When Fatphobia Leads to False Conflations

Today, James and I had to have some vitals checked and do some blood work for a new life insurance policy.

First, the whole thing was kind of sketchy. They're a medical contractor that does the work for Mutual of Omaha, and they do offer to come to your house. I'm glad that James opted not to do that, because my allergies are worse at home than anywhere else, and that affects my heart rate at times, for sure.

Anyway, the address they gave us was a pretty spectacular glass office building that was way fancy.

Mal especially enjoyed this white noise indoor courtyard.

When I found the suite, I went in and told the guy we had a 9:30 appointment. He asked, "Do you know the name of the company? We have a lot of companies here." Well, actually, maybe? They didn't mention that they rent office share space, and that information would have been helpful.

Next, they'd instructed us to start drinking water before the appointment because we'd need to provide samples. I took this seriously, and when they hadn't called us in by 9:45 (we were already discussing how long to wait before we took off), I went to the bathroom. As I washed my hands, a lady opened the door and said, "Laura? Oh. We need a urine sample." I told her, "I held one for you for fifteen minutes." Sigh.

We went back into this office and I was ready. I am at a healthy headspacee, for the first time in 30 years, regarding my body. I eat and move and wear what and how I want, without thought to others' opinions, or without shaming myself, and it's so freeing. But I don't know how I'd react to having a number assigned to me (I don't really care what size I wear; that's never been an issue) and I don't want to risk obsessing or going down a dark tunnel over a stupid measurement of my body relative to the gravity of our planet.

So.

I said, "I need not to know what I weigh." The technician interrupted me with, "But no! You're beautiful." I said, "I know." (Seriously. Ask James.)

Just because I was performing self-care doesn't mean I think I'm ugly. On the contrary. Most of my life, I've felt pretty until outside sources "corrected" me. My not wanting to know my weight made her think I feel "too" fat and therefore ugly. There's a meme I just saw last week, and this recalled it.

From Body Positive Memes by Michelle Elman

So there's that. Anyway, because the whole office was carpeted, the scale didn't work, anyway, and so we both just provided weights out of the air. I said what I weighed when I first went in because I was pregnant with Mal. My body is definitely different now than then, but besides that pregnancy, I haven't weighed in 10 years, other than at the doctor's, and then I said the same thing: I can't know. It's not good for me.

Besides that, neither of the women who helped us had English as a first language, although one was fluent. The other was a lot more fluent in English than I am in any other language, but since we were talking about medical conditions and medication, sometimes had a difficult time understanding James and therefore writing down what he was saying. Never mind that EVERY SINGLE THING they asked us we'd already answered on our life insurance application.

Fortunately, the blood-letting was done quite adeptly and you can't even tell that I got jabbed today.

But also, the notes given to us before the appointment about what to expect were: "Blood and urine samples, body fat checks, basic questionnaires."

Sigh.

This is for life insurance, so I'm sure they have some rubric they use to determine risk, based on many factors. However, science is on the side of saying that "body fat" shouldn't be one of them. From a study a few years ago, researchers found "a U-shaped curve, with the bottom of the curve — the lowest risk of death — falling around 25 to 26 on the BMI chart, making the risk of early death lowest for those now labeled overweight. People considered 'mildly obese' had roughly the same risk of dying as those in the 'normal' category. Death rates went up for those on either end of the scale — underweight and severely obese — but not by much." (New York Post)

Anyway, I'm just glad that's over. Because ugh. And after fasting and not having caffeine, I treated myself to Krispy Kreme's Chips Ahoy doughnut and a soda. Because that, too, is self-care.