Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED)
Our initiative is a public health incubator, designed to cultivate novel insights and strategies for prevention. We introduce trainees to a rich array of disciplinary perspectives, methodologies, and theories and provide them with opportunities to join crosscutting collaborative teams.
Fighting Body Size Discrimination
An Act prohibiting body size discrimination
Weight stigma is widespread and results in discrimination from landlords, lenders, employers, and service providers; interpersonal harassment from loved ones; and structural exclusion when public spaces are built to be inaccessible to larger bodies, as with the ever-shrinking size of commercial airline seats. Weight stigma is also a known risk factor for eating disorders in people of all sizes. The more a person takes negative messages about fat bodies to heart, the likelier they are to develop an eating disorder, regardless of how much that person weighs. In addition to eating disorders, weight stigma is associated with risk for diabetes and other poor health outcomes.
STRIPED supports the Massachusetts Legislature’s work addressing weight stigma and discrimination through legislation. An Act prohibiting body size discrimination has been introduced for the 2022-2023 legislative session and has been assigned S.1108/H.170.
Read our full policy brief to learn more.
Sign-on Opportunity! Join us in calling for an end to weight discrimination in Massachusetts by having your organization sign onto our community sign-on letter urging lawmakers to support this important legislation. If you would like your organization to sign on, contact us at: STRIPED@hsph.harvard.edu and we’ll follow up with you with more details.
Advocacy Opportunity! If you live in Massachusetts, you can take action to end state-wide weight discrimination! Please send an email to your senator urging them to support the bill. You can use the template below to find your state senator and reach out to them to register your support for the bill.
The Massachusetts state legislature is considering a bill (S.1108/H.1705) that would make discrimination based on body size illegal in the state. We’re working hard to enlist support for the bill from senators across the state.
Please send an email to your senator urging them to support the bill. Use the Massachusetts Find My Legislator tool to find your Senator’s name and email address. We have made an email template, where all you have to do is copy/paste the text into an email and fill in your name and city/town. Please also share this email widely to your Massachusetts network! Thank you, STRIPED Advocates — Let’s get this done in Massachusetts!!
Please feel free to edit the below template, especially if you’d like to include your personal reasons for supporting this bill, or how it relates to your life/work/family/etc. The bolded and italicized text parts is where you have to insert a name, town, or other personal detail. Copy and paste the text into the body of your email.
Subject Line: Please support MA Bill S.1108/H.1705
Dear Senator [insert senator’s name],
My name is [insert name] and I am a constituent of yours in [insert town/city]. I am writing today to ask you to support Massachusetts bill S.1108/H.1705, An Act Prohibiting Body Size Discrimination, filed by Senator Rebecca Rausch and Representative Tram Nguyen this session. This bill currently sits in the Joint Committee on the Judiciary. I urge you to support this bill and let Joint Committee on the Judiciary Chairperson James B. Eldridge know you want him to pass S.1108/H.1705 as soon as possible.
S.1108/H.1705 addresses a vital civil rights issue: Discrimination against individuals based on their body size, particularly weight-based discrimination. If passed, the bill will ban body size discrimination and protect all Massachusetts residents by adding height and weight to the list of protected identities alongside gender, race, and other important identity groups. In Massachusetts in 2019, weight discrimination cost nearly $2.3 billion and affected over 725,000 people. [if you’d like, insert why this bill is important to you].
Weight discrimination shows up everywhere: wrongful terminations, missed promotions, wage inequities; from healthcare professionals, landlords, lenders, service providers, and more. It is linked to serious health and mental health conditions and is strikingly common; as much as 42% of people in larger bodies have experienced weight discrimination. Unfortunately, there are no legal protections for folks in MA who experience discrimination based on body size. We must change this and make Massachusetts the second state in the nation to ban body size discrimination, setting the precedent that body size discrimination is unjust, unlawful, and unacceptable.
Thank you for your leadership. Can I count on you to convey your support of this bill to Joint Committee on the Judiciary Chairperson James B. Eldridge? I look forward to hearing back from you.
Sincerely,
[your name]
[your address]
The Campaign for Size Freedom is led by NAAFA and Law Office of Brandie Solovay’s FLARE Project. It is supported by Dove.
More resources on weight stigma and discrimination:
- Read the latest about S.1108/H.1705.
- STRIPED has compiled a fact sheet, news stories, and science summaries for more background on the problems weight discrimination poses.
- This policy brief, published by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at UCONN, covers weight bias and weight discrimination law.
- “Weight based discrimination in the workplace is real. Here’s why talking about it matters,” from YW Boston blog by Jordan Ziese, Advocacy and Public Policy Senior Coordinator, discussing the history of weight-based discrimination, body-positive advocacy, and steps to address weight discrimination at work.
- “The Scarlet F,” from Harvard Public Health magazine, features STRIPED Director S. Bryn Austin and Trainee Monica Kriete MPH ’18 and explores weight discrimination from a public health perspective.
- This legal article by Iyiola Solanke advocates for the civil rights law strategy for people with large bodies seeking protection from discrimination.
- Rebecca Puhl’s Washington Post op-ed titled, “Weight discrimination is rampant. Yet in most places it’s still legal,”calls attention to the importance of this legislation.