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Mississippi legislators seek to bar restaurants from serving fat people

Holly

I’m still reeling from the insanity of Clinton wanting to yank due process out of deportation. But wait… there’s more insanity before bedtime!!

Mississippi House Bill 282 would make it illegal for restaurants to serve food to anyone who is considered obese by the State Department of Health. And apparently the legislator who introduced this bill is completely serious about it, even though he’s aware it’s unlikely to get passed.

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.

This kind of thing cannot be ignored when talking about the “War on Obesity” and how distorted it is by people’s ingrained cultural attitudes and paranoias about fat. Fat is so bad and evil that you need laws against it; you need to legally restrain restaurants, sources of food, from potentially propagating fat. You need to hang signs saying “We Don’t Serve Fat People.” Sometimes bills like this are introduced without expectation of passing, to raise awareness about an issue. But is it really awareness-raising to suggest something so blatantly discriminatory? Especially when fat people already get discriminated against — even refused service, in some cases — for being fat? It’s so absurd that it would make a good joke about how out of control the obesity scare has become, if it weren’t being done with some serious anti-fat intentions.

51 thoughts on Mississippi legislators seek to bar restaurants from serving fat people

  1. …in addition to being just plain stupid and bigoted, how exactly does this guy expect this to be enforced? Are we just going to assume that the waitstaff and management will know who the department considers to be obese? Are they planning on distributing a blacklist?

  2. explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese, and shall provide those materials to all food establishments

    Hit the button too soon, sorry — I mean, I saw this. But I don’t understand how that’s going to work, short of scales and calipers, and that’s just … degrading.

  3. He doesn’t expect it to be enforced, of course. It’s a deliberate overstatement, like saying “this problem is SO bad, maybe we should consider these DESPERATE MEASURES. OK maybe we shouldn’t go that far, but still this is BAD!”

    Importantly, it’s not satire. He doesn’t mean the opposite, even though it’s so ludicrous that it could be satire. He’s simply overstating, and that’s very indicative of the general anti-fat sentiment that propels this sort of thing.

  4. I still don’t understand the people who seem to think that the solution to the obesity “crisis” is to starve people. Jesus, why not just propose incarcerating everyone with a BMI over 25 in a state-run fat camp?

  5. Are they going to see a fat person and assume that they are fat due to poor eating habits? Or will they quiz each customer to see if they are on any medications/have a medical condition that can cause weight gain?

  6. Not only is this a stupid law, but isn’t it illegal as it constitutes discrimination against a group of people?!! Aren’t public establishments mandated to serve the public unless there is a reasonable proof doing so may go against the public good? I don’t know about you, but I anticipate lots of litigation and protests arising from this idiotic law if passed.

    Moreover, the same politicians who bleat about preserving democratic freedoms are now creating legislation which will warm the heard of your average Fascist/Communist authoritarian/totalitarian proud.

    As an American citizen, I want to extend an invitation for them to leave our country and live in societies where such tyrannical measures are appreciated. One suggestion which immediately come to mind is the People’s Republic of China, especially during tumultuous periods like the Great Leap Forward & the Cultural Revolution.

  7. It won’t pass. Even the bill’s sponsors know that. They’re just grandstanding. Besides being ridiculously hateful, the bill would be financially devastating to restaurants and tourism throughout the state. People would be put out of work all over the place, and that’s one state that can especially ill afford that.

    But the fact that this wasn’t laughed out of committee speaks volumes about how much crap fat people are willing to put up with and even give to themselves (one of the sponsors is, himself, inarguably fat). If fat people as a group stood up for themselves, it would be career suicide even to suggest such a bill.

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  9. Knowing the criteria for who is too fat to serve will be like the definition of porn. “I don’t know how to define it but I’ll know it when I see it.” And when I see it in female form I am going to know it much faster and more vehemently then when I see it in male form. After all anorexic thin is this era’s version of foot binding and corset wearing. Female fat is a clear flying of the finger at the Beauty Myth and men, even fat members of the Mississippi House had better get after it before women start laughing at this like we laugh at past legislation that mandated standards of “sanitation” that our homes had to meet before we could be considered for employment.

    Meowers don’t blame the targets of this hateful bill for the hateful behavior of its sponsors. This is SSDD for the Republicans, how many gay Republicans support anti-gay legislation? 2007 was a banner year for that discussion. You want to run with the good ole boys then you better target whom we tell you to target or you cannot play on the good ole boy team. Its not career suicide it’s a wedge issue where we start ripping on each other over “The War on the Obese,” rather then working together to stop….. (fill in the blank with a hundred more important issues).

  10. Mississippi must be one batshit crazy place. With thousands still homeless from Katrina, state politicians want to divert $600 million dollars of federal disaster aid to expand a state-owned port and build upscale resorts and condos. It’s shit like this that shoots big holes in the theory of state’s rights.

