When Political Correctness Kills
In February 2021, Cosmopolitan UK came out with a cover that sparked substantial criticism. Here are two photos.
Does this look like a picture of perfect health to you? What’s wrong with this picture?
In the ever-incessant attempt to make everything politically correct and bow to cancel culture, it appears that all common sense has gone out the window.
The “new healthy” is anything but healthy. It’s downright dangerous and negligent to promote this “new healthy” fallacy. When I look at these images, I see sickness and disease. It’s unconscionable to champion such a false narrative. It’s equally disturbing when pop culture celebrates rail-thin models that look like they are suffering from anorexia. Either extreme is reprehensible and disgusting.
Here is a more realistic picture of obesity [1]:
- High blood pressure
- High cholesterol
- Metabolic syndrome
- Insulin resistance
- Diabetes
- Cardiovascular disease
- Nutritional deficiency
- Stroke
- Gall bladder disease
- Inflammation
- Osteoarthritis
- Sleep apnea
- Depression and anxiety
- cancer
- Low quality of life
- Pain and suffering
Health is not whatever you want to call it. In all things, actions have consequences. Eating unhealthy processed food and being obese will always yield health problems and disease, no matter what you want to call it. Promoting this new version of “healthy” is a dangerous message amid skyrocketing obesity and diabetes rates worldwide. Furthermore, the fact that obese people triple their risk of being hospitalized due to covid [2] makes me wonder if Cosmopolitan even considered whether their ridiculous message was timed appropriately.
Science is objective and does not bow to hurt feelings, cancel culture, or political correctness. Being obese opens the pathway to disease no matter how delusional pop culture spins it. This is anything but empowering. You can perpetuate a lie, but it’s still not going to prevent the consequences of being obese.
