Media portrayal of people with diabetes
I've had diabetes for nearly 40 years, and I am fed up of the media portrayal of people with diabetes as fat, lazy people who eat sweets all day and won't get up off the couch. I know people with diabetes who won't admit to anyone that they have it because they are afraid people see diabetes as some sort of personal failure.
Parents of children with juvenile diabetes, when they try to raise money for diabetes research, are met with refusal from people who say things like, "If you just stopped feeding your kid so much, he wouldn't have diabetes!" or "You don't need money to cure your kid's diabetes. It'll go away if he loses weight."
Anytime I meet someone new and tell them I have diabetes, I wait for the questions: "Won't that go away if you lose weight?" "You got diabetes because you were fat, right?" "Did you get diabetes because you ate too much sugar when you were a kid?"
I've gotten a bit of a reputation for writing repeated letters to the editor of my local paper every time they print another article that says that diabetes is caused by obesity and do not distinguish between type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes.
A columnist for the local paper wrote an entire editorial column about obesity and diabetes, and got lots of letters from people with Type 1 diabetes telling her that she completely ignored the fact that there is more than one type of diabetes, and furthermore that not all cases of type 2 diabetes are caused by obesity; some are caused by genetics. She wrote another column basically whining that all diabetic people are big meanies who were picking on her for TELLING THE TRUTH.
A couple of years later the World Health Organization released a report linking diabetes and obesity, and this columnist seized on that report and cherry-picked the parts she agreed with and printed them in her column saying "SEE? I WAS RIGHT AND ALL THOSE MEAN DIABETIC PEOPLE WERE WRONG!"
Sometimes I feel like printing up a little card and handing it to people so that I don't have to repeat the same things over and over again:
-- No, I did not get diabetes because I was fat. When I developed diabetes, I was a very skinny five-year old.
-- No, I did not get diabetes because I ate too much sugar when I was a kid.
-- No, I did not get diabetes from drinking sugared pop. I think I had one entire can of Coke in the five years before I developed diabetes.
-- No, it will not go away if I lose weight. If I lost weight, I would simply be a thin person with diabetes.
-- Yes, I have to do shots. No, taking pills will not help.
-- No, I do not have the "bad kind" of diabetes. There is no "bad" kind of diabetes because saying that there is implies that there is a "good" kind.
-- No, the shots do not hurt, but if they did, I would take them anyway, because I kind of like being alive.
-- It's nice to know that you would "rather die" than have to take shots every day. Me, I'd rather live.
Parents of children with juvenile diabetes, when they try to raise money for diabetes research, are met with refusal from people who say things like, "If you just stopped feeding your kid so much, he wouldn't have diabetes!" or "You don't need money to cure your kid's diabetes. It'll go away if he loses weight."
Anytime I meet someone new and tell them I have diabetes, I wait for the questions: "Won't that go away if you lose weight?" "You got diabetes because you were fat, right?" "Did you get diabetes because you ate too much sugar when you were a kid?"
I've gotten a bit of a reputation for writing repeated letters to the editor of my local paper every time they print another article that says that diabetes is caused by obesity and do not distinguish between type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes.
A columnist for the local paper wrote an entire editorial column about obesity and diabetes, and got lots of letters from people with Type 1 diabetes telling her that she completely ignored the fact that there is more than one type of diabetes, and furthermore that not all cases of type 2 diabetes are caused by obesity; some are caused by genetics. She wrote another column basically whining that all diabetic people are big meanies who were picking on her for TELLING THE TRUTH.
A couple of years later the World Health Organization released a report linking diabetes and obesity, and this columnist seized on that report and cherry-picked the parts she agreed with and printed them in her column saying "SEE? I WAS RIGHT AND ALL THOSE MEAN DIABETIC PEOPLE WERE WRONG!"
Sometimes I feel like printing up a little card and handing it to people so that I don't have to repeat the same things over and over again:
-- No, I did not get diabetes because I was fat. When I developed diabetes, I was a very skinny five-year old.
-- No, I did not get diabetes because I ate too much sugar when I was a kid.
-- No, I did not get diabetes from drinking sugared pop. I think I had one entire can of Coke in the five years before I developed diabetes.
-- No, it will not go away if I lose weight. If I lost weight, I would simply be a thin person with diabetes.
-- Yes, I have to do shots. No, taking pills will not help.
-- No, I do not have the "bad kind" of diabetes. There is no "bad" kind of diabetes because saying that there is implies that there is a "good" kind.
-- No, the shots do not hurt, but if they did, I would take them anyway, because I kind of like being alive.
-- It's nice to know that you would "rather die" than have to take shots every day. Me, I'd rather live.