Implications of Large Bodies on Healthcare Access

Implications of Large Bodies on Healthcare Access

Weight stigma, also known as weight bias, is the negative attitudes, stereotypes, or discrimination based on people with big body sizes. These have become common, especially during this time when social media has led to many people, especially women and girls, becoming self-conscious about their bodies and how they look. Being overweight or obese is often associated with being lazy, lacking willpower, low intelligence, and are considered unattractive. Such attitudes have led to the development of stigma against big-bodied individuals. Weight stigma is not only about overt insults, but also embedded in all areas of culture, including workplaces, and healthcare. It is invisible and generally examined bias with the implicit message that thin is better and healthier. Even in the most conscientious settings, when jokes on race or gender were unacceptable and would not be tolerated, making disparaging remarks or comments about a person’s weight or shape is somehow acceptable. Big-bodies individuals are bullied teased, and often excluded, with many people having a belief that such individuals deserve to be treated like that since they choose to be that way. This leads to such big-bodied people developing physiological and psychological issues that build up to low self-esteem and stress. In most cases, when persons with big bodies that can be considered obese visit hospitals due to some health issues, the doctors or nurses often associate these problems to being overweight. As a result, most of these practitioners recommend weight-loss treatment. In this paper, we look at some pictures relating to the issue of bias related to big-bodied individuals and receiving proper healthcare services by analyzing some images related to the topic..

Image 1: (Cody Stanford, 2020).

The image is a picture of an overweight woman having a conversation and holding hands with another woman with a slender body, who seems to be a therapist. The two seem to be having a positive conversation as the big-bodied woman seems to be smiling. As can be seen in the picture, the big-bodied woman is receiving some advice from the other slender woman.

The image is a perfect example of how medical practitioners should treat the big-bodied women and shows the kind of relationship that medical practitioners should have with their overweight patients. The sad reality is, most medical practitioners have negative attitudes towards people with big-bodies or obese. Additionally, most of these people with big bodies often find it stressful to visit a doctor’s office since in most cases, they are not that welcoming. They might find that there are no chairs to accommodate them in the waiting room, or whenever the medical staff takes their blood pressure, they struggle to find the right size cuff. In other situations, some of these individuals hate going to the doctor’s office because of the doctor’s remarks on their weight, telling them to try and eat less and exercise more. Such remarks always make them feel stigmatized and stereotyped. The above image can be seen as a message to the medical practitioners that they should be welcoming and have positive attitudes towards people with big bodies. They should always be ready to offer professional help to such individuals without stigmatizing them or making them feel uncomfortable about their weight. In other words, healthcare practitioners should offer their services to anyone, without bias on people with overweight bodies.

Image 2: (Sy, 2019).

The above image shows an overweight woman with a stethoscope on her back. The image is a depiction of the fat misdiagnosis epidemic, portrayed from the way the stethoscope is being used on her back instead of her chest. It depicts that most healthcare practitioners often associate the health problems experienced by big-bodied people to their overweight nature. The image depicts the doctors’ biased against larger-size patients which leads to changes in their treatment plan.

Whenever a big-bodied person visits the doctors with certain symptoms, the first thing that the doctor sees is fat and immediately associates whatever complication the patient is having with being fat. Such cases where doctors misdiagnose a patient due to their weight are common. For instance, a patient who has a big body involved in an accident and needing a hip surgery might be told that it is too dangerous due to her weight and this leads the patient feeling that it is their fault due to lack of character. Such patients end up getting poor treatment, and the problem might even become worse. Some weight shaming from doctors leads the big-bodied women to stop visiting the doctor at all, and this consequently leads to more health problems. Doctors should learn to accept all patients, regardless of their size or shape, and offer professional services without shaming the overweight patients since everyone has a right to health care that respects their body and their choices for how they want to approach their overall wellness. This way, the biased against larger-size patients will reduce, and they will be able to get quality healthcare services without fear of being stigmatized.

Image 3: (Effective weightlosssmalysia.com, 2020)

The image shows a picture of a big-bodied woman who seems to be stressed as she is holding her head and has a sad facial expression. The woman seems to be having a mental breakdown^, possibly from her oversized body.

In most cases, people, especially women, with oversized bodies, experience stress and mental problems due to their weight. The stress can be contributed by the stigmatization that such women face from all corners that leads to stress-related eating and as a result, leads to them becoming more overweight. According to (Nauert, 2020), “Stress could exacerbate obesity and its cardiometabolic conditions by impeding the adoption of healthy behaviors, and altering body chemistry.” Stress can lead to the development of eating disorders, such as Anorexia and Bulimia. Such disorders, together with the societal pressure stressing on the idealized perfect female body, can lead to more or less eating and more stress. In Whose Body is this Reading, the author highlights that there exists a striking association between problems with food and body image and emulation of the beautiful, independent, cool superwoman of media surgery (47). He further asserts that social, economic, and psychological factors have combined to produce a generation of women who feel deeply flawed, ashamed of their needs, and not entitled to exist unless they transform themselves into worthy new selves (47). Most of them end up neglecting their health and develop more severe eating disorders. As a result, most of these women end up becoming stressed and feel like they do not fit into society.

Image 4: (The Guardian, 2020).

