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Doctor Posts Joke Video Demonstrating Stigma That Kills People. Where’s the Hippocratic Oath When You Need It?

So apparently Dr. Terrible is getting a run for his money in my all time list of creeps. Meet Dr. Irresponsible and Dr. Hatemonger.

So yesterday, a number of people told me about a video posted on Kevin MD that was horrible beyond the normal bonds of horrible. (Sorry, no power on earth will compel me to link to that ish. Some things deserve exactly zero clicks.) And the first thought that came into my mind is, “This video is going to kill people. Literally. People are going to see this video and they are going to not go to the doctor and they are going to die.”

You see this video, created by Waqas Khan or (Who calls himself Dr. I Am Sorry) was one of the most nightmare cases of bigotry, prejudice and racism I have seen in a long time. (Again, not willing to give clicks here. Google it if you must.) In this video (which is part of a series of videos of unrestrained bigotry by the way) we see Miss Fatty going to the doctor. In this short video we get to see all of the following tropes played out:

Fat people are slow.
Fat people are pushy.
Fat people eat nothing but junk food.
Fat people are completely incapable of understanding what they are eating.
Fat people are lazy.
Fat people have done nothing to try to lose weight.
Fat people are stupid.
Fat women will never find a man.
Fat people believe that there is a magic pill that will make them thin.
Fat people are guaranteed to get diabetes.
Fat people understand nothing about their bodies or their health.
Fat people never exercise.
Fat people don’t do anything their doctors tell them to do.

Oh and by the way, did I mention that Ms. Fatty is African American? So all those stereotypes, yup, you can apply them ALL to African American women while you’re at it. And you can add:

African American Women are fat.
African American Women are bossy.

A lot of this is punctuated by soliloquies by Dr. I Am Sorry. (Or “Dr. You Should Be Sorry and I Predict Will Be Soon” as I call him) spouting anger and bile and vitriol and bigotry towards his imaginary non-compliant patients that make it clear he has nothing but disgust and hatred towards them.

Okay. Now let’s get to the killing people part.

We know from several sources, including the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity that weight stigma among American medical professionals is rampant. In one study 24 percent of nurses reported being repulsed by obese patients and 12 percent preferred not to touch fat patients. In another study, 48 percent of nurses reported being uncomfortable treating fat patients and 31 percent reported a preference for not having to care for obese patients at all. Yet another study involving doctors found that two-thirds reported that their obese patients lacked self-control, and 39% stated that their obese patients were lazy.

Prejudice towards obese people in medical settings is well documented and you can bet that patients are aware of it. Naturally for some fat people, this awareness makes them more fearful about going to the doctor. In some cases it makes them delay going to the doctor or avoid going to the doctor altogether. In one study, over 12 percent of women said they canceled or delayed doctor appointments due to concerns about how they would be treated regarding their weight. In this same study, embarrassment over weight and concerns about how the doctor and staff would treat them was cited as the number one reason among women for cancelling or delaying appointments. It is also well documented that when people delay or stop going to the doctor, they get sicker and they die sooner.

So we have a situation where:

Doctors, nurses and medical students have a demonstrated bias against fat people.
Fat people are aware of this bias.
The awareness of this bias causes fat people to delay or avoid going to the doctor.
The number one prescription of doctors for people is weight loss even though there is no medically proven (outside of amputation) method to achieve this for most patients–at least not long term, and the weight loss “cure” suggested by doctors is more likely to leave patients sicker, sadder and fatter than before.

And the solution suggested by these two “doctors” is to create (Dr. Waqas Khan) and publicize (Dr. Kevin) a video that shows a fat African American woman actively demonstrating every stereotypical view that medical professionals typically hold about African American women and fat women while simultaneously demonstrating the medical profession’s hatred and disgust towards these very patients? How is this not convincing even more people of size not to go to the doctor? How is this not eventually killing people who have decided not to go to the doctor? How is Hippocrates not jumping out of his grave to take away their medical licenses?

It’s time for doctors to realize that holding a lot of unsubstantiated and biased views about people of size is lazy, unethical, dangerous and deadly. And it is way past time for doctors to realize that posting a pile of hate that pours lighter fluid on an already painful and problematic situation for a little click bait is beyond irresponsible–it can be fatal.

In short, shame on you doctors. Shame. On. YOU.

Sincerely Yours,

Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

More Victims Dying to be Thin

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I recently read about this story about student Ella Parry who died after accidentally overdosing on diet pills she bought from the Internet. The pills were found to contain Dinitrophenal or DNP. This highly toxic industrial chemical has been determined to be unfit for human consumption. There is no known antidote to the toxin once it is ingested. Ella, an otherwise healthy 21 year old woman bought 100 of the slimming pills online for the equivalent of about $100. She did ingest more pills than the label suggested. But very shortly after taking the pills, she started to feel quite ill. Not long afterward, Ella drove herself to the local emergency room. Her metabolism began to soar, and despite efforts by the doctors to bring her temperature down, Ella’s body “burned her up from the inside”.

