Comments on: "Losing Weight Is Like Beating Cancer"

By: C

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:41:59 +0000

I’m disgusted. My mom had cancer and DIED from it!! Losing weight is NOTHING comparable to dealing with the body destroying itself from the inside-out. Crap like that makes me mad.

By: fatfighter

fatfighter — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:30:32 +0000

I personally like Emily Brill.

By: Fat Girl

Fat Girl — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 21:46:57 +0000

Just have to add that after I looked at the gawker post I was astonished and disgusted how many comments actually seemed to be not only deriding her for making a silly comment, but also for being a former fatty- as if the fact that she had been fat before is why she is saying such a ridiculous thing.

It was.. disturbing.

By: Winter

Winter — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 22:24:30 +0000

Wow. Just wow. I had a good friend die less than a week ago. She did not have cancer, but Primary Pulmonary Hypertension. It’s a rare lung disorder and quite serious. She was always in somewhat decent health considering the disease, but she got pneumonia and her heart just gave out. She was 22. I have another friend (she’s how I knew the girl who passed away) who has had PPH since she was a baby, had a lung transplant when she was 18, and now at 22 has been on the list for another transplant for quite a while. Both of them were/are quite thin though, so I suppose everything was alright? I know both of them would have easily traded their slim bodies for much heavier ones if they could be healthier. The girl who had the lung transplant actually was a bit chubby at one time because of one of her medications (a steroid). Did she dislike the weight gain? Yes, but it was that for her chance at life.

I actually have an eating disorder and have heard people liken EDs to cancer before. I always disagreed with that comparison, too. I firmly believe they are psychological disease and hate when people disregard them as “just wanting to be thin” and the like. But they are not cancer. With an eating disorder you do technically have the choice to eat more healthy and such. With cancer, you don’t have that choice. Beating obesity or an ED (which can coincide, of course) can be the hardest things in some peoples lives – but they are not the same thing as an extremely life-threating disease. Not in the least. My friend’s death has actually been making me think more about trying to recover, because she would have given anything for a healthy body. And although I don’t feel like my body is really being hurt most of the time, I’ve realized that I am slowly killing myself.

I’m sorry for the long, slightly OT ramble. This is also my first post on here, although I’ve been lurking for a few months. I just had to respond to this as it really hit close to home.

By: Red

Red — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:48:19 +0000

I’m a cancer survivor and someone who has lost 50+lbs and there is no comparison. Living in the shadow of cancer is physically and emotionally exhausting.

One of the reasons I needed to lose weight was to make sure the physical disability I have because of my cancer treatments doesn’t get worse. And losing weight was hard, but it was and continues to be a f’ing cakewalk compared to what I went through during cancer treatments and what I still deal with as a cancer survivor.

By: Cindy

Cindy — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:25:07 +0000

Fat people — and, really, women — can’t win.

We’re harrangued to be thin because it’s, you know, “healthy.” We owe it to so many people on this earth to be healthy. (Healthy means you can work longer hours, do two more loads of laundry at night, do more unpaid labor on nonprofit boards, etc.) And when we do what some of us *have* to do to achieve and maintain thinness — keeping up a diet and exercise diary that probably looks like that of a triathlete in its complexity — we’re self-absorbed. Vain. Silly.

The culture aches for us to be sick this way. As long as we’re going mad to make ourselves achieve a look that stiffens the dicks of *most* heterosexual males (yeah, what is THAT look?) we’ll buy this, buy that and never ever work on justice issues that make good, healthful food available to all. Or healthcare for all.

Wow. I’m really angry about this.

By: AnnieMcPhee

AnnieMcPhee — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:08:53 +0000

Yikes – I mean he said the cure for OBESITY was simple, not the cure for cancer. Sorry!

By: AnnieMcPhee

AnnieMcPhee — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:08:24 +0000

Thanks Madge! Unfortunately gawker never put up my post responding to the asshat who said the cure for cancer was simple – put down the twinkies and go for a walk. I had a few choice words for him, lemme tell you.

But this FA freak has now responded back on the thread you linked – I guess I shouldn’t have bothered, but it was too rich. What idiocy. She doesn’t know one person who is fat and comfortable with it? There are thousands on the fatosphere! Which I told her :) I said well now you know one, and if you want to know more go to the fatosphere. You’ll find them.

By: MSeeger

MSeeger — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:42:24 +0000

Losing weight is like beating cancer

Losing weight is beating cancer

Weight is beating cancer

Weight is cancer <– WUT?!

By: lisa-marie

lisa-marie — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:07:59 +0000

Obviously this woman has never had someone close to her fight cancer, or she would never make such an outrageous comparison. She sounds like a brainless little rich girl who has no concept of reality.