    “Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is…. predation—a system wherein the rich have come to feast on decaying systems built for the middle class.”

    James K. Galbraith, The Predator State

  12. Gordo, we’d have to throw them all out and start ov–, wait a minute. That sounds pretty good. Hmmmmmmmmm.

  13. “Jesus, why not just propose incarcerating everyone with a BMI over 25 in a state-run fat camp?”

    Dear God, no. I have a BMI of about 30. And I am far from obese. I’m 5’3″ and 170-175 lbs. I hate, hate, HATE that BMI is “standard”. I am considered obese. I am not obese. I am 26, active, and quite healthy. I’d probably look horrible at my “ideal” weight. BMI = Bullshit.

  14. And just to put it in prospective, I’m so “obese” you can see my collar bone clear as day! And I wear a size 12/14! I am so, so obese, yes? Grrr, I hate the BMI. 😡

  15. I would also presume that if it were legal to not serve “fat” people, it would also be legal to not have to hire them.

  16. Wow, yet again I’m ashamed to live in Mississippi. Now this bill is just stupid. MS has, I think, the highest rate of “obesity” in the US. If obese people were barred from eating in restaurants…well, our economy would be in the crapper.

    Of course, all that is beside the point that it doesn’t fix the problem. It just doesn’t make any sense. Methinks someone just needed to be seen. We have many programs here that approach obesity in a healthy way, among them a campaign to get MSians to just get out and walk. Banning them from eating out…GAH I can’t understand it.

    Too many intelligent people live in Mississippi to just cut it out of the US, but is there any way we could put the morons on a boat and ship ’em out or something?

  17. Not only is this a stupid law, but isn’t it illegal as it constitutes discrimination against a group of people?!!

    In most states, fat people don’t count as human beings as far as anti-discrimination laws go.

  18. Gee, we can’t let those fatty fat fats have any kind of dignity or respect, can we? They’re not human beings after all. It was before my time, but didn’t we try this already with another group of people, and it was ultimately struck down? I know I remember hearing something about it…/snark.

  19. This reminds me of a story that was in the news a few years ago. A young teenage girl in (I think) California had some kind of very rare disorder that caused her to put on a lot of weight. I think she weighed about 800 lbs. She ended up dying because of it, and there was talk of investigating her mother for “allowing” her child to become so big. In one article, someone was quoted as saying something like “Even though [the girl] was so obese, her mother continued to feed her”. Yeah, because fat people don’t need to eat, you know. Seriously sick and ridiculous.

  20. Are they going to measure us before we get seated? How will they KNOW exactly who matches “obesity” criteria–make us get on a scale?

    If they let the “borderline cases” go in, can the people excluded sue over that?

    This is just another exercise in humiliating and shaming fat people, nothing more.

  21. Gee, it’s not safe to be racist or sexist anymore. What can you do with all that pent up self-loathing? Who can you blame for your failures? Why fatties, of course. Easily seen and disturbing to others, they make great scapegoats.

    Besides, it is an easy side trip to saying, “It’s not her color, but her fatness.” If you recall the Reagan fairy tale of Welfare Queen, wasn’t she always fat?

  22. I wonder how many members of the Mississippi leglislature are obese themselves. My guess is that it’s a significant number. Maybe they think their wealth will exempt them from this.
    As far as I know, it’s quite legal in many places to refuse to hire people because they are fat. I’m sure that Mississippi is just as progressive on this point as on all their other civil rights…

  23. Dear God, no. I have a BMI of about 30. And I am far from obese. I’m 5′3″ and 170-175 lbs. I hate, hate, HATE that BMI is “standard”. I am considered obese. I am not obese. I am 26, active, and quite healthy. I’d probably look horrible at my “ideal” weight. BMI = Bullshit.

    Well, yeah. Which is why I made my modest proposal for state-run fat camps.

  24. So, are there laws in Mississippi that say you can/should/must refuse to serve alcohol to drunk people? I’m assuming that is what this ‘no food for the fat’ thing is based on. It’s inexcusable, but it would be really funny if Mississippi had no laws againsts serving liquor to the obviously intoxicated, but had laws against serving food to the obviously fat.

    How would this work for delivery? Would the pizza guy show up with a pizza and a scale? Or you you go to the restaurant in advance and pre-register as someone who can be served food?

    I was at a liquor store with a friend once, in NH, and they wouldn’t sell us champagne because I didn’t have proper ID with me, although my friend did, and we were in our mid-twenties. I offered to leave, but they still wouldn’t do it. Would the same rules apply for fat people? None of you can get food if a fat person is with you, since you might feed them?

    And why should this apply only to restaurants? Shouldn’t all grocery stores, variety stores, movie theatres etc. also be barred from selling food to fatties? It should be illegal for anyone to sell food products to fatties, or supply them with food products, right?