Now there is no question that people fall victim to Internet scams all the time, and it’s easy to find illicit substances online. But it leads me to wonder if Ella is simply a victim of an Internet scam, or if there’s more at play here. How much pressure do young people get to be very, very thin? How much have they heard that being thin is easy and anybody can do it if they try? What happens when they find out it is not easy for them? What lengths will they go to in order to achieve an “acceptable body”? I can’t help feel that this is just another casualty of our culture’s obsession with thinness, and our culture’s utter inability to educate us about natural body diversity. This leads to many potentially fatal problems including eating disorders. And it leads to desperation that might cause an educated, intelligent young woman to buy pills off the Internet and consume them without even understanding what is in them or how dangerous they are.

This is why the war on obesity is not just a war against fat bodies, but about all bodies. Because fear of not having the perfect body, fear that a body could become fat one day, leads people of all sizes to make poor choices with sometimes devastating consequences in order to fit into their skinny jeans. This is why I will continue to fight for body diversity and for better education about the real facts about bodies and weight.

If you’re interested in joining this fight, perhaps you would consider participating with us in the upcoming Fat Activism Conference. We’ve got a call for participation HERE. It’s a very simple form that you could fill out in just a few minutes.

And I’d like to remind you, that if you are interested in joining us in our upcoming Fit Fatties Virtual Event, there are just a few short days left to sign up. You can learn more HERE.

Love, Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

P.S. Want to hear me speak about body diversity? Learn more HERE.

A Killer Green Dress and other Fashion to Die For

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Recently I heard about Fashion Victims: The Pleasures and Perils of Dress in the 19th Century a new exhibit at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Canada. The centerpiece of the exhibit is a bright green ballgown from 1860. Like many other fashions of the time, the bright green color was accomplished with a dye created with arsenic. The vivid green color was very popular at the time because it looked beautiful under the new electric lighting. Other arsenic-laced fashions on display include electric green shoes, gloves and other items.

These arsenic laced items were known at the time to be dangerous to the fashionistas who wore them. Arsenic was absorbed through the skin when the wearer perspired and frequently caused rashes and worse conditions. And the garments were not only very dangerous to those who wore them, but also to those who created the fabrics and made them into clothing. Similar to these dangers in dressmaking were the frequent poisonings by those who created the fashionable hats of the time. The demand for a larger number of felted fur hats, required cheaper fur which used mercury in the finishing process. Mercury is known to cause a wide variety of damage to the brain and nervous system. The poisoning of hat makers became so well known that the phrase “mad as a hatter” came into widespread use. Add to this the generally poor working conditions for those working in the garment district including terrible fires like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and you see a whole class of workers dying to help others look good.

The desire for using cheaper materials to replace more expensive ones, led to an explosion in products available to the middle classes, but sometimes it simply led to explosions. On display at the exhibit you will find some hair combs created from celluloid rather than the more expensive tortoiseshell combs. The material was so flammable, that houses burned when the combs came too near a fire. The material was also used as a film base for motion pictures, and theater fires at the turn of the century were dangerous and sometimes deadly.’ Also on display in the exhibit are tightly-laced corsets and extremely narrow shoes and gloves which were considered fashionable during the day.

One might be tempted to believe that we have moved beyond all that and are no longer willing to die or kill for fashion. But I wonder if this is really true. We certainly have stricter regulations regarding the dyes we use in clothing. And many items are now fire retardant. But there are some studies indicating that the fire retardants themselves might be bad for our health.

Studies in laboratory animals and humans have linked the most scrutinized flame retardants, called polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, to thyroid disruption, memory and learning problems, delayed mental and physical development, lower IQ, advanced puberty and reduced fertility. Other flame retardants have been linked to cancer. At the same time, recent studies suggest that the chemicals may not effectively reduce the flammability of treated products.

And while corsets are more often decorative than function in modern fashion, how often do we use spandex “shapewear” to smooth our bodies under certain kinds of clothing? Even though we know that it literally squishes our internal organs and makes us more prone to yeast and bacterial infections? And some women go as far as painful and dangerous surgery just to look better in their Jimmy Choos.

Fashions are still based on a very narrow vision of beauty attainable by no-one without a huge budget, great genes and Photoshop. Women are still dying in droves trying to make their bodies conform to a size and shape that may not be attainable by anyone without significant photo retouching.

And plenty of people are still dying to create inexpensive fashions. We may have created work regulations that make the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire unlikely here in the U.S. But plenty of people are dying in other countries in order to offer us the cheap clothing we still desire.

All of which leads me to ask this question. When will it end? When will we decide that it is unfashionable for people to die so we can buy more clothes? When will we start demanding clothing fit us instead of asking our poor bodies to be starved, mangled, stretched and permanently damaged to fit clothing? When will we stop impregnating our fabrics with chemicals that cause brain damage and cancer? I hope it’s soon. But however fast it is, in my opinion, is just not fast enough.

Love, Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)