For women, being 13 pounds overweight means losing $9,000 a year in salary

If you’re a woman, and overweight, you can probably stop reading right now. Because odds are that you’re experiencing what I’m about to write about.

People – probably employers – expect you to hide. If a woman is overweight, employers are less likely to select her to fill a higher-wage job that involves interacting with the public. Overweight women are more likely to make less money than people of ‘normal’ weight and, tellingly, plump women earn even less than men who are overweight or obese. The data is from new study by Jennifer Shinall, assistant professor of law at Vanderbilt Law School.

And no, it has nothing to do with a woman’s likely level of education. “I controlled for education in my study,” says Shinall. “What is going on is being driven by the employer side of the equation; by employer preferences.”

Shinall has made employment discrimination her major area of legal study; she has been interested in body issues since her childhood and youth, when she was a dancer. “I was never overweight, but I remember being measured for costumes as a young girl, and it being announced – loudly, to everyone around me – that I would need a larger size than anyone else,” she recalls. “I was very aware of body size – all dancers are – and body image, and the way that gaining even five pounds is a very big deal for a woman. And that dancers are a very judgmental crowd” when it comes to scrutinizing each others’ bodies for the slightest sign of fat.

So, it turns out, are employers. But while a malicious comment from a fellow teenager can be bad enough, systematic discrimination in the employment market can have a real, measurable and negative impact on the many decades that will follow their graduation.

Being thin, it seems, is an unspoken requirement if you’re after a fatter paycheck. And the thinner you are, the better you fare, financially speaking. If you are deemed to be heavy, on the other hand, you suffer, as a 2011 study made clear. Heavy women earned $9,000 less than their average-weight counterparts; very heavy women earned $19,000 less. Very thin women, on the other hand, earned $22,000 more than those who were merely average. And yes, those results are far more visible on women’s earnings than on those of men.

You may also struggle for promotion. It turns out that about half of male CEOs are overweight, but only 5% of female CEOs carry extra pounds. Add an extra layer to that glass ceiling.

Shinall, who has discussed her findings at conferences, isn’t surprised by findings like this. At this point, all she can do is form hypotheses about the reasons employers don’t want to hire overweight or obese women. “They don’t want an obese woman to be the face of their company or the person their clients interact with,” she speculates.

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But her theories are formed based on the responses she gets from her audiences at those conferences. “I’m not surprised, because fat men are fun!” she recalls one man commenting after one presentation.

Of course, some employers now won’t even hire overweight women at all. Or will fire them if they gain even a few pounds.

Last year, a judge ruled that it was fine for an Atlantic City casino to fire any of the “Borgata babes”, cocktail waitresses who he acknowledged were hired essentially as “sex objects”, if their weight increased more than 7%. The “babes”, in their suit, claimed that they had been told to take laxatives ahead of weigh-ins.

At least Citizens Medical Center in Victoria, Texas applied its new policy to men and women when it stated flat-out in 2012 that it wouldn’t hire anyone with a body-mass index (BMI) of more than 35. You might say, well, that’s logical, right? A hospital would want to encourage healthy behavior, and doesn’t weight reflect that?

Well, it’s a little more complicated. First of all, the hospital seems to be a little bit more concerned with appearance than anything else. They want employees’ appearance to be “free from distraction” and to fit patients’ “expectations”.

Secondly, there are all kinds of flaws with BMI as a measure of health, in spite of its growing use by the insurance industry to identify those more likely to consume more medical services. If you’ve got heart disease or metabolic disorders, it seems as if being overweight or even mildly obese actually may boost your long-term survival rate.

What matters more is lifestyle. A sedentary receptionist, who smokes and drinks on weekends and never exercises, however sleek and polished and well groomed she looks and however well an employer thinks she represents the business, actually may be less healthy than an overweight woman who has a physically-demanding job (home health aide, say, or cleaner), who doesn’t drink or smoke, and who gets a moderate amount of exercise. Incidentally, in a few decades, that young receptionist also is at risk for becoming overweight herself – and may have less healthy habits.

Indeed, Shinall found that “many morbidly obese women are working in very physically demanding jobs where they are on their feet all day.” They also don’t earn very much.

When does discrimination start? Brace yourselves: long, long before you reach a BMI of 35.

In fact, one study suggested that bias against women begins showing up when they are only a few pounds above their ideal weight, although men can pile on far more pounds before it becomes a problem for them.

A woman who is 5ft 5in, for instance, begins to experience this when she is only 13lbs above what the BMI charts deem her highest healthy weight. At that point, her BMI is still only 27, and she weighs 16lbs – and is probably quite able to fit into a size 14 dress, and she’s still within the range of today’s “average” American woman.

There is almost no scenario where being overweight is an advantage for a woman – or even where it puts a woman on an even playing field relative to their overweight male counterparts. Indeed, weight discrimination seems to be on the rise. And it’s not just about what women earn, but how they spend.

Consider the plus-size clothing market: not only is there less choice, but women often have to shop online, since many retailers no longer stock even size 16 items in their stores. That means paying higher shipping costs – sometimes several times, if items don’t fit or aren’t flattering. (No chance to try an item on before buying …)

All of this data, says Shinall, could set the stage for some very interesting legal strategies on behalf of overweight women in the coming years. While some women have sought protection from discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Shinall notes that the fact that many obese women do just fine in physically demanding jobs suggest that may not be the perfect tool.

Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act, on the other hand, opens the door to something different: a “sex plus” claim, based on a company’s unequal treatment of men and women facing precisely the same circumstances (such as a refusal to hire someone with preschool-aged children.) It’s this law that female flight attendants used to defeat formal weight limits.

It’s clear that obese men get better treatment, generally. “If there’s an obese man in the company who is being better treated, that could open the door,” says Shinall.

Alternatively? You could move to Michigan, to Washington DC, San Francisco or a handful of other progressive jurisdictions that simply ban discrimination on basis of appearance.