ANN ARBOR—Why do some people deserve protection from discrimination through the law while we don’t think it’s appropriate for others?

That’s the question raised about “fat” discrimination, said Anna Kirkland, an assistant professor in the University of Michigan’s departments of women’s studies and political science. Kirkland said she uses the word fat in her research because people she interviewed did not consider it an epithet.

It’s legal to discriminate against someone based on weight in every state except Michigan, which passed the anti-discrimination law in 1975. Some cities, such as San Francisco and Washington D.C., have local laws against weight discrimination. A proposed bill could ban discrimination against height and weight in Massachusetts, which state lawmakers recently discussed. Kirkland submitted a letter summarizing some of her findings about the Michigan law to the Massachusetts legislative committee in charge of the bill.

“The question is,” Kirkland says, “what is the proper role for law in saying what a person’s traits ought to mean?” It’s legal for an employer operating a strip club to hire only female dancers, but it’s not legal for a clothing chain to hire only young white people to sell its products, she said. An employer can tell an overweight job applicant that their appearance would not convey the right message to customers, she said.

“I hope my research prompts some conversations about whether that’s fair. We could think about fat as a difference that we need to accommodate in the interest of fairness,” Kirkland said.

A fat person, she says, can perform a job as well as anyone if some employers change the working conditions, such as providing a sturdy armless chair.

“Disability laws rest on the idea that you sometimes have to change the world and not ask the person to change to fit the world,” Kirkland said. “So sometimes we don’t just ignore a person’s traits, we actively pay attention to them to level the playing field.”

Kirkland has extended her research by interviewing overweight acceptance advocates nationwide about what gaining legal rights would mean to them. Other findings from that project include:

• Advocates did not like being known as disabled, even though that would be the route to getting accommodations on the job.

• Advocates argued that being overweight isn’t a choice. If it is a choice, it’s not important. People should be free from discrimination either way.

• Discrimination in health care is a major concern for overweight people, but there are no laws to help them.

Kirkland’s research appears in her new book, “Fat Rights: Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood” and in two forthcoming essays, “Obesity, Health, and Antidiscrimination: Revisiting What Rights Do,” and “Think of the Hippopotamus: Rights Consciousness in the Fat Acceptance Movement.”

or more information about Kirkland, visit: http://polisci.lsa.umich.edu/faculty/akirkland.html

Women’s Studies at Michigan: www.lsa.umich.edu/women/

The Department of Political Science: http://polisci.lsa.umich.edu/index.html

Anna KirklandWomen’s Studies at MichiganDepartment of Political Science