ANTIDISCRIMINATION LAW’S NEW FRONTIER: Fat Bias Starts Early and Takes a Serious Toll. General Leslie Groves was fat. If prejudice had kept him from heading the Manhattan Project, would it have succeeded?

On the other hand, research also purports to show that the more you associate with overweight people, the more likely you are to gain weight yourself. So does that mean shunning fat people is defensible as self-protection? More seriously, when I see people who are significantly overweight, I don’t mind — I just feel sad because I know that they’re probably not happy being that way. And while it’s true that all you have to do to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more, that’s not as easy as it sounds. On the other hand, I’m not convinced that the “fat acceptance” movement will help. We didn’t reduce the number of smokers in this country by “smoking acceptance.” Though, of course, the reduced number of smokers probably has something to do with the increase in obesity. . . .