No Fatties

A club up in Montreal, one of my favorite planes on Earth, is receiving some flak for posting, and I quote, "NO FAT GIRLS ALLOWED!!!!!!!!!!", on their Facebook page. Obviously, the club is backpedaling, and they say that it was some planner's idea of a joke. I actually buy that excuse, it probably was intended as a joke. It was just intended as a joke at the expense of fat girls.

Lots of people are up in arms over this, and apparently night clubs have been sued for racial discrimination in the past, which is, somehow, a bigger problem. I just can't get too up-in-arms over this. Clubs? Only allowing hot people inside? No!

For Pete's sake, duh! Of course the clubs are discriminating. That is was clubs do. Clubs exist for almost entirely superficial reasons. A book store, or perhaps cafe doing the same thing sounds wrong, but a club? That's SOP. If you're fat, you know that you're fat, and you're going to a place that's a temple to shallow, alcohol-fueled physical contact. You're an idiot for getting insulted.

In much the same way that I have no problems at all with high-end designers not making plus-sizes, clubs simply work this way. These companies are selling an image as much as a product. If a club was widely known for being filled with fat and/or ugly people, no one would go! Look at club websites. See anyone who's ugly in the photos section?

Make no mistake, this is discrimination. But if you have an image to maintain, and that image is material in the continued success of your brand, you need to regulate how that image is broadcast. Remember Burberry's brand taking a hammering in the UK after the chavs picked it up? Or Coach in the US after it started going after lower SES brackets? We have direct evidence showing that a poorly managed brand suffers damage when undesirable clients are seen attached to that brand.

So get over it or lose some weight.

Club Prohibits "Fat Girls," Claims It's An "Inside Joke" (Jezebel.com)