When addressing oppressive framework in the medical system, there is scarce discussion on the issues within the realm of reproductive healthcare. One way oppression persists in reproductive healthcare is through the stigmatization of overweight women. Fat shaming and attributing disease to fatness has been the first approach that doctors tend to take as soon as fat women vocalize symptoms. However, this shaming is particularly prominent in the area of reproductive health and has become problematic to the point where fat women are discouraged or even denied proper fertility treatment due to stigma surrounding body fat
To begin, fatphobia is one of the many ways barriers to prenatal and fertility treatment are imposed by oppressive medical systems. Internalized fatphobia begins within the doctors offices and clinics. Doctors go through years of medical education in institutions that teach them how to embed racism and politics into healthcare. Despite having the opportunity to learn and research medicine, the first baseless conclusion they make is of correlating the health of a body to weight. Colored women already experience discrimination. However, white women’s insecurities are also weaponized when they do not obey status symbols of thinness. For many of these women, doctors gatekeep treatment by giving ultimatums to “lose weight” in an unrealistic amount before proceeding with fertility treatment. No guidance is provided to a healthier lifestyle or discussion about environmental factors besides diet and laziness that are contributing to body fat. It is absolutely injudicious for a medically licensed doctor to dismiss treatment when they ought to know that hormonal conditions like PCOS & stress causes weight gain, not the other way around.
Women are also oppressed via the deeply problematic concepts of eugenics and racialization. These ideologies continue to be practiced even unintentionally. The reason why eugenics has historically been practiced is to maintain the reproduction of bodies that fit the categories society wants them to be – white, wealthy and thin and control/minimize populations of the “physically unfit”, poor and colored people. An example of how Eugenics is practiced is by implementing social welfare programs that seem beneficial for low income, minority communities that are laced with the intent to control reproduction so the government does not have to give assistance to the children that would otherwise be born (Lind et al., 2023).
Fatness is a racial construct due to the fact that many BIPOC communities tend to not fit the thinness standards set by the White population. This must be why a white society will go to the extent of also making sure to exclude white women who are fat from reproductive healthcare. It is tragic that in 2023 there is such little commotion on how much work needs to be done to destigmatize fatness and failure to provide quality healthcare. Postponing fertility treatment has little to do with wanting mothers to be healthy but more to do with a fatphobic society doing its best to maintain the mental and physical barriers towards care for these groups of women.
References
Lind, E. R. M., McPhail, D., & Mazur, L. (2023). 209 Gender, Fat, and Reproductive Health Care. The Contemporary Reader of Gender and Fat Studies (1st ed., pp. 209-226). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003140665-21