  25. BMI is a formula cooked up by insurance actuarials, not doctors or any other certified healthcare professionals.

    The whole point of BMI is to set the weight to height standard so unrealistically low so that insurance companies have a ready-made excuse to deny millions of dollars per year in claims by citing obesity and overweight as pre-existing or contributing conditions.

    BMI cabnnot measure any aspect of health, not the way blood pressure, blood cholesterol, triglycerides, EKG, range-of-motion or stress tests do. Health cannot be determined from body size or BMI. Therefore, we need to do away with BMI as a supposed measure of health. Period.

  26. This is so bizarre — even if one thinks the state should be allowed to regulate how “obese” people eat for their own good, how would this bill do that? It makes no distinctions between healthy, nonfattening food/restaurants and fattening fried food. It would at least make (a very little bit) more sense if one were saying fast food burger & fries restaurants couldn’t serve fat people, but apparently some fresh-n-lowfat-garden-fruits-n-vegetables place is also to be banned. Do some people think that to lose weight, one should not eat anything at all ever????? That that is somehow healthy and good? Plus there seems to be some assumption here that restaurant food is more fattening than what one can buy at the grocery.

    I just don’t get it. Of course, I dispute the basic premise that the government has any right to forcibly regulate people’s diets “for their own good”, but even if one accepts that premise this bill is not logically consistent with it.

  28. I have to agree with Meowser, yet again! Fat people need to have some self-respect and pride and stop participating in this shit. We’ve gone along with everything in the past every idea that other people were so sure was correct, and when it failed yet again, we were always the ones doing something wrong, we have been cowardly and craven for too long, now we need to learn to take ownership of ourselves again and (truly) balance the scales.

  29. >>>So, are there laws in Mississippi that say you can/should/must refuse to serve alcohol to drunk people?<<<<<

    Ya beat me to it. Dang!

  30. Meowers [sic] don’t blame the targets of this hateful bill for the hateful behavior of its sponsors.

    I don’t. Dude, anyone who knows me (or my writing) knows I don’t. BUT…the fact of the matter is that fat people are supposed to be the “majority” in this country, and we sure don’t frigging act like it sometimes. If we stopped hanging our collective heads in shame about our weight it wouldn’t take all the hate away, not by a long shot. But the haters would at least have to think twice about their actions.

  31. I swear that half of these idiots think that fat people have no idea that they’re fat, and all they need is someone to point and say, “Hey, you’re fat!” for them to go, “Oh my gosh, you’re right! Off to the bariatric surgeon for me!”

    Though considering that 90% of these shamers are male, and I’ve seen studies that say that men actually don’t notice that they’re overweight until they’re at least 30 pounds past the top of their range, I suspect some projection going on herre.

  32. According to some statistic I just saw while walking down the street, 2/3 of the population of Mississippi is technically “obese.”

  34. Agreed w/ Mnemosyne and a poster upthread who noted that this would probably be disproportionally invoked against women. A guy would have to be pretty damn obviously heavy before he would be considered ‘obese.’ I’m guessing he’d have to be about 100+ over his alleged BMI healthy range before he’d even get pulled aside.

    Buuuuut, who wants to bet that a woman who isn’t anorexic (ie: all of us who are not clinically underweight) gets the fat police writing her a ticket? I’m average weight myself- 5’7″ and 130lbs- but I get called a big fatty fat fat-fat all the damn time. I’ve noticed that the new standard for women is BMI 18 and under. Anything over anorexic is fat according to this asshats.

    Fat is a fucking feminist issue like WHOA.

  35. Can any of these people seriously think for even a brief moment that this is about anything other than punishing fat people? Like, seriously, is there even a pretense at “it’s for their *health*!” going on, or have they just skipped the crap and come right out with the real motive?

  37. Sniper, fat people don’t have to be a protected class for this law to be unconstitutionally discriminatory – all classifications are subject to rational basis review, which this law would clearly flunk. As beth pointed out, there’s no rational relationship between banning fat people from restaurants and protecting public health. The law would ban fat people from macrobiotic/vegan/health food only restaurants, and leave grocery store junk food unregulated.

    Of course, there are actual, like, lawyers here, if someone wants to correct me on that.

  38. Mississippi should worry less about legally defining and restricting obesity and should focus on legally defining and restricting food instead. Fast food isn’t food.

  39. I live in Mississippi, and I can say this bill is doomed on multiple counts. First, Mississippi has a 30% obesity rate. Second, restaurants are a powerful lobby. Third, the relevant committee chair weighs over 300 pounds. Fourth, the governor who would sign it is Haley Barbour, no small thing himself. So it’s never going to become law.

    What’s going on here is that there are multiple bills in both houses of the legislature that would ban smoking in public places on the grounds that smoking is a public health hazard. The two Republicans and one conservative Democrat who wrote this bill no doubt intended this as a reductio ad absurdum of that argument.

