I wound up getting fired because someone had complained about me. While this may be true (spending 8 hours on a bumpy golf cart around grabby, drunk, white, rich old guys is bound to make you cranky) I also know that that Lady Hangover still had her job after I left. And I also know that she was about 50 pounds smaller than I was and pretty and she lived on the golf course with her rich parents.

This was a shitty job and I wasn’t too sad, but I certainly taught me that the wealthy and pretty had a free pass in a lot of situations.

I think snorting coke is pretty well documented to be bad for you.

Maybe time is the great equalizer. Maybe, when Kate Moss has an age related illness people will cluck at her “well, dearie, you should have put down the cocaine! Pushed yourself away from the dusty coffee table!”

I somehow doubt it. I’d bet both hand Kate Moss’ obituary will be dram-rama-SUPERMODEL-GORGEOUS!!!!

Meowser is definitely dead-on in saying that fat people are judged by their physical bodies and assumed to be doing something wrong and their fat is assumed to be a burden on others.

A colleague of mine used to do it and may do it still (I don’t work there any more). It used to drive me slightly crazy. I did rather wonder at the time if there’d have been more of a reaction to a woman doing this, rather than a young man, but I was never tempted to test the hypothesis…

On the whole, though, I think it’s down to workplace culture. I’ve never worked anywhere else where that happened.

HA!

Clearly you’ve never worked in the entertainment industry.

I do believe — having lived it — that you’re correct in your assessment that “just because you lose weight, your world won’t change”; however, that does NOT mean that conventionally pretty people are not privileged in their conduct FAR beyond what’s “permissible” for those visibly outside that norm.

(Britney Spears, anyone? Amy Winehouse?)

And the further outside that norm you are, the more severely you’re punished in this society, particularly for “deviant behavior” that people who cleave more closely to the norm can do and get away with.

And if you don’t believe that people can show up to work hungover — or high, for that matter — and not get fired, you should take a tour of some big city law and accounting firms, those bastions of conservatism and maintenance of the status quo.

Because the status quo in America IS that the more you cleave to the white patriarchal approved norm, the more you can get away with.

If you remain unconvinced, Google “white privilege”, “male privilege”, and Paul Campos’ central thesis — then get back to me.

But I still don’t think it’s accurate to say that “thin people are given a pass for their vices and peccadillos because they make the world a prettier place.” There are plenty of thin people with drug vices, alcohol vices, gambling vices, sexual vices, etc. who have to face the consequences for their actions. There are plenty of thin people who get fired for showing up to work on drugs or drunk, who get their houses foreclosed because they overspent themselves into backruptcy, who get disowned by their families and friends and shunned by society for their sexual tastes and preferences. And to imply that they get a free pass simply because they are not overweight is ridiculous, frankly. And to imply that the world will go any easier on someone who’s facing serious debt, or being fired for drug or alcohol abuse, etc. if they just lost 50 or 75 or 100 pounds is plain wrong, in my experience.