I’m writing this letter in response to two editorials that have recently appeared on your Op-Ed page concerning the discrimination against the current Miss Universe.

Discrimination against fat people has been around for a long time. It therefore does not surprise me that Alicia Machado is experiencing discrimination due to her gaining a few pounds.

What does surprise me is that it has to come to this ridiculous extreme of 18 pounds before the pretty people of the world wake up to see the discrimination for what it is.

My wife and I are both overweight and have been experiencing this discrimination for years.

Why has no one stood by our side and denounced the objects thrown at us from cars and the deriding insults, laughing and condescending looks we receive on a daily basis?

Why is it that only when it starts hitting close to home that thin people begin to speak out?

I would also like to call some attention to three real tragedies which have occurred in the past two years, one of which happened just last week.

Last May, an overweight Chicago woman died of natural causes but the cause of death was initially listed as a heart attack.

Instead of providing sympathy for her family, the Chicago police department kicked her body to make it jiggle.

They then proceeded to eat the food in her home and play video games until others arrived to help move the woman’s body, leaving the doors and windows open in her house and inviting neighbors to gawk at her naked body.

When they moved her body, they dragged her naked across the front lawn, dropped her body next to the truck and made jokes about her size, laughing the whole way, all of this in front of her children.

Last week, a young boy in Fort Lauderdale chose to hang himself rather than go to school and face the taunting of his peers due to his weight.

Two years ago, a 12-year-old boy brought a gun to class and shot himself due to the teasing and harsh words being thrown at him by his classmates.

Why do we have to have children dying before people wake up to size discrimination?

Why are we unable to exercise on a daily basis or go to a restaurant without some idiot laughing at us or making jokes about me or my wife? Why is it that we have begun to deal with many other types of discrimination yet size discrimination is still tolerated by society?

People are looked down on if they use the words Kike, Nigger, Chink or Baby but “fat-assed bitch” is supposed to be acceptable?

April Samp used the phrase, “Is it what separates beauty from bovine?” Was it really necessary to equate someone who is overweight to being a cow?

She also mentioned that being treated according by how good you look has been around for years and that it will probably be around as long as gaining weight equals unattractiveness, laziness, and lack of intelligence.

Treating a heavy person as unattractive and undesirable has only been around for the last 50 years.

It is completely and wholly within the power of society to make this discrimination. In the middle ages, a heavy woman was treated as a goddess. In some Asian countries, weight is looked upon as health and with pride and respect.

Why can’t we as a society change the way we treat heavy people? We are teachers, friends and fellow human beings. Don’t we deserve the same respect given to thin people? We love ourselves for who we are and we respect others for being human.

Why is it so hard for people to return this in kind?

Dave Edsall

Physics

Graduate Student