Why do we encourage women to do this to their bodies?

Size six Ontario woman dies after liposuction.

Thirty-two-year-old Krista Stryland, a successful Toronto real estate agent and mother, went to a private clinic for liposuction, apparently to remove fat following the birth of her three-year-old son.

Hours later, court documents allege, she lay in a recovery room for 30 minutes without vital signs after a procedure that drained fat from 23 incisions in six different parts of her body.

She was pronounced dead in hospital on Sept. 20, 2007. Her sister says she was a size 6. She says the doctor should have told her that she did not need liposuction.

Doctors

A while ago I went to the doctor for a checkup. I haven’t been to this particular doctor for a while, since I’ve been away at school. So I get there, the nurse weighs me and checks my blood pressure and everything. Then the doctor comes in, takes one look at my chart, and says, “So, should I yell at you?”

Excuse me?

“You gained 50 pounds in a year!”

Um, no. See, I haven’t been weighed here since my junior year of high school–but I guess reading is hard for fatphobes. I gained 50 lbs. in 3 years, which is probably not ideal but a lot less extreme. Regardless, wouldn’t gaining such a large amount of weight in what you assumed to be a short amount of time be a sign of a possible health problem that you should be trying to figure out, not an occasion to yell at me?

“You’re going to get type 2 diabetes. Obesity keeps your insulin levels too high.”

Actually, I got all my blood work done last week, and my insulin levels are perfectly normal. Wouldn’t it make more sense to suggest that I get my insulin levels checked, instead of acting like you have the magical ability to detect blood sugar levels just by looking at a fat person?

“I want you to limit your calories to 2000 a day, and get a little bit of exercise. Just walk about half an hour a day.”

Oh, you mean limit myself to the recommended daily calories for someone of my age and gender? The amount of calories I eat normally? I’m glad to see you have the magical ability to detect overeating just by looking at fat people, too. And I had been walking half an hour a day. For the past two weeks now I’ve been biking for at least an hour a day instead. You know what? I still haven’t lost any weight. I must be lying about my exercise habits.

“You know obesity aggravates asthma? What, your pulmonologist didn’t tell you to lose weight? Shame on him.”

Oh, you meant the pulmonologist who prescribed wonderful medication for me that just happened to contribute somewhat to my weight gain? Medication that helped me manage my asthma successfully even before I was able to remove myself from the stressful situation that was causing a lot of my asthma flareups? The doctor who actually looked at my symptoms and behaviors before trying to treat my condition? Shame on him indeed.

“If you want, you can come back at the end of the summer and we could weigh you again.”

Wait, is that supposed to be an incentive for me to lose weight?

Of course I didn’t say any of this. On the one hand I was too busy boggling at it, and on the other hand I did not have the energy to get into a fight with a doctor that I will, God willing, never have to see again.

But this was the first time that this had happened to me, and it gave me a more tangible picture of what others are going through–and how much worse others have it. I’ve been lucky.