Duh!

From the Any Idiot Could Have Told Them That Dept. comes this:

Chicago (AP, May 3) - Overweight adolescents are more likely than normal-weight children to be victims and perpetrators of bullying, a study found, bolstering evidence that being fat endangers emotional as well as physical health.

The results in a study of 5,749 Canadian youngsters echo data from British research and follow a U.S. study published last year in which obese children rated their quality of life as low as young cancer patients' because of teasing and weight-related health problems. ...

Obese boys and girls were more than two times more likely than normal-weight youngsters to be victims of "relational" bullying - being intentionally left out of social activities. Obese girls were about twice as likely to be physically bullied on a weekly basis than normal-weight girls; among obese boys the risk was slightly lower but still substantially higher than for normal-weight boys.

The report said it underscored "the importance of enlisting teachers and schools in the fight to prevent and treat obesity in children." However, while it said that reducing bullying and thus social isolation could help children struggling with weight issues, it apparently fails (or refuses) to reach the obvious conclusion that the way to reduce the bullying is to fight the bigotry against overweight people, who are routinely regarded as clumsy, inept, unattractive, and slow-witted.

Being overweight, even being obese, is not an illness. Fat people are not "sick." They are at greater risk for a number of conditions, and for that reason obesity is not something to be desired but to be avoided. But being overweight and being "sick" are not the same thing. Smoking puts you at greatly increased risk of cancer and heart disease - but no one would say a smoker is sick (I'm speaking medically, not colloquially) unless they had some identifiable condition. Women with certain types of breasts are, statistically, at increased risk for developing breast cancer - but no one would say that such a woman is sick unless she actually is.

The same is true of obesity and I suspect, frankly, that our description of it as an "illness" to be "treated" is less an expression of our concern than a justification of our prejudice.