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We’re witnessing a familiar shift: the return of the thin ideal. In North America, advertising, entertainment, political discourse, and media messaging are once again aligning to promote thinness as the social norm and ultimate “ideal.” It is becoming increasingly acceptable to scrutinize people’s bodies (women, especially) on the national stage. Film shots linger on a woman’s defined collarbone (or “beauty bone”), and coverage and promotion of Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 (GLP-1) weight loss medication appear to be everywhere.
This renewed ideal creates very real pressure that seeps into our workplace interactions. Whether colleagues are jointly committing to the “75 hard” (a strict 75-day program) or discussing the latest A-List actor to have gone on Ozempic (a drug not FDA-approved for weight loss), workplace experiences undoubtedly shape our ideas about body image and wellness.
As leaders who care about our teams' well-being, we cannot ignore these realities. At the same time, we know that commenting on people’s bodies is inappropriate and harmful. So, how can workplaces move forward in a way that is equally empowering, responsive, and respectful? Yes, conversations about the body at work can be uncomfortable, but that does not mean we should avoid a critical conversation impacting our people. Instead, we can name and challenge these pressures so that we don’t have to face them alone.
Several social trends compound to influence this cultural moment and intensify exclusion for fat team members:
While remote workspaces continue to be the ‘new norm’ for many businesses, in-person office work will remain a constant for others. The design of workspaces is one of the many crucial components that make a place accessible and inclusive. However, our culture of thinness has led countless body shapes and sizes to be neglected when designing such spaces, particularly fat bodies.
Note: The way we use the word “fat” is significant because the word is often used in a derogatory manner. Many in the fat community have reclaimed the word to signal pride and power or a matter-of-fact description. Some reject the medicalized terminology of “obese” and “overweight” because medical professionals often use these terms to deny care and further people’s marginalization. The fat community uses many terms to represent who they are, such as “small fat” and “super fat,” to name a few. It is important to engage with individuals and the fat community to identify the most inclusive language that fosters dignity and respect across different relationships and contexts.
We spend so much time at our desks; it is crucial that they are designed for the person sitting at them. Desk chair size is a persistent issue for fat team members. When they do not fit in their assigned desk chair, they can feel physically uncomfortable, experience bruising on their body, and be left with short or long-term physical pain. Improperly sized or poorly fitted chairs may tip, buckle, or collapse, creating safety risks. Seats with armrests can pinch or restrict larger bodies. Furthermore, desks that are inaccessible may not provide sufficient clearance for someone to fit their legs underneath comfortably or safely.
Ask your team members: Does your desk space accommodate your needs?
Back up your commitment to inclusive spaces by providing accessible seating options (e.g., armless, adjustable, with a range of sizes) to accommodate larger team members and desks that allow fat team members to rest their legs comfortably.
As with individual desks, comfortable, accessible furniture throughout the office is essential. This means that communal spaces like dining areas, conference rooms, prayer rooms, nursing rooms, and relaxation rooms should all have furniture like chairs, desks, sofas, and tables that are inclusive of fat people. It’s best to avoid stools, tiny benches, or chairs with rigid armrests. Creating a fat-inclusive office also means re-thinking every inch of the space. Avoid tight corners, a buildup of office paper or other materials blocking pathways, and small bathrooms or bathroom stalls. Conference rooms should have enough space for everyone to sit comfortably without having to touch others or “squeeze” into the room.
Inclusive Tips:
How we design physical spaces is essential. Equally important is how we design our culture, policies, and programs. There are many places where fat-exclusion can show up in the workplace, but let’s explore a few.
Dress codes are often framed as neutral or “professional,” yet they can reinforce fat-phobic ideals by centring narrow body standards. Requirements around “tailored” fits, specific silhouettes, or limited size ranges can exclude or stigmatize team members whose bodies don’t conform to these norms. When clothing policies prioritize appearance over function, they can signal that certain bodies are more acceptable than others.
To mitigate this, organizations can adopt dress codes that prioritize safety, comfort, and job requirements over body shape or size.
