2011 Miss San Antonio
Despite being 5-foot-8, weighing in at just 129 pounds, and wearing a size 2, 17-year-old beauty queen
Domonique Ramirez was allegedly told to "get off the tacos" and ultimately stripped of her 2011 Miss San Antonio crown for being too fat. Miss San Antonio pageant officials claimed Ramirez showed up to a bikini shoot for the Miss Texas pageant overweight, rendering the pictures "unusable." Organizers also claimed Ramirez was chronically late for events and neglected to write thank-you notes. After the stunner was informed she would have to step down as Miss San Antonio in January, Ramirez fired back, filing a lawsuit with the help of the League of United Latin American Citizens to show that all of the allegations were "untrue, exaggerated, embellished." A jury deliberated for two days, and eventually ruled in favor of Miss Ramirez, reinstating her crown.
The Lovely Bones
Not even Oscar-nominated actors are safe, it seems. After the usually slender Canadian actor
Ryan Gosling was cast in the role of grieving father Jack Salmon in filmmaker Peter Jackson's adaptation of Alice Sebold's bestselling novel
The Lovely Bones, he figured he needed to pack on the pounds to pass as a middle-age dad. "I was 150 pounds when [Jackson] hired me, and I showed up on set 210 pounds,"
Gosling told The Hollywood Reporter. "We had a different idea of how the character should look. I really believed he should be 210 pounds. I was melting Haagen-Dazs and drinking it when I was thirsty." The movie studio, Paramount, and filmmakers were less than thrilled with Gosling's portly appearance, reportedly telling him, "Go hit the treadmill." Gosling was eventually fired from the film and replaced by the decidedly more in-shape Mark Wahlberg, with Paramount citing "creative differences" with the Canadian. "Then I was fat and unemployed,"
said Gosling.
Jenny Craig Spokeswoman
After starring on the short-lived Showtime series
Fat Actress in 2005, Kirstie Alley dropped a staggering 75 pounds. For the next three years, Alley worked as a spokeswoman for the
Jenny Craig weight-loss program—that is, until she was let go in 2008 after gaining nearly all the weight back. "She's devastated over the way her Jenny Craig career fizzled. It was a huge professional setback, and a major blow to her ego," a source told
The National Enquirer. Alley was replaced by former
One Day at a Time star Valerie Bertinelli. All was not lost, however. Alley launched the semi-scripted reality show
Kirstie Alley's Big Life in March 2010 on the A&E Network, about her struggle to lose the weight she put on, and she is currently a contestant on
Season 12 of ABC's
Dancing With the Stars.
The First Ronald McDonald
While serving as co-host of the nightly
Joy Boys radio program in Washington, D.C., as well as hosting numerous children's television programs—most notably a four-year stint playing the character Bozo the Clown—in 1963, Willard Scott was asked by McDonald's to create a character for the fast-food franchise. From 1963 to 1966,
Scott appeared as the first Ronald McDonald in a series of McDonald's TV commercials. However, in Morgan Spurlock's documentary
Super Size Me, author Eric Schlosser (
Fast Food Nation) claimed that McDonald's, concerned about the brand's image, had Scott replaced as the character of Ronald McDonald on account of his weight. Scott wasn't too fat for NBC's
Today show, however, and served as the morning program's weatherman from 1980 to 1996.
Ralph Lauren Model
"Dude, her head's bigger than her pelvis," wrote
Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin next to a grossly retouched image of 23-year-old model
Filippa Hamilton posing in an ad for Ralph Lauren back in September 2009. The company then quickly removed the ad and filed for copyright infringement, demanding that the images, reportedly shown at a mall in Japan, be taken off the Web. Weeks later, the 5-foot-10, 120-pound French-Swedish model was fired from her job of eight years as a Ralph Lauren model for, strangely enough, being too fat. "They fired me because they said I was overweight and I couldn't fit in their clothes anymore," said
the size 4 Hamilton. She added, "I'm very proud of what I look like, and I think a role model should look healthy." You can read
the company's full statement concerning Hamilton's firing here.
Saturday Night Live Castmember
Saturday Night Live has a checkered past with firing cast members. Even fan favorites
Adam Sandler and Chris Farley were reportedly sacked from the show back in its heyday. Well, this one could quite literally take the cake. In September 2009, sources claimed that
SNL cast member Casey Wilson was fired from the show after failing to lose a requested 30 pounds over the NBC program's summer hiatus. The rumors led to claims that
SNL honcho Lorne Michaels was sexist, as the show has featured several hefty male players over the years, including current cast member Kenan Thompson. However,
Wilson has since denied the rumor, stating, "I had an amazing time on
SNL, and these rumors are completely untrue." She added, "And to clarify, the issue isn't that I'm too fat, it's that I'm too phat. Can I get a WHAT-WHAT!" OK, perhaps she was just fired for too many jokes like that.
Pro Soccer Player
Many international soccer stars have had trouble managing their weight over the years [see:
Ronaldo] but few have been fired for it. Enter St. Patrick's Athletic soccer player Michael Keane. The 25-year-old midfielder, who took home a weekly wage of more than €3,000 ($4,200), was fired back in July 2008 for failing to heed warnings about his physical condition. Apparently, Keane, a former teenage superstar, had gotten an ultimatum from the club earlier in the year to lose weight and was given a target goal, so when he failed to meet the soccer club's requirements, was promptly shown the door. Keane, now 28, hasn't played pro soccer since, although there have been
recent rumblings of a possible comeback.
Hooters
The Hooters restaurant chain, known for its voluptuous and scantily clad female staff, has been sued over the years for everything from
denying men jobs to putting
grandmothers in headlocks. In 2010, a pair of Michigan waitresses—Cassandra Smith, 20, and Leanne Convery, 23—joined the fun,
suing the chain for allegedly being fired because of their weight. Both women weigh in at 132 pounds. Smith filed her lawsuit on May 24, 2010, after being told by managers that she needed to "improve her uniform fit" and being offered a gym membership, while Convery filed her claim in June 2010, after she was fired in July 2009 following a warning from management that she had 30 days to make her uniform "fit more properly." A judge allowed the case to move forward in August 2010, citing a
rare Michigan law that outlaws weight discrimination—making it the only state in the country with such a law on the books. The verdict is pending.
Host,
Dance Your Ass Off
Known for her performance as Tracy Turnblad in the Broadway musical adaptation of John Waters' film
Hairspray, dancing her way to the semifinals of ABC's
Dancing With the Stars, and surviving a battle with cervical cancer, the curvy Marissa Jaret Winokur was hired as host of Oxygen's reality-TV show
Dance Your Ass Off. However, despite great ratings for the show's first season,
Winokur was let go and replaced by the
abtastic former Spice Girl Melanie Brown, aka Mel B.
Winokur's publicist later confirmed to AOL TV that she parted ways with the show because she was "criticized by producers for her appearance." Winokur's luck unfortunately failed to improve:
She was fired from the CBS daytime talk show
The Talk in January in what CBS brass called "a mutual decision based on time, not talent."
Nebraska Cop
It's a good thing Chief Wiggum resides in the fictional town of Springfield. Back in 2007, hefty Bellevue, Nebraska, police officer Chris Parent was fired for poor physical performance during a state-mandated gun test. Video produced by the department showed that at the training session Parent passed the shooting test, but failed when asked to kneel down, shoot, and stand back up. Parent filed several lawsuits against the department and was finally reinstated two years later, thanks to Bellevue's Officer Wellness Policy, which required only that officers had to be in fair shape (it has since been revised). "No income. Your named dragged through the dirt. How would it be for you?"
asked Parent. Although he managed to win his job back, Parent still found himself on the receiving end of many a joke from his fellow cops. "Trust me. The chief won't let it go," said Parent.
