One Woman’s Fight To End Size Discrimination In Canada

By Amanda Scriver

Society purports to teach us that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but sometimes it feels like that doesn’t apply to fat people. We encounter near-constant discussion about our bodies and the bodies of those who look like us, and what they mean about our health, worth, and morality. Often, people are openly insulting. It’s hard to live as a fat person in the world when you’re dealing with harmful and hurtful comments on a day-to-day basis. Worse, in most places it’s legal to go beyond insults, and actually deny fat people jobs, housing, or education.

Jill Andrew is a Toronto-based fat activist who is taking on the fight against size discrimination head-first. In May 2016, she launched a petition that garnered just over 600 signatures, which challenged the Ontario’s human rights commissioner to add size discrimination to the Ontario human rights code, making it illegal to discriminate against someone for the size of their body (whether fat or thin). In July, Andrew opened the petition to Canadian supporters outside of Ontario, in hopes of bringing her case to the Canadian Human Rights Commission. On the Change.org petition page, Andrew describes her campaign:

“Every person’s human right — children and adults — to not be undermined because of their…