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Cosmopolitan Magazine once again glorifies obesity with plus size models in an article on body positivity in its February issue.
The magazine clearly declares “It’s healthy!” on its cover, depicting visibly obese influencers for the publication’s multi-profile “11 Women Who Prove Well-Being Is Not One Size Fits All”.
Obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death and increases the risk of complications from COVID-19.
I’m sorry, that’s not healthy. @Cosmopolitan pic.twitter.com/U8R0THaiiz
– Tristan Justice (@JusticeTristan) January 4, 2021
“’Healthy’ can be a loaded word,” the women’s fashion and entertainment magazine opened its article. “We asked these women to open up on their personal journeys to take up the ‘healthy’ as theirs.” The story highlights several women of different body types and lifestyles, each recounting turbulent relationships with her own image.
“Plus-sized people often feel like they can’t be part of the wellness area,” complains Instagram star Callie Thorpe, who has 250,000 subscribers on the platform. “We’re trolled for being fat, so we can feel left out of exercise because our bodies don’t match the narrative.”
Thorpe’s rejection, while unhappy and felt by millions of others, has now led to the escalation of the promotion of unhealthy standards to deal with the cultural stigma associated with obesity. This activism is a dangerous trend that is bearing toxic fruit in the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, in which obesity has been shown to increase the risk profiles of people for complications from COVID-19.
“Since the start of the pandemic,” Science Magazine reported in September, “dozens of studies have reported that many of the sickest COVID-19 patients were obese people.” According to a study published in August, cited by the flagship journal, overweight patients who contracted COVID-19 were 113% more likely to land in hospital than patients of a healthy weight. Obese patients were 74% more likely to end up in intensive care and 48% more likely to die.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 42% of Americans called themselves “obese” in 2017-18, a condition often responsible for diseases leading to premature death such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer, many of which are the most important underlying conditions in people susceptible to COVID-19. Over 70% of adults aged 20 and over are overweight.
Dr Tim Logemann of the Cardiology and Obesity Treatment Program at Wausau Aspirus Hospital in Wisconsin told the federalist the coronavirus death toll, which exceeds 350,000, according to the latest data from Johns University Hopkins, would be much lower were it not for the obesity epidemic.
While COVID-19 is an inflammatory disease, Logemann said, the cells of obese people are already inflamed, which reduces the body’s immune response even in the absence of pre-existing conditions that systematically lead to serious and even fatal complications. of the coronavirus. When mechanical problems resulting from obesity, such as difficulty breathing, are associated with a virus that impairs a person’s respiratory function, the level of risk increases even more.
“Young people would see a lot fewer deaths,” Logemann said, if the nation was at a healthier weight.
However, the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine only fuels the fire of the accompanying outbreak in the name of wellness activism. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, obesity was consistently ranked as one of the leading causes of preventable death. According to the World Health Organization, at least 2.8 million deaths each year can be attributed to the deceased being overweight or obese, a figure much higher than the total number of deaths from COVID-19. As of this writing, the novel coronavirus has grown to less than 1.85 million since it was first detected, in the absence of unreported numbers from authoritarian regimes.
“I don’t think body shaming helps,” said Logemann. “I also don’t think that saying being overweight 100 pounds is healthy, because it isn’t.”
Logemann acknowledged that the current “eat less, exercise more” approach to tackling the obesity epidemic has not worked, instead insisting on treating obesity as a disease. “We need to understand that the current food supply makes most of us sick and obesity is a disease,” Logemann said. Rather than dismiss the idea that obesity is harmful, Americans must instead learn to eat better and live healthy lifestyles.
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