  40. I think it would be fun to see this bill passed. I do not condone bigotry against any people as a whole (and I’m going to go ahead and call obese people, along with kinky people, people with bad teeth, and what the hell, unicyclers, “a people”)–I just enjoy watching loopholes develop.

    I imagine a lot of resturounts would redifine themselves as something not under the umbrella of the bill–now my resturaunt is a “al fresco grocery store”, or something. Grocery stores can’t deny to sell food, can they? This is a lot like the “I went to get a non-therapeutic massage and, what do you know, my masseur and I fell in love and had sex” excuse they use to get around prostitution charges. Which of course doesn’t USUALLY work, so they get raided and such.

    God, is that what the future holds? SWAT teams busting down the doors of underground “fattie feeders”, demanding the BMI’s of all present? Call Spielberg, I have a script to sell him.

    That was way fun, but all this brings back to the main point: THIS LAW WOULD DO NOTHING! If legislators were really concerned about solving the so-called “obesity problem” (and yeah, if you’re at risk for heart condition or diabetes because of your weight, you have an obesity problem), they should be looking to the long term–changing the ways our schools treat physical education and play time, helping them build habits that will help them later on. The best educational programs encourage critical thinking skills (as opposed to rote memorization) because this is a SKILL they can use later on. Frankly, we need to teach our kids critical living skills as well, get them in the habit the way we get them in the habit of brushing their teeth, saying please and thank you, and so on.

    Will is solve the obesity problem? There is no obesity problem–America will never “be skinny” (an idiotic concept). Will it work for everyone? No, of course not–some will rebel, some will not fit in, some will try their hardest and never work out. But will some people–maybe many, or even most–live happier, fuller, better lives? I really think so.

    And then you can all come see my movie. Dare to dream, right?

  41. (and yeah, if you’re at risk of a heart condition or diabetes because of your weight, you have an obesity problem).

    Unless of course you happen to be thin, then your risks become just risks, that you try to reduce using available knowledge. Wow, that’s the same as being fat, except your ‘problem’ is that fat becomes the focus rather than reducing your risk factors as much as you actually can.

    And by the way,try not to use ‘obese’ as if it’s a persons identity. It is supposed to be a ‘disease’ present from the point of BMI of 30 onwards because health risks are purported to increase at that point, I don’t whether that is true or not, to be honest we are told this by people I no longer trust, in this area. It is true of say being a young man or getting divorced, being poor, etc., these are not labelled diseases.

  42. Hey guys, they thought it was never gonna happen that smoking would be prohibited (now they are even talking about banning it here in your own car !) and that restaurants would be mandated to change the way they make food either. This is SCARY stuff !

    Can we say BIG BROTHER?

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  44. He doesn’t expect it to be enforced, of course. It’s a deliberate overstatement, like saying “this problem is SO bad, maybe we should consider these DESPERATE MEASURES. OK maybe we shouldn’t go that far, but still this is BAD!”

    Even apart from the fatphobia, I must protest legislation as performance art.

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  46. Smoking harms other people directly. When other people can be directly harmed by a person being fat, I’m sure it will be all over the news.

  47. This proposed law is blatant discrimination, and there is no justification for it, even if your state is the most overweight. How about we bar lawmakers who discriminate against fat people from running for public office?

  48. Even apart from the fatphobia, I must protest legislation as performance art.

    Hah! But I think it is about fatphobia. This is a trial balloon to see if they can get away with this kind of discrimination. Next it will be a law screwing fat people on health care – something “reasonable” people can agree to.

    When other people can be directly harmed by a person being fat, I’m sure it will be all over the news.

    Haven’t you heard? Every day thousands of assholes are mortally offended and grossed out by the sight of fat people minding their own business. It’s an epidemic!

  49. Jesus, why not just propose incarcerating everyone with a BMI over 25 in a state-run fat camp?

    Huckabee gets in the Oval Office and you’ll see it.

  50. In this “day in age” we would never EVER tell a woman, a black person, or even a homo/bi/trans/sexual that they aren’t allowed to eat in a restaurant because of their race, gender or sexuality. But apparently, some feel that we can tell fat people that they can’t… are we just blinded by our culture’s fear of fatness or have americans actually reached a point where we have become so alienated from our own bodily instincts that we not only need nutritionists but laws to tell us how to eat? whatever happened to just plain trusting what your body is telling you… Oh wait, considering all the disgusting chemical crap that is in our food, no wonder we need nutritionists and laws to govern our bodies rather than our own selves… damn, someone get me out of this country.

  51. I don’t think this is meant to be serious. Well, at least it shouldn’t be taken seriously. Let’s focus on the real work being done for obesity, rather than the sensationalism we see in stories like this.

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