The Epidemic

Today, the American Medical Association officially classified obesity as a disease.

That's right, my body, as well as so many others out there, is home to a terrible, awful disease. I am made sick by my body. Unwell. Ill. Less than okay.

I read this post on Fat Heffalump about an hour ago, and I'm still a lot of things. Angry, for one, that the AMA went ahead and gave the okey-dokey signal for even more pressure to change my body. Disheartened that this option was on the table in the first place. This feels like a major blow.

Reading the LA Times article is a significantly less than fun experience. If we can all get past the many, many pictures of Headless Fatties scattered throughout the page and just focus on the text, then good for us. The Times seems ambivalent toward the move, as they well should be. On the one hand, they're excited cause, yay! we're gonna "do something" about fat people! On the other, the acknowledge that we will all face more pressure from weight-loss drugs and even more stigmatization.

The AMA is adamant that this is a good move, despite the fact that members of their own council were urging them not to make it. How good a move is it when your own people are telling you not to do it?

The AMA is certain that this will light a fire under medical professionals' butts, ensuring that they deal quite actively with overweight patients. Which is funny, considering the number of horror stories I've heard related to fat bodies and medical professionals, like doctors denying their patients medical care in lieu of telling them to lose weight. While there certainly are doctors out there who are more than willing to actually treat their patients instead of telling them to exercise, fatty, I can only imagine that this will make it that much harder for fat people like me to get medical attention for things not caused by being fat.

Despite the fact that fat does not equal unhealthy, despite the fact that my body hasn't stopped me (and despite the fact that people have because I'm fat), despite the fact that this is entirely not okay, my body is a diseased one.

Right.

There's a petition against this ruling now, and you can sign it here.