Obese is a slur.
Dangers of Language
TW: Obesity, Ableism
Let’s talk about the O Word. Obesity, Obese from the latin Obedere, meaning to eat or to gnaw. A medical diagnosis that is categorized by the Body Mass Index. Obesity is one of the few medical ailments that you can be diagnosed with but have ZERO symptoms. In fact, you can exist in a larger body without ever experiencing what the medical world has associated with obesity. Which begs the question, what is the actual purpose or impact of this term?
Growing up in the early 2000s, I know I was inundated by the “War on Childhood Obesity”. This was particularly rough when you were, in fact, a child regularly identified as Obese. The nightly news was filled with blurred out faces on fat bodies, simply existing, alarming news segments identifying fatness as public enemy number one. Obesity was (still is) seen as the worst possible word to be associated with. Obese meant that you were medically failing, unable to regain lost “self control”. Fundamentally broken in ways that were unexplainable.
Media is currently trying to shift the narrative around obesity, replacing personal failing with the body has a disease. Thanks, I guess. Apparently, this was to encourage compassion for the poor fat souls who have been born genetically ‘doomed” (Read heavy sarcasm). Or maybe to sell us medical cures such as Ozempic or Gastric Bypass. Who knows. What you should know though is that Obesity is a “disease” without consistent concrete symptoms, only diagnosed by one measurement system, the Body Mass Index. A simple google search would lead anyone to the fact that the Body Mass Index is not a reliable measurement for…anything and was originally built to measure white men in an attempt to identify them as superior. cough… cough… eugenics energy.
Regardless of the intention to shift our understanding of obesity, the collective social damage has already been done. We have normalized the dehumanization of fat bodies through the Obesity identification system. This term has repeatedly been used to shame fat people by both medical professionals and regular Joes “concerned” for our health.
Language is powerful. Obesity has been associated with failure, disgust, lack of compliance and many more unsavory assumptions. This branding can be a death sentence to a fat person trying to receive proper medical care. Fat people are often denied testing in favor of treating the “obesity” first, with of course weight loss.
Instagram “doctors” have taken obesity identification as a way to discredit larger bodied creators. Hiding behind “caring about health” to hide their intentions to shame, ridicule and exert superiority over them. Bottom line, you can be fat without medical issues. You can be fat with medical issues but that doesn’t give providers the right to deny treatment options. Fatness and morality have nothing to do with one another. Labeling obesity serves minimal purpose as a“medical” term, causing both emotional and physical harm to the patient.
Sources: Existing as a fat person.