Inclusive Tips:
Clothing can be exclusionary when organizations offer only minimal sizes to team members. Not only will fat team members not be able to participate in company bonding experiences, but they may also feel that the company does not care about them. Swag meant to be worn on the body, such as lanyards, fanny packs, hats/caps, and bags, may not fit people with larger bodies.
Inclusive Tips:
People of all sizes enjoy activity and exercise. However, certain “wellness” and “health” communities’ ideas are fatphobic and create a stigma against fat bodies. Companies need to establish wellness programs that do not perpetuate harmful narratives. There are ways to encourage your team to take care of themselves while remaining weight-neutral.
Inclusive Tips:
If your company requires team members to travel, it is essential to consider how travel options can be exclusionary to fat bodies. Airplanes, cars, buses, and other forms of transportation might not hold fat bodies comfortably and may not even be safe if things like seat belts don’t fit. The physical layouts of lodging and restaurants may not accommodate larger bodies either. Something even more subtle to consider is that fat team members might not feel comfortable travelling and doing business in cities or countries known to be far more fatphobic.
Inclusive Tips:
Fat team members routinely face cultural stereotypes and bias that frame them as lazy, less competent, “unprofessional,” attention-seeking, or unattractive. As a result, fat people face barriers in hiring, compensation, and advancement because they are wrongly perceived as lacking the skills, discipline, or credibility required to succeed. The harmful assumption that everyone desires thinness is widely accepted and reinforced through casual workplace questions, comments, jokes, and personal disclosures.
Inclusive Tips:
Fat stigma and fatphobia are deeply connected to anti-Blackness and racism. The ideal, normative, dominant body is constructed as white, thin, cisgender, younger, and non-disabled, among other socially privileged traits. This becomes even more significant when talking about fat women or fat Black women who experience compounding and intensifying stigma concerning their fatness due to different intersections of their identity.
Fatphobia and the pressure to conform to a body ideal are also experienced differently based on people’s age and gender. Therefore, workplace efforts must be intersectional and acutely responsive to the overlapping layers of identity that people bring to work. When we make space for fat bodies, we also make space for Blackness, racialized bodies, disabled bodies, and a variety of cultural identities. These issues cannot be meaningfully addressed in isolation. Learn about how we can trace the roots of fatphobia back to the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and patriarchy.
Discussing weight at work may feel difficult or uncomfortable. We are often conditioned to treat these feelings as shameful or private. But this work is necessary if we are to build a workplace culture where everyone feels valued. We should absolutely not comment on individual bodies at work, but it is our duty to name the harmful systems that make people feel isolated in their own skin.
External factors like the commodification of wellness, thin body ideals enforced in popular culture, and GLP-1 normalization seep into our workplace talk. Internally, a company’s wellness programs and physical design also shape workplace experiences and can make those outside the ideal feel excluded or diminished.
A culture catered to a thin body ideal by default is something that workplaces should tackle head-on. We must name and challenge the societal trends impacting us so that everyone can feel valued and empowered in their own bodies at work. By naming these trends, we can address how they manifest in workplace design, messaging, and decision-making. Only then can workplaces move toward cultures where people are able to thrive without having to shrink themselves to belong.
Please note that the information presented here is not exhaustive. There are many obvious and subtle ways that our societies exclude fat bodies from workplaces. Furthermore, no two fat people have the same experience. Executive leadership, managers, supervisors, and team members can proactively engage in dialogue and education to better understand fat team members' experiences. Inclusion requires that we first listen.
This blog is not meant to be a static guide, but rather a compilation and reflection of our learnings to date. Everything changes - from technologies and innovations to social norms, cultures, languages, and more. We’ll continue to update this blog with your feedback; email us at hello@feminuity.org with suggestions.
This blog was written collaboratively by members of the Feminuity team.
If you wish to reference this work, please use the following citation:
Feminuity. "The Weight of Workplace Wellness: How Workplaces Exclude Fat Team Members and What to Do Instead"
