Should you be allowed to be fat and also work as an air hostess?

Should Air hostesses be allowed to be overweight? That is the question that an Indian court had to deal with recently and they delivered judgment almost a decade after an airline hostess took the government owned Air India to court. The Calcutta High Court felt that Air India should reinstate the now 44 year old Ms. Neepa Dhar as well as to pay all of her earnings since she was originally sacked for being overweight in 2001. They said that Air India would not have to permit her to work on planes and she could be assigned to ground duty.

Previously Air India's policy of sacking overweight women had been challenged in court unsuccessfully partly because there are clear clauses in the employment contracts for air hostess which stipulate that they must meet a set weight and size.

In the case of Ms Dhar, she claimed that she became overweight as a side effect of taking a medication to treat high altitude anxiety syndrome, thus implying that her weight gain was a medical problem as opposed to a lifestyle choice. Mr. Dhar originally joined Air India in 1987 and worked for 10 years before being grounded due to her weight. She was given a number of warnings and was only dismissed four years later after she was still overweight.

Well, what do you think? Should you be allowed to be fat and also work as an air hostess, or is this a ridiculous suggestion? Surely being overweight means that you cannot get between the trolley and the seats in the airplane aisles and that you simply take up too much room in the tiny spaces that are allocated for preparing food and drink on board? Being overweight means that you compromise efficiency and safety as well as give a pretty poor impression overall of the airline.

Whatever next? Catwalk models saying that they want to be able to keep their job despite putting on weight? Women should just accept that some jobs require them to be slim and if they can't maintain a slim weight they should just leave their job with dignity rather than kicking and screaming all the way to the courts. Ba ba boom...