Opinion Stop telling fat people their bodies are costing our healthcare system
on the use of fat suits in Hollywood. The comments found online in response quickly devolved into rants linking obesity and health and attempting to erase the author’s lived experience, working to completely erase the central issues highlighted by Rebecca’s piece.
of the prevalence of weight bias across four countries, including Australia. And it’s been proven to have significant ill effects on a person’s overall health.Allow me to be clear: A person’s health status, or the status we assign their health due to their appearance, is not information that is owed to anyone, aside from perhaps a trusted medical professional. I choose to share my health status publicly because I’m able to do so without the fear of being accused of “bringing this on myself”.
, researchers say there is evidence suggesting “socioeconomic factors such as income, wealth, and education as the fundamental causes of a wide range of health outcomes”.I can guarantee you, unequivocally, that my body is less “healthy” than 99 per cent of the bodies of fat people that I know. I can also confirm that my body costs our medical system more than their bodies ever have. Yet I have never, not once, been accused of draining our resources or “glorifying” my diseases by simply existing.