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94 5 • FAT AND FAIR TREATMENT In 2001, Jennifer Portnick, a 240-pound aerobics instructor who reportedly worked out six times a week and taught back-to-back exercise classes, was denied a franchise by the exercise chain Jazzercise. A company representative maintained, “Jazzercise sells fitness. . . . Consequently, a Jazzercise applicant musthaveahighermuscle-to-fatratioandlookleanerthanthepublic.Peoplemust believe Jazzercise will help them improve, not just maintain their level of fitness. Instructors must set the example and be the role models for Jazzercise enthusiasts” (Fernandez 2002). Ms. Portnick, who happens to live in one of only a handful of U.S. jurisdictions in which height and weight are protected legal categories, turned to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. She filed a complaint and won. Ms. Portnick’s story is not unique, although her outcome is.1 There are countless anecdotes of differential treatment allegedly based on body size. In 2009, when Ronald Kratz II reported for his shift on his materials handling job, he was terminated allegedly for being too heavy to perform the work (Sixel 2011). In 2010, film director Kevin Smith was asked to vacate his seat on a Southwest Airlines flight because of his size (Lee 2010). And in 2008, the Japanese government instituted a national policy that measured workers’ waistlines.2 Workers who exceeded the recommended government limit were required to receive “dieting guidance if after three months they do not lose weight” (Onishi 2008). The common thread of these stories, size discrimination—whether labeled “weightism,” “sizism,” or “fatism”—is at the heart of the social justice frame we examine in this chapter. As we saw in chapters 2 and 3, this frame is reactionary and contests common beliefs that the fat body is unattractive and unhealthy. The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance This chapter focuses on the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA). While there are many different fat acceptance groups (such as the Fat Fat and Fair Treatment 95 Rights Coalition, the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, and the Association for Size Diversity and Health), we focus on NAAFA because it is vocal and considered “the go-to source” on fat acceptance for the media (NAAFA 2011i). As we mentioned in chapter 1, NAAFA was founded in 1969 as a nonprofit , volunteer-run civil rights organization dedicated to “protecting the rights and improving the quality of life for fat people” (NAAFA 2011a). It currently has about 11,000 members, and its board of advisors includes “scientific, medical and legal leaders from all over the country” (NAAFA 2011b). The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance’s website provides links to twelve official policies on a range of issues: adoption, activism, dieting, education , employment, fat admirers, feederism, obesity research, physical fitness, size-related legislation, weight-loss drugs, and weight-loss surgery (2011k). Each policy states NAAFA’s official position on a given issue, what the group advocates , and what it resolves to do. In addition to posting these official policies, NAAFA also disseminates a monthly newsletter and offers size-diversity tool kits for educators and employers. In this chapter, through a frame analysis of these public documents as well as supporting documents from influential figures associated with the group, we present the group’s social justice frame. As in other frame-specific chapters in Framing Fat, we also turn to other framers’ positions on social justice and examine the resonance of the social justice frame. The Central Claim: Fat Is Not a Social Problem, but Size Discrimination Is The central claim of any frame is the primary assertion that singularly captures the frame’s version of reality, often creating a social problem that needs to be addressed. However, unlike the aesthetic and health frames, NAAFA claims that the fat body, in and of itself, poses little threat. Instead, the social problem arises in how individuals respond to it. The rolling banner at NAAFA’s home page indicates that when it comes to fat, the main issue is discrimination. It reads, “Discrimination is wrong. . . . We come in all sizes. . . . Understand it. Support it. Accept it” (NAAFA 2011j). Claiming that fat prejudice is “one of the last publicly accepted discriminatory practices” (2011a), NAAFA’s vision is “a society in which people of every size are accepted with dignity and equality in all aspects of life” (2011a). And according to NAAFA, size discrimination is prevalent in many arenas of social life. The group points out that in education, for example, teachers hold negative stereotypes of overweight students and perceive...

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