I love seeing people get salty at the idea that people with a “high” BMI get to be vaccinated before thin people. Y’all spent decades shaming fat people and telling them how horrible and unhealthy they are and how they’re going to die and now y’all want to be like “oh no the BMI should only be used to harm fat people! They aren’t ‘chronically ill’ enough for the vaccine!” Nah. You reap what you sow. Eat shit, fatphobes.
I was so ashamed when my state’s tool for determining your turn to get the vaccine put me in the first group after healthcare workers because of my BMI. Then I learned my brother also qualified based on BMI.
I have known that it is bullshit for years, but knowing that logically doesn’t erase over 30 years of being shamed and shamed and Shamed.
But then when my brother said that he technically qualified I was absolutely stunned. He qualified for the vaccine because he has several other immunocompromised things anyway, but he’s just the most like… average sized normal looking dude. I say this in knowledge of all of the baggage inherent in those words, because they were the first ones I thought of when he told me. “But you look so normal!” Which highlighted to me the kind of rhetoric that fat people are abused by on the daily but also how much BMI isn’t even thin people vs fat people or anything. You could pass a random hipster guy with a beard and a beanie and just think “I like that dude’s hoodie and his commitment to the color purple,” and never, “ugh, he’s obese” and yet the BMI will tell you there’s something wrong with him and he’s in the bad category.
So many people just don’t want to treat fat people as people. They want to shame all the time about how unhealthy we are and then when something comes up saying yeah wow okay, we guess these people are unhealthy, they should have a vaccine before all these thin people who have been ‘worried for their health’, suddenly 'oh no we didn’t mean like that. We only meant for people to get it.’
I fucking struggled deciding to get the vaccine based on this. In the end I did, and I’m getting my second dose in 3 weeks. And I told myself, first of all, shut up, you do deserve it, because everyone does. But if that does not convince you yet, self, then get one in place of some anti-vaxxer mom who will not get it even when it is her turn.
(via zephuckyr)
