From the New YOrk Times- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/dining/larger-customers-restaurants.html
Sit on me if old.
For people who identify as large, plus-size or fat, dining out can be a social and physical minefield. Chairs with arms or impossibly small seats leave marks and bruises. Meals are spent in pain, or filled with worry that a flimsy chair might collapse.
But restaurants don’t have to make it harder by ignoring a customer’s physical reality, she said.
“It puts the onus on the fat person,” said Ms. Baker, 32, who fluctuates between size 22 and 24. “We are the paying customers. We are paying you. We want to be comfortable and treated like humans.”
Bruce Sturgell, 39, who founded the culture and clothing website Chubstr in 2011, said he walks into every restaurant expecting to be uncomfortable. He wears a size XXL or XXXL shirt — the smaller side of big, he says.
“We’re in the early stages of this movement about fat acceptance and body positivity, and you’re seeing it in fashion and on television but not so much in restaurants,” he said.
“We are in a great cultural moment where people are talking about equity and inclusion, and size falls into that,” said Cheryl Durst, 57, chief executive of the International Interior Design Association.
Other changes are a nod to design trends and consumer preferences. The Golden Corral buffet chain last year adopted a roomier look that will eventually be adopted in all 491 of its restaurants. There is more space between tables, and sturdy, armless wooden chairs that the company said will lend a homier feel.
Taco Bell has stopped bolting tables to the floor, and has added movable seating in some stores to better serve groups of diners, said Matt Prince, the company’s senior manager for public relations and brand experience.
Over the years, large diners have tried to draw attention to their needs through protests and legal action. The efforts, though, have been sporadic.
Ms. Howell, 71, is 5-foot-8 and weighs about 300 pounds. When she and friends find a restaurant they like in Las Vegas, where the organization is based, they sometimes bring their own comfortable folding chairs.
It doesn’t always work out that way. Traci Armstrong, 46, who runs Specialty Catering in Bluffton, S.C., travels to eat at the nation’s best restaurants as a hobby. She is 5-foot-4 and about 335 pounds. She always books two airline seats.
She flew to Washington, D.C., over a holiday weekend to eat at Pineapple and Pearls, which has two Michelin stars. When she got there, her reserved seat was at a stationary bar stool at the chef’s counter. She didn’t fit. The staff offered to seat her outside or accommodate her at a sister restaurant, but she declined and left.
“I was mortified,” she said
Most diners, she said, simply want their size acknowledged without judgment.
“I’m fat,” she said. “And I deserve to eat in a restaurant and feel like I’m allowed to enjoy my life.”
Sit on me if old.