Michael Buerk is a 73-year-old British newsreader who railed against obese people in his latest article for the Radio Times.
“The obese will die a decade earlier than the rest of us,” he wrote.
“See it as a selfless sacrifice in the fight against demographic imbalance, overpopulation and climate change.”
[…]
“Give them the facts to make informed decisions; by all means ‘nudge’ all you like, but in the end leave couch potatoes alone. They’re weak, not ill.”
It would perhaps save the NHS money, he suggests, so insulting the one-third of the British population who are obese is apparently fine if that is the lofty goal. I have heard the same arguments from Americans who blame fat people for the rising costs of their insurance premiums (hint, take a look at your obscene pharmaceutical prices to start off with), and no doubt it is an argument in economies across the Western world.
But it is not just Buerk’s approach to the economics of health provision that is difficult to stomach. He delights in calling us “porky”, he talks of people “guzzling” and “waddling”, dehumanising us further. He is aiming to humiliate and objectify people who are not slim, and he does so with the air of confidence only ever found in older white men who have sailed through their lives without the slightest barrier in place.
Yet even Buerk himself questioned the logic of how much fat people cost the NHS, albeit in a clumsy and offensive way.
“Who can calculate how much an obese person would have cost if they were slim?”, Buerk blurted.
“How much would he or she cost if, instead of keeling over with a heart attack at 52, they live to a ripe, dementia-ridden old age, requiring decades of expensive care?
“In any case, VAT on takeaways, confectionery and fizzy drinks more than covers it.”
However, the problem is not whether I will cost the NHS more because of my weight compared to if I was still slim. The problem is not if I cost the NHS more than if I weighed half a stone less, or five stone less. The problem is not the individuals and their behaviours (see also drinking and smoking for other moralising tirades about costing the NHS money; never extreme sports, though) but the way that some people are happy to throw other people under the bus with pretend outrage.
It is unacceptable to look at any group of humans and declare them more or less worthy to be treated when they break their leg, get lung cancer, catch tonsillitis or get a stomach ulcer. The latter, even if they have consumed nothing but pickled onions and wine for the last twelve months. We’ve all got our foibles. The purpose of the NHS is to provide healthcare for all that is free at the point of use, and that is what we must continue to provide, without hesitation, whether somebody has smoked or drunk their way to the cancer ward or not.
People were very proud and very complimentary when I gave up smoking a few years ago. Understandably, really, considering it was a bloody difficult endeavour. I like to think that if I developed a lung condition later in life as a result of all the smoking I did before, I would be treated just as well as somebody who developed a lung condition who had never smoked. And if I get something ostensibly related to fatness (and a lot of that science is icky at best), I deserve the same good treatment. Whether I am this weight, or weigh more, or weigh less.
Being fat is not caused by one factor alone. In my experience, disability plays a big part in why I became fat and why I struggle to move enough to be less fat. But the danger is that attitudes like Buerk’s makes us instantly defensive when we have done nothing wrong. I used to be slim, now I’m fat. Neither of those is morally superior to the other. I don’t need to declare that my fatness is not my fault because that suggests it is a wrong that needs to be justified. It is not. It is simply a state of being. My body is bigger than some, less big than others. I eat more than some, less than others.
And Michael Buerk can feel smug and superior all he likes for getting to his age without “keeling over with a heart attack at 52” – and we know that he is not alone in his thinking – but he is not stronger than the messages emanating from the fat positivity movement and from women who support women, fat people who support fat people, and anyone with an unusual body presentation who is saying “fuck you” to body fascists and concern trolls everywhere.
Photo: John Schneider