship with food, impacts everybody. Research shows that eating disorders affect at least 10% of people in the U.S. However, due to underdiagnosis and lack of eating disorder screening in primary care settings, experts suggest that number may be much higher, with eating disorders and “disordered eating” affecting closer to the majority of people in the U.S. This means that in most workplaces, there are people struggling with their relationship with food and/or their body, whether you realize it or not. Learn more about eating disorder informed workplaces here.
4 Tips for Employers to Make Workplaces More Weight-Inclusive
Do your research on Fatphobia. To start, employers can read writer Zane Landin’s Entrepreneur article which has many great options for workplaces to improve their body-size diversity and any existing Fatphobic policies. They can also read author and activist Virgie Tovar’s Forbes column where she writes about Fat discrimination and weight stigma in the workplace.
Create a safe(r) workplace for people with marginalized identities. When thinking about how employers can decrease discriminatory hiring practices, we can look to some of the more successful workplace models that were implemented to decrease racial discrimination in the workplace in 2020. Many companies are doing a poor job of increasing diversity and promoting safe(r) spaces for their BIPOC employees. Individual biases of leadership and lack of representation in leadership roles directly impact how employees with marginalized identities are treated in the workplace – and their desire to work somewhere from the beginning. We must create environments where people with marginalized identities can express workplace issues and where the issues are actually addressed without the possibility of retaliation.
Hire the right people. The fact is that discrimination already exists in almost all hiring practices, whether intended or not, whether explicit or not. In addition, pretty much every person on the planet is Fatphobic, including larger-bodied people themselves. So, if you’re hiring anyone, you’re probably hiring someone who’s Fatphobic. What employers can do, however, is attempt to hire people with a better understanding of their privileges and the marginalizations they face across the spectrum of “-isms” (racism, ageism, sexism, etc). Workplaces should hire people who are willing to learn and who are generally respectful of others. Employers can start by hiring people who know they are not perfect – but who are willing to learn and are even more willing to make adjustments to their actions if they learn that their actions are Fatphobic or in any other way problematic. Adaptable and socially conscious are terms that can be listed in job postings.
Promote and hire Fat people for leadership roles. One of the most important changes in workplace policies should be to hire people in larger bodies at every level of all organizations; this shouldn’t be hard since at least 70% of Americans are in larger bodies. Representation in leadership roles specifically brings new perspectives, recommendations, ideas, and implementations regarding inclusive policy changes.
Systemic Change is Needed (and in the Works)
Despite body discrimination and mental health issues related to body image being so rampant in the workplace, there are little to no resources for most employees, though it varies based on industry and leadership. In March 2022, Bloomberg did an article titled “Yes, You Can Still Be Fired for Being Fat,” stating that “Unlike other forms of discrimination, companies can get away with such treatment because, in most places in the U.S., there’s no clear law against it.” There are currently no federal legal protections against body-size discrimination, and Michigan is the only state that does have protective legislation. As an activist working against body-size discrimination, I have been involved with the Harvard-based Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED) and National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA). In 2022, these organizations strategically focused on New York and Massachusetts in an effort to advocate for state-based protections, and progress is slowly being made; however, many politicians and legislatures may not see this legislation as a priority. I do.
As a queer and biracial woman, I know that I have legal workplace protections under the United States Constitution, whether these protections are followed by companies or not. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it unlawful to discriminate against someone on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity) or religion. However, as a self-identifying Fat person, I do not have those same rights. And honestly, that’s pretty screwed up.
Despite the lack of systemic inclusion, workplaces that provide safe(r) spaces for individual healing (short term disability, genuine understanding of mental health, etc) may have better performing employees. Increased confidence and decreased imposter syndrome lead to more success in the workplace, so decreasing Fatphobia (which leads to internalized Fatphobia) is likely to improve the work performance of higher-weight employees. In short, if Fatphobia is rampant at a workplace, it will impact business negatively.
Unfortunately, systemic change is a very (very) long game. There are people and organizations like my (Serena Nangia’s) company The Body Activists, Kara Richardson Whitley’s The Gorgeous Agency, and Chevese Turner’s Body Equity Alliance which are doing work with companies to improve their systems and policies to be more size inclusive. There are also many BIPOC people of size who are creating theory and developing research to support the day-to-day strategy and direction of Fat studies and their own industries, like Mimi Cole, Gloria Lucas, Da’Shaun Harrison, Virgie Tovar, and Dr. Sabrina Strings. Activists and advocates are doing the work to make sure that workplace discrimination is not tolerated or legal anywhere, but in the meantime, individuals and leaders of organizations can do their part to make work a safer place for everyone.
So when we talk about mental health action, we need to talk about weight inclusive workplaces. We need to talk about safety (or un-safety). We need to talk about physical, emotional, cultural, social, mental, and spiritual safety. My ask of the eating disorder field is this: is your workplace truly weight inclusive, aka – is it safe? What does your answer mean for your employees, for your clients, for you? It is your responsibility to make safe(r) spaces for healing; otherwise, you’re still causing harm.
