*Content Warning: Anti-Fat Language*
Hello Readers, it’s Co-editor Gail.
Yesterday I was supposed to have gotten my single dose Covid-19 vaccination. But I woke up to the news that the FDA and CDC were putting pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to cases of rare but severe blood clots. So currently, I am still unvaccinated.
While I am excited and looking forward to eventually receiving my vaccine (I hate needles. I never thought I would feel this way about getting a shot!), the reason I am eligible to get it is for me, complicated.
I live in Massachusetts. I thought I wasn’t going to be eligible until April 19th with everyone else aged 16+. To my surprise, on April 5th, Mass changed the rules from needing at least two medical conditions to qualify. Now you only need one. The one that made me suddenly qualify according to the mass.gov website is:
“Overweight and obesity”
“Overweight (defined as a body mass index (BMI) > 25 kg/m2 but < 30 kg/m2), obesity (BMI ≥30 kg/m2 but < 40 kg/m2), or severe obesity (BMI of ≥40 kg/m2), can make you more likely to get severely ill from COVID-19. The risk of severe COVID-19 illness increases sharply with elevated BMI.”
As I have mentioned in a previous blog, I am a fat person. Over the past several years I have been educating myself on Anti-Fat Bias and other issues surrounding Fat Liberation and acceptance.
The medical industry is full of Anti-Fat bias. I have learned about how the medical industry essentially made up the idea of obesity as a disease and that BMI’s are total BS and have a racist history. I will link some articles at the end if you would like to read up on this yourself. Everyone should read and educate themselves on these issues regardless of their size. Like all biases, Anti-Fat bias hurts EVERYONE.
In general, these biases are just plain dangerous to fat folks as we often get misdiagnosed or ignored by doctors as they take one look at us and assume that all we need to do is lose weight when in reality, a much more serious medical problem completely unrelated to weight could be killing us. I have been made to feel doomed by doctors for just existing in my own body. I am currently struggling to find a new primary care physician as it is incredibly difficult to sus out if they are un-biased.
While some fat folks do have health issues that are related to their weight, weight in and of itself, is not an indicator of a person’s health and even greater than this, no one owes the world perfect health to be treated like a human being.
My own personal journey of fat acceptance has been and continues to be long and rocky, but I currently feel that I am in a good place. So, you can imagine how disheartening it was to find out the only reason I could qualify for a vaccine so soon, was because I am fat. Because of the same dumb and outdated medical biases that still persist in our world.
I questioned if it was personally ethical for me to even make a vaccine appointment before I would have been eligible for just my age. If I don’t subscribe to the idea that “obesity” is a disease, is it wrong for me to get a vaccine when that is the “medical condition” that I qualify for to receive it?
Ultimately, I decided that the value of getting vaccinated as soon as possible for myself and others and being yet another fully vaccinated person to ultimately eradicate Covid-19 is a greater good that outweighs (no pun intended) my personal qualms and hang-ups about eligibility.
Not to mention that if I did get a life-threatening case of Covid, I can be rest assured that doctors would probably treat me differently because of my weight including but not limited to if I would get to remain ventilator or not.
But even so, I still have this sense of imposter syndrome. Like I don’t deserve the vaccine yet because I don’t think the reasoning is legitimate. Like I am stealing this dose from someone who needs it more. Like I am going to sit in the chair at the pharmacy a total fraud “overweight” and “obese” on the outside, sinisterly laughing in fat acceptance on the inside.
I have since been rescheduled for a Moderna vaccine AKA Dolly Parton’s special sauce. In the spirit of progress for a day when the primary concern for my health is simply because I am human and not because of my size, here’s a song Dolly wrote last year entitled When Life Is Good Again.
Anti-Fat Bias Reading:
How Obesity Became A Disease:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/03/how-obesity-became-a-disease/388300/
The Bizarre And Racist History Of The BMI:
https://elemental.medium.com/the-bizarre-and-racist-history-of-the-bmi-7d8dc2aa33bb
Dear Doctor, Here’s What Fat Patients Need From You:
Gail Bello is a poet and playwright from Waltham, Massachusetts. She graduated in 2019 with a BFA in Creative Writing and a minor in Theatre from The University of Maine at Farmington. Find her previous publications at https://thaumaturgedramaturge.wordpress.com and follow her on Twitter @AquajadeGail