Stop telling fat people their bodies are costing our healthcare system

In fact, I often get praised for choosing the ‘unhealthy’ option while in public because “treat yourself, girl!” I’m afforded a life free from public ridicule because I have thin privilege. It’s not because I’ve made choices that have directly led to my misjudged appearance of glowing health.

Rather like my autoimmune diseases, my genetic lottery dictated much of how my body functions and looks. Our ‘healthy choices’ and ‘lifestyle changes’ can only take us so far in this quest for long, healthy life. And I’m afraid the whole picture is much more complicated than we’ve been led to believe. In a 2014 paper, the authors state there is evidence suggesting “socioeconomic factors such as income, wealth, and education as the fundamental causes of a wide range of health outcomes”.

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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. The main difference between my body and those who face daily discrimination for their size, is that the only one who could be accurately accused of putting a strain on our healthcare system is mine.

I’m not saying that body weight has no impact on certain health conditions, because like a lot of things, it certainly can. What I’m saying is, that fact doesn’t warrant the mountain of shame and personal responsibility rhetoric heaped onto people living in fat bodies.

Because despite mountains of research dedicated to the cause, there are still no safe, scientifically backed methods for long-term, meaningful weight loss for the vast majority of the population. UCLA researchers have cited 83 per cent as the number of participants who regained more weight than they lost after two years post-weight loss diet. People in fat bodies receive messaging from all angles that their fatness is both unappealing, and unacceptable in our society, but the fact remains; prescribed weight loss doesn’t meet the criteria to be considered evidence-based medicine. So the suggestion that those bigger bodies should simply lose weight is both reductive and entirely missing the point.

So can we put this tired rhetoric to bed once and for all? Can we afford every person living in every body a basic right to respect and bodily autonomy? I think so.

As for the link between obesity and adverse outcomes from Covid-19, there is enough evidence out there to suggest there could indeed be a link. Just like there is for a plethora of other chronic health conditions like type 1 diabetes, heart disease, asthma and other things like age and pregnancy. And we’re not going around telling people with those health conditions that they’re hurting our health system.

It’s time for a major overhaul in our collective understanding of what health looks like in our culture. It’s definitely time to stop placing the burden of blame on individuals for things they cannot control. What we can do, is encourage our political leaders to double down on the systemic and policy-related changes that we know keep all of us safe.

Hannah Vanderheide is an actor and writer based in Melbourne.

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