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Via Junkfood Science<\/a> and Feministe<\/a>, a few Mississippi legislators have proposed the following law:<\/p>\n Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the State Department of Health after consultation with the Mississippi Council on Obesity Prevention and Management established under Section 41-101-1 or its successor. The State Department of Health shall prepare written materials that describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese, and shall provide those materials to all food establishments to which this section applies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The bill’s lead author, Representative W.T. Mayhall, Jr.<\/a>, told Sandy at Junkfood Science that he is sincere about this bill, although he realizes that it has little chance of passage. ((In case you’re wondering, Mayhall is a Republican. One of the bill’s co-authors is a Democrat, however.))<\/p>\n This is madness.<\/p>\n UPDATE<\/strong>: I want to add a couple of quotes from the discussion taking place at Big Fat Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n First, GinLiz writes:<\/p>\n Extremely obvious hate legislation like this makes it easier to pass less extreme legislation. When next year folks propose some anti-fat school cafeteria legislation or something, the fat people and others in the state won’t react strongly to it, because they will think to themselves “well this is far more reasonable than that crazy bill last year. This one makes sense and could work!” Providing an extreme example distracts people from the “milder” hatred. In fact, I’ll bet that this bill will be rejected, and people will say “well good, now we can focus on smarter ways to eliminate obesity. Let’s form a new task force to work on some passable legislation.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n She (he?) is right. Extremist proposals like this move the entire discourse of acceptable anti-fat discrimination further towards the discriminatory end. How much more reasonable will this make a proposal to have schools put fat kids on a separate eating plan? Or the next case of the state taking a fat child away from her parents?<\/p>\n Wallflower writes:<\/p>\n I’m not going to make comparisons between racial discrimination and fat discrimination, I’m going to point out that this is de-facto racial discrimination. Several non-white ethnic groups have genetic tendencies towards more adipose tissue, higher BMIs, and the appearance of carrying more body fat. African Americans, some Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics are the major groups that generally run to large. African Americans are statistically taller than the average population, which even in non-fat individuals can give the appearance of carrying more adipose tissue. This is carte blanch permission for restaurants to racially discriminate based on subjective measures. Trust me, the whiter a restaurant wants it’s particular client\u00e8le, the fatter the non-white client\u00e8le is going to look to them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n UPDATE THE SECOND<\/strong>:<\/p>\n More discussion of this can be found at Kate Harding’s place<\/a>, and at the following links I swiped from Kate: JoGeek<\/a>, The Rotund<\/a>, the already-linked Big Fat Blog<\/a>, Lindsay<\/a>, Rachel<\/a>, and Thoughtracer<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Via Junkfood Science and Feministe, a few Mississippi legislators have proposed the following law: Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by … Continue reading