The woman suing is named Jennifer Portnick. A more detailed account of her lawsuit can be found here. She maintains several websites, including one called Full Moon Fitness, and Fitness Fun Central, which carries a picture of her.
And it's cruel and inhumane to post "your favorite pictures of obese people". I'd never take a cheap shot like that..
I repeat, never.
She's not a bad looking woman, IMHO. I may not flip around to check her out if she was walking down the street, but if she worked in the same office with me, I certainly wouldn't hide my eyes when I saw her coming.
Unlike some of you, I don't think beauty only comes in sizes 0-6, and some of the most wonderful women I have ever known are overweight.
As for her qualifications to do the job: It should be remembered that world-class female athletes whose stock in trade is physical strength do not look like supermodels. For every statuesque, long-legged runner like Mary Decker or lithe Teutonic blonde like Grete Waitz, there is a short, efficient, and unremarkable-looking running machine like Joan Benoit Samuelson. Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova are tennis legends. Jennifer Capriati, with her flat chest and larger-than-you-would expect posterior, is either the best or the second best female player in the world. OTOH, Anna Kournikova is a footnote, and will be forgotten like yesterday's news if she should ever get a little pudgy.
To be fair, we aren't talking about world-class athletes in this case. We are talking about fitness instructors, who have to do more than play the part; they have to look the part. The person who is shouting at you with disco music blaring to work like a beast of burden in order to lose your abdominal roll shouldn't have her own.
Like I mentioned in my previous post in this thread, this is a suit made possible by SF's constant meddling in business affairs in the name of multi-cultural-sexual-racial policing. Jazzercise has a right to their own look unless they are being unreasonable in their standards, and based on what I have read so far, I don't believe they are. Besides, Portnick already has her own deal going, but I guess she decided that if she couldn't fit into Jazzercise's suit, she would file one of her own, and get some free and frivolous publicity.