The image shows an image and an article of a big-bodied woman who used her own obituary to rail against fat-shaming. In the article, she called out the medical profession for only offering weight loss support after being diagnosed with cancer. In the message, she urges society to better address the health concerns of overweight women. The woman died after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

This is an example of one of the many cases where medical practitioners assume that oversized patients experience the problems they have due to their overweight bodies. More often than not, many overweight patients visit the doctor’s office only to be criticized for their weight, and the only advice they are given is to lose weight in order to become healthier. Even though it is true that it is not healthy to be overweight, due to complications caused by too much fat in the body, doctors should realize that they cannot tell anything about a person based on their size. Not even their health condition. Many doctors do not have adequate information about weight bias and stigma and its implications on the health of individuals struggling with obesity. Doctors should know that “obesity is a complex disease that cannot be minimized to the “calories in/calories out” mantra that has become commonplace, and factors that can contribute to weight might include biological issues such as genetics and hormonal changes that come with ageing; developmental issues such as parental obesity; psychological issues including depression or history of trauma; or environmental factors, such as large portion sizes” (Cody Stanford, 2020).

Image 5: (Ndung’u, 2020).

The image shows an overweight woman with people behind her pointing their fingers at her. It depicts fat shaming, which has become prevalent in modern society where oversized women are constantly faced with stigma and insults due to their body size and shape.

Nowadays, with the increase in social media platforms where people can post pictures of themselves for other people to like, as seen I platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, body shaming and fat shaming have become one of the negative effects of such platforms. Using such platforms, society has formed an idea whereby females are supposed to have lean bodies in order to be considered attractive. Therefore, anyone who is fat or has a big body is considered unattractive. As Shrill highlight in his book, fat people know that they are fat and that rest of the world thinks they are disgusting (95). This put a lot of pressure on the women and young girls to watch what they eat and their eating habits so that they can maintain a lean body with less fat. As a result, some of these women develop eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, whereby they restrict themselves from eating and might be obsessed with exercising so that they cannot gain any fat on their bodies (61). As the author of Whose Body Is This reading highlights, most women, do not feel good about their bodies and as a result, most of them are “disordered” when it comes to issues of self-worth, self-entitlement, and comfort with their own bodies; eating disorders, far from being “bizarre” and anomalous, are utterly continuous with a dominant element of the experience of being female in this culture (57). To reduce fat-shaming, society should avoid suggesting that the female body should be lean or slim and so that women can access healthcare with no shame. The media should avoid portraying that only slender women are attractive and concentrate on the beauty of plus-size or oversized women.

Image 6: Fatgirlstarves. (2020).

The image shows an oversized woman eating cake. She seems to be binge eating as she has five pieces of cake, which shows an eating disorder, often associated with stress. The image depicts an eating disorder that women develop as a result of stress. Some women end up becoming overweight due to stress that leads them to eat more food as a way of dealing with this stress.

Binge eating, and other eating disorders such as bulimia nervosa, leads a person to indulge in too much eating, and then later attempting to get rid of the food by puking. This is a serious health problem and many women affected are often ashamed of going to the doctors to seek medical help. They fear being shamed for eating too much as therefore becoming fat or even obsessed. This is an example of the implications of large-bodied women in healthcare access. Most of these women eat behind closed doors as they are ashamed of eating too much. We live in a culture where female eating is seen as a furtive activity, properly engaged in behind closed doors, and even, under those circumstances, requiring restriction and restrains. To reduce the stress associated with binge eating, specialists recommend mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), which can improve cardiometabolic outcomes from the changes in physiological changes in depressive and anxiety symptoms, resilience, self-regulation, and behavioral changes in diet and physical activity.

References

Cody Stanford, F. (2020). Addressing weight bias in medicine – Harvard Health Blog. Harvard Health Blog. Retrieved 18 March 2020, from https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/addressing-weight-bias-in-medicine-2019040316319.

Effective weightlosssmalysia.com. (2020). Stress and Obesity – Effective Weight Loss Management. Effective Weight Loss Management. Retrieved 18 March 2020, from http://www.effectiveweightlossmalaysia.com/what-is-obesity/what-causes-obesity/stress-and-obesity.

Fatgirlstarves. (2020). Binge eating disorder – Fat Girl Starves. Fat Girl Starves. Retrieved 18 March 2020, from https://fatgirlstarves.wordpress.com/tag/binge-eating-disorder/.

Nauert, R. (2020). Mindfulness Therapy May Ease Stress for Those with Weight Problems. Psychcentral.com. Retrieved 18 March 2020, from https://psychcentral.com/news/2017/07/10/mindfulness-therapy-may-ease-stress-for-those-with-weight-problems/123029.html.

Ndung’u, B. (2020). Shocking: Women reveal how they have been fat-shamed by their partners. Classic 105. Retrieved 18 March 2020, from https://classic105.com/shocking-women-reveal-how-they-have-been-fat-shamed-by-their-partners/.

Shrill. Hello, I’m Fat.

Sy, A. (2019). The Fat Misdiagnosis Epidemic. Glamour. Retrieved 18 March 2020, from https://www.glamour.com/story/weight-stigma-is-keeping-patients-from-getting-the-care-they-need.

The Guardian. (2020). Canadian woman uses own obituary to rail against fat-shaming. The Guardian. Retrieved 18 March 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/30/canada-ellen-maud-bennett-obituary-fat-shaming.

Whose Body Is This?