By Katerina Mansour, Staff Writer

Published in print Mar. 4, 2015

First off, let me make this title clear to everyone. What I mean by obesity does not equal beauty is that health and beauty have absolutely nothing to do with each other in a purely objective sense. Society, in the United States, has slowly but surely been shifting to a place where people are equating health, or more specifically weight, with concepts like beauty or femininity. I am quite sure many of you have heard someone say “real women have curves” as I am sure you have heard many people claim the contrary. There seems to be this, often unspoken, battle between “skinny” and “fat” girls and it has become quite disturbing for many reasons.

Recently, many songs, movies and TV episodes have focused on the subject of weight and how it relates to beauty. Many women with curves have started making it their mission to show the world they are beautiful and that nobody should tell them otherwise. The problem with this is that it is being taken too far. Suddenly women seem to be taking these messages as statements that weight and health do not matter, that obesity is not something that should be feared or fought.

Women suffering from obesity are now often attacking thinner women with terms such as “skinny bitches” and other derogatory language. Of course, this is more often than not, a response to years of victimization which makes it a sociological phenomenon that is quite easy to understand. However, it is evolving in dangerous ways.

Your weight and your beauty have nothing to do with each other, ladies, please understand this. I am all for preaching that everyone is beautiful in their own way, but weight should not be attached to these beliefs. Some of you might be thinking, well of course the two are related! People tend to be attracted to one or the other. You’ll often hear people say “she’s too fat/skinny” when describing someone’s lack of attractiveness. This, however, does not mean that health and beauty go hand in hand. They should, in fact, be entirely separate from each other.

An obese woman can very well be beautiful, just as a skinny woman can. Their beauty is not what I am concerned about. According to the CDC, more than one-third (34.9% or 78.6 million) of U.S. adults are obese while 18.4% of adolescents age 12-19 years are obese as well. These figures date from 2009-2010 and I am sure an increase will be noted with the figures of 2014-2015. Obesity has become an incredibly serious problem for the United States and many other countries around the world. Yet we seem to be minimizing its dangerous side effects as of late. The risk of coronary heart disease, heart failure, high blood pressure, stroke, type 2 diabetes, cancer, sleep apnea, and many more illnesses and diseases are elevated for obese individuals. This is not a joke. Obesity was recently declared a disease itself. For those who are not convinced by the plethora of health threats obese individuals face, perhaps a more economic approach might strike a cord. The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the U.S. according to the CDC was $147 billion in 2008. Medical costs for obese individuals were $1,429 higher than individuals of normal weight. These are significant numbers that affect us all.

We should not be telling people they are beautiful no matter what and ignore the dangers they are facing health-wise. We should not be helping obese individuals “come to terms” with their obesity or even embrace it. Obesity, in the large majority of cases, is not an untreatable condition. Therefore there should be no “coming to terms” with it.

I am not suggesting we lash out against obese people or tell them they aren’t beautiful. This is not what I am talking about. What I am suggesting is that we stop linking beauty and weight together and start caring about each others’ health. Many might be angered by what I am saying. I know that many obese individuals have reached the point where they do not care anymore. Some even feel superior to those whom they feel demean or insult them. Would you be telling an anorexic woman that she is “beautiful no matter what” and to embrace her weight? I doubt it. It’s a flawed comparison because anorexia is a mental illness whereas obesity is not. However, I think it helps make my point. Unhealthy attitudes should not be minimized or praised just as they should not be chastised or attacked.

Obesity is an absolutely tragic thing to see, and an increasing amount of young women are being added to the statistics. I will not go into the behaviors and mindsets that lead to obesity or how these should be fought in order to regain your health.

That could be the subject of an entirely different article. What I will say is that the current trend of promoting ‘curvy’ women by saying that we’re all beautiful so weight doesn’t matter is not leading to anything good.

The problem is that the “target-market” for these preachings are women who are overweight. And it must be stated that being overweight and being obese are two vastly different things. Yet, they are increasingly being lumped together. Being a few pounds overweight and having some curves is not the same as having a health condition that will likely shorten your life by several decades. Encouraging the acceptance of being overweight, as this new trend tends to do, can also lead to a complacency that can take you straight into obesity.

Let’s help each other reach and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Weight does not define beauty, but it can define health. The focus of my article was primarily on women because this has been a largely female-centric debate and phenomenon. However, all of this could just as easily be applied to men as well.