Georgia Nail Salon Charges Woman Extra For Being Overweight

Here’s your rage-inducing news of the day: a Georgia woman claims she was charged five dollars extra for her manicure simply because of her weight.

Michelle Fonville tells WSB.TV that the owners of Natural Nails in DeKalb County, Georgia charged her extra for her manicure, claiming that damage to salon chairs had been done by overweight patrons, and that the extra $5 was to cover the potential cost of a replacement chair. “I said, Ma’am, you can’t charge me $5 more. That’s discrimination because of my weight,” Fonville says, noting that Kim Tran, the manager of the salon, brought up the broken chair issue in response: “Do you think that’s fair when we take $24 [for manicure and pedicure] and we have to pay $2,500? Is that fair? No.”

But the salon was seemingly set up to discriminate to begin with; the chairs they’re so concerned over only have a weight capacity of 200 pounds, and claiming that anyone over 200 pounds is responsible for chair damage, after already inviting them to sit on said chairs, is a very shady means of getting an extra five dollars through completing the manicure and then slapping on the extra humiliation charge. If the salon is so concerned about its precious chairs, perhaps it should order some that accommodate all of its customers, instead of blaming the patrons for “breaking” chairs that were not designed to support their weight to begin with. Also, the salon seems to be operating under an assumption that it’s the patrons over 200 pounds that are responsible for chair damage, as opposed to typical wear and tear over time, punishing patrons for damage that can’t be traced to their particular usage of the chair. It’s discrimination and really terrible business. As Fonville says, “The word has to get out there that these people are discriminating against us because of our weight. I mean come on, we’re in America. You can’t do that.”

It appears that the chairs are more valuable and worth protecting than the needs and feelings of the salon’s patrons, but once this news gets around, one wonders if anyone will want to fill those precious seats anymore. Charging extra for your own inability to provide for a wide variety of bodies, not to mention to justify your own prejudices against people of a certain size, is a really ugly way to run a beauty salon.