Club Prohibits "Fat Girls," Claims It's An "Inside Joke"

A Montreal nightclub angered patrons by posting “NO FAT GIRLS ALLOWED!” on its Facebook page. But promoters say it’s far from the only club to discriminate based on appearance.

According to the Montréal Gazette, party planners for the club Muzique posted the message “NO FAT GIRLS ALLOWED!!!!!!!!!!” followed by a winky face as part of a Facebook invitation to a party Saturday. John Jay, who’s in charge of Muzique’s communications and marketing, says, “It was not an intentional thing. It was actually an accident. It was someone thinking he was funny.” The last two statements contradict each other, but the “accident” defense doesn’t hold water anyway — what, did the planners accidentally hit the “NO FAT GIRLS ALLOWED!!!!!!!!!!” key? Equally unconvincingly, Jay explained that the line was “an inside joke.” We’re sure it has some secret meaning that isn’t offensive at all.

Some of Muzique’s Facebook friends are outraged, but another club promoter, Stefano Apostolakos, says this kind of discrimination happens all the time, albeit tacitly. He explains to the Gazette that “a nightclub that wants to attract a certain kind of crowd will never openly turn people away based on weight […] but if people don’t fit in with the club’s look, a bouncer can still find some excuse to turn them away -whether it’s a long wait time, an expensive bottle service fee or claiming the club is at capacity.” But another promoter, Shant Kojakian, says most clubs don’t turn people away because of their weight — instead, “race tends to be more of a factor.” Well, that’s a relief then.

Earlier this year, an Illinois nightclub was sued for alleged racial discrimination, and last year students at Washington University in St. Louis filed a complaint against another nightclub for the same reason. But while a few US cities have laws against weight discrimination, there’s little record of clubs being successfully sued on those grounds — and appearance discrimination, in general, may be harder to prove than racism. On the plus side, Muzique seems pretty embarrassed by its’ planners little “inside joke” — and with the advent of plus-size clubs, maybe the kind of venue that screens its patrons based on a Hollywood idea of hotness is finally on the way out.