"Overweight women tend to be VERY unsympathetic."

[rocktivity]

Last edited Wed Sep 5, 2018, 08:54 AM - Edit history (2)

So said a lawyer discussing which potential jurors should be dismissed from his 17-year old female client's murder trial. I heard it on a true crime show several hours ago, and it's still ringing in my ears.

Now, I'm not naive about this sort of thing. When I was working in advertising and got a jury duty notice, I was advised to make a point of mentioning that I was a copywriter. Why? "They don't like jurors who who are good at thinking creatively." And I know that if the defendant can afford it, some lawyers will hire "mock" juries and put their strategies through a dress rehearsal of sorts.

But it's disappointing, to say the least, to learn that overweight women harbor so much such self-hatred and jealousy that they'd send young, pretty, skinny, innocent women to jail as revenge. I suppose I should therefore feel comforted that there are lawyers vigilant enough to keep them off juries. But it comes across as a demeaning, archaic, VERY sexist stereotype all the same.

Maybe it was the lawyer's emphasis on "VERY" that got to me the most.


rocktivity