Some thoughts on health, skinny-privilege, and leukemia

On February 25th, I was diagnosed with Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia.  Now that I am in remission, I can officially say with all the wisdom of hindsight that it was one of the most bizarre and trying times of my young life (I’m 23).  As expected, chemotherapy took an emotional and physical toll on my body, making me physically weak and sending me into a spiraling web of emotional depression.  While all this was normal and expected, what was not foreseeable was the knee jerk reaction of a few family members.  Rather than express the obligatory concern, these new standard bearers for blaming-the-victim managed to muster one pithy statement to my mother: “Does the doctor think she got it because of her “weight problems”?

  Of course, “weight problems” was just code for fat.  And no, I did not get leukemia because of fat.  And although I know my family didn’t mean it as a compliment to my girth, in many ways that would have been easier to take.  As medically unfounded as these comments were, being able to blame something as tangible as “fat” would be easier than admitting to myself that I got a life threatening disease because of that and not the real cause.  The real cause being a genetic mutation that caused my DNA to improperly splice and make my white blood cells attack the body they were supposed to protect.  It may sound incredulous to some, but not everything in the life of this chunky gal is about her weight.

I chalk-up these misguided beliefs about overweight people to “thin-privilege.”  Similar to well-know cultural terms like white-privilege and male-privilege, thin-privilege dictates that events in the life of a fat person must be the result of their weight.  Whether it is dating, health, or even the job market, certain people believe that whatever happens to a fat person, happens because of their weight.

Fat prejudice is rampant in the field of “health,” which I so crassly found out when I had cancer.  To the credit of my nurses and doctors, who knew better, they never once believed my leukemia to be the result of my weight.  In fact, they constantly told me how healthy I was (you know, besides the cancer).  Almost every RN commented that they wished most patients had my blood pressure and resting heart rate.  Before my illness, I worked-out for about 30 minutes per day.

  Even before cancer, people would glance at me a lot when I worked out, and it didn’t take an MD to know why.  I do not fit the mold of someone who works out a lot.  I don’t look like someone who is so healthy and medically in shape.  This is because while I am medically in shape, I am not in shape culturally.  It has become my personal mission to show there is a huge difference between actually being healthy and “looking healthy.”  Looking healthy is a cultural construction tied to ideas that clear skin and a nice figure are the markers of health, rather than blood pressure and oxygen intake. 

 This is not to say that being overweight isn’t a health problem; it can be.  I also realize that there is no even playing field for larger people in dating or the job market; I’m sure anyone that has carried extra weight or tried buying really cute clothing knows that discrimination exists.  But these things are not TOTALLY tied to weight (just as everything an African American does is not tied intrinsically to their skin color), and that is where many people miss the boat.  I am not culturally the proper weight; but medically I am healthy.  People can be healthy at all sizes, if they still maintain an active lifestyle and diet.  Unfortunately, culture has not yet caught up to reality…