SALON

Monday, Jan 4, 2010 8:05 PM UTC

Where the fatties don’t roam

A dating site purges clients who've gained weight

By

Topics: Obesity, Broadsheet,

As a body acceptance advocate, I get a lot of tips from readers about beauty standard-related outrages. The one filling up my inbox today: A dating site has banned 5,000 people, supposedly for gaining weight over the holidays. BeautifulPeople.com restricts membership to those voted sufficiently hot by other members, and that hotness must be maintained even after you’ve been allowed past the gates, lest you find yourself booted back into the “application” cycle. Founder Robert Hintze has this to say about the recent purge: “As a business, we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld. Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”

It’s a nasty statement, no doubt designed to make people like me blog furiously about the cruelty and injustice of it. Problem is, I don’t really care. The word “fatties” doesn’t scandalize me, and I can’t say I’m surprised to learn that a dating site that forces potential members through the “Hot or Not” gauntlet encourages sizeism. I’m going to go out on a limb and say I bet it also privileges young, able-bodied people with shiny hair, clear skin and sparkly white teeth; that is, as Hintze says, “the business model and the very concept.” So why am I bothering to give this non-story any attention at all? Because it’s a good opportunity to talk about the difference between real problems and easily ignored jackassery.

Here, for instance, are some real problems: Over 50 percent of physicians surveyed regarding fat people “as awkward, unattractive, ugly, and noncompliant,” just under half of nine to 12-year-old girls wishing they were thinner, and 10 to 15 percent of women exhibiting “maladaptive eating behaviors.” Then there’s the way perceived physical attractiveness affects hiring and salary decisions, with fat people being paid less than thin ones, and “women encounter[ing] weight discrimination for being just 30 pounds overweight.” And weight stigma being correlated with depression. And the beauty standards of the past being replaced by, as Amanda Marcotte recently pointed out, “newer, more oppressive ones that require you to take all the artifice of old and make it your actual body” — corsets gave way to lipo, push-up bras to breast implants, cover-up to dermabrasion, wrinkle cream to Botox, mascara to Latisse, etc. By contrast, here’s something that is not a real problem: A dating site whose raison d’etre is recreating the junior high cafeteria experience shunning customers who’ve gained a few pounds, and its founder making a deliberately provocative statement about it.

Fatties and non-beauties have much better things to get angry about, actually — like the fact that such easily ignored jackassery often gets more attention than real discrimination. According to a 2008 review of research on weight stigma by scientists at Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, negative stereotypes about fat people “are prevalent and are rarely challenged in Western society, leaving overweight and obese persons vulnerable to social injustice, unfair treatment, and impaired quality of life as a result of substantial disadvantages and stigma.” So instead of taking Robert Hintze’s bait, how about we save our furious blogging energy for challenging those stereotypes — and our online dating dollars for some other site?

Kate Harding is the co-author of "Lessons From the Fatosphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce With Your Body" and has been a regular contributor to Salon's Broadsheet. More Kate Harding.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 61 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations