Weight Discrimination

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/07/opinion/puhl-christie-weight/index.html?hpt=op_t1
For today's op/ed assignment, I chose an article about how weight discrimination affects Americans running for political office, namely a potential presidential candidate named Chris Christie, who is overweight. The author presents the arguments that not only can you not necessarily tell a person's health by their body weight, but also body weight is in no way an indicator of a person's character or value. I absolutely agree with the author that body weight should not have as heavy and influence as it seems to have on people's opinions of each other. The fact that only one state in the country has a law protecting overweight and obese people from discrimination is shocking to me. If we have laws protecting people from discrimination based on gender, race, religion, disability, and veteran status by their employers, then why should we not have laws protecting overweight and obese people from discrimination by their employers? Harshly judging people for being overweight is not only cruel, it is often innefective at correctly judging someone's value, character and worth. The author cited a poll that showed that most people, but women especially, favor the creation of laws protecting people from weight discrimination in the workplace. I believe that women favor it more strongly because women are often more the subject of harassment based on weight than men due to our society's heavy placement of a woman's worth on her physical appearance. For this reason, I believe that the creation of weight discrimination in the workplace laws would benefit not only overweight employees, but society as large by addressing a social problem.