Cosmopolitan Faces Fierce Backlash Over Covers ‘Praising Obesity Despite Coronavirus Risk’

Cosmopolitan UK is facing harsh backlash and mockery on social media for its latest issue. More specifically, for suggesting there is nothing unhealthy about being obese, prompting accusations that the magazine is endangering lives amid the pandemic.

It featured photographs and interviews of 11 women who represented the different sizes of healthy, with a sign that read: “This is healthy! 11 women on why wellness doesn’t have to be one-size-fits-all.”

Image credits: RitaPanahi

Cosmopolitan published photographs and interviews of 11 different women with a sign that read: “This is healthy! 11 women on why wellness doesn’t have to be one-size-fits-all”

Image credits: RitaPanahi

The publication said that yoga teacher Jessamyn Stanley has become a “superstar in the American wellness industry thanks to her inclusive attitude.”

Stanley noted that she has embraced her body size and has learned to tune out “fatphobic comments” on Instagram where she has 450,000 followers and encountered drawbacks to the attention.

“I’ve had to accept that’s how the mainstream sees me and not try to change. For me, that’s been very therapeutic,” Stanley stated.

Influencer Callie Thorpe, for example, said that “Plus-size people often feel like they can’t be part of the wellness space. We are trolled for being fat, then can feel excluded from exercise because our bodies don’t fit the narrative.”

Cosmopolitan explained that Callie’s journey towards self-love started with her diet blog in 2012. “I thought if I made myself accountable to strangers, I’d [lose weight]. It made me feel worse than ever,” she explained.

Thorpe now adheres to the “body neutrality movement,” focusing on what her body can “do” rather than how her body “looks.”

Image credits: Cosmopolitan

But people on social media have a real problem with it

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Since the pandemic took over the world, multiple studies have reported that many of the sickest COVID-19 patients have been people with obesity.

For example, in a meta-analysis published on 26 August in Obesity Reviews, an international team of researchers put together data from scores of peer-reviewed papers capturing 399,000 patients.

They found that obese people who contracted SARS-CoV-2 were 113% more likely than people of healthy weight to land in the hospital, 74% more likely to be admitted to an ICU, and 48% more likely to die.

In fact, a French chief epidemiologist has been warning that obesity is a major COVID-19 risk factor since the beginning of April.

“This virus is terrible, it can hit young people, in particular obese young people. Those who are overweight really need to be careful,” professor Jean-François Delfraissy told franceinfo radio at the time.

“That is why we’re worried about our friends in America, where the problem of obesity is well known and where they will probably have the most problems because of obesity.”

Image credits: RitaPanahi

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This isn’t the first time that Cosmopolitan has made headlines by featuring plus-sized women. In 2018, the outlet’s cover starred obese model Tess Holliday. That time, it was widely criticized for advocating for an unhealthy lifestyle as well.

Holliday, on the other hand, was unapologetic for her appearance and lashed out at the “horrible people” who were “whining about how me being on the cover of a glossy magazine impacