female health matters

Personal stories about female health matters.

May 28, 2008

obesity means social death

Coco's obesity has been classified as a disability and as such she is entitled to welfare payments but she steadfastly refuses to rot at home and continues to actively seek work even though the reception she receives from most job interviewers is a humiliating experience.

"I never even knew that people can die from obesity until I read an article about it," says Coco. "Sure, I know about my risk for heart disease but to be faced with a separate classification for death by obesity is very challenging and smacks, to me, of medical discrimination on top of all the other discrimination I face every day from everyone else."

"The article highlights alienation as the top cause of obesity death and that makes sense to me," says Coco. "If thin people faced as much cruel and humiliating discrimination as obese people do at job interviews -- and every other kind of human encounter -- I wonder if the medical establishment would come up with a new type of thin death classification (not anorexia) to account for the resultant spate of deaths?"

"That the article also highlighted a high Social Security expenditure (% of GDP) as a factor in obesity death also makes sense to me," says Coco. "Nations that are quick to classify obese people as disabled and pay them to rot at home are definitely contributing to obesity deaths."

"When you're pushed out of sight and mind, unloved and unwanted, with nothing better to do than stuff yourself with comfort food while watching soaps you're already suffering a social death, right?"

"Here's the article I read alienation causes obesity death?"

Labels: , , , , , , ,


Copyright 2006-2014 all rights reserved Female Health Matters