A Japanese company offers to hire an overweight person for 15 euros an hour. The buzz revealing the extent of grossophobia on a global scale.
This is unreal news, but it is creating a buzz. According to an article byAbsolute General News published Monday, June 7, 2021, a new Japanese service allows individuals and businesses to hire fat people for 2,000 yen (or 15 euros) per hour. Named “Debucari”, this offer makes it possible to hire an obese person, because as stated in the American media, people over 100 kilos are very rare in Japan. “On the initiative: Mr. Bliss, also founder of the plus size fashion brand Qzilla. It was after struggling to find plus size models for his brand that this new project took shape.”, Explain Capital.fr, which takes up the info on June 10, 2021. The entrepreneur therefore had the idea of offering this service as a real business opportunity. And for his company, nothing degrading. She even says it’s positive and rewarding.
Beyond the shocking side of the initiative, the news circulates in several countries of the world, relayed like a funny, comical buzz. There was, however, reason to treat it as a real social issue: who are the people who hire these services? How are they perceived in Japanese society? But above all, what does laughing about it say about our dehumanized relationship with the fat body? Anti-grossophobia activists have spoken out on their networks. They remind us that this kind of information is not trivial and has an impact on the lives of fat people, but also of all, who will internalize these speeches.
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This media treatment only drives the point home for fat people, who find themselves judged, dehumanized and reduced to a uniform category: fat people, for whom there is no individual situation, but a collection of bodies deemed contrary to the standards. In France, being a fat person means exposing yourself to multiple discrimination at the professional or medical level in particular. So there is nothing to take this newcomer from Japan with a joke.
by Mathilde Wattecamps and Céline Peschard