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Paris (AFP) – People “incapable of containing themselves”: both in medical consultations and in everyday life, the stigmatization of obese people is recurrent and often finds its origin in the lack of knowledge of the causes of their disorder.
“I have the impression that they take me for a piece of meat without a brain,” says Sophie, 56, who requested anonymity.
During medical appointments “for very specific symptoms, the doctors’ first words are: + The first problem to treat is your obesity +”, she laments, considering herself “reduced to (her) carnal envelope”.
For her, society and the medical profession have a “narrow view” of obesity: “He who doesn’t want to restrict himself is fat.” An image associated with “dirt, inconstancy, laziness.”
Two out of three French people consider obesity to be “a problem of the will”, reveals a survey carried out in February by the startup Fedmind, which fights against grosophobia by organizing discussion groups. The European Obesity Days take place on Saturday and Sunday.
However, far from being a matter of will, Sophie’s obesity is “the symptom of a compensation linked to a psychological problem,” she explains, and the comments do not help her improve, at least on the contrary.
Obesity results from “an accumulation of circumstances that people are victims of, such as metabolic disorders, mental illnesses,” explains Nina Lahaeye, from Fedmind, to AFP. “There are more than 110 factors that contribute to obesity, it’s not an option,” she says, but the public is poorly informed on the subject.
Sylvie Benkemoun, president of the Think Tank on Obesity and Overweight (GROS), adds that “fatphobia implies that everyone can weigh a standard weight” without taking into account, in addition to “psychological trauma and disorders, possible genetic predispositions”.
Sylviane, 45, sees “three numbers” when she steps on the scale. Overweight since she was three years old, she says she “has never experienced a normal weight curve.” She experienced a trauma that led her to seek “refuge in food”, but she was also diagnosed with hypothyroidism.
“When I was a teenager, an endocrinologist told me + If you were in a concentration camp, you’d be skinny. That’s where you get full, that’s all +,” she recalls. Throughout her upbringing, she was a victim of stigmatization and it never really stopped.
“Unconscious Stereotypes”
This discrimination persists despite the fact that the World Health Organization (WHO) was alarmed, on May 3, by an “epidemic of overweight and obesity” in Europe, which is facing almost one in four adults.
According to the Fedmind study, one in five French people think that comments made to overweight people encourage them to lose weight so they don’t have to suffer more.
A false idea that only increases the difficulties of the victims. “The problem with these stereotypes is that they are unconscious,” says Sylvie Benkemoun. “The authors of these annotations do not realize the damage it can cause, it prevents life.”
On the contrary, “grosophobia produces obesity,” adds Catherine Grangeard, psychoanalyst and author of books on the subject. “(Society) makes us believe that being thin is being good to yourself, it’s extremely serious manipulation.”
She points in particular to diets that can “yo-yo lead to obesity,” by making weight loss catch up a bit more.
Sylvie Benkemoun, for her part, points to the “increasingly invasive” surgeries being offered to lose weight. If obesity increases the risk of developing serious diseases, “grophobic doctors often overlook other diseases such as cancer, which are diagnosed later,” she laments.
The WHO considers people with a BMI (body mass index) between 25 and 30 to be overweight and those over 30 to be obese.
“Society is far from trivializing fat bodies, stretch marks, sagging breasts,” laments Nina Lahaeye. So, to change mentalities, round women “dare” to show themselves on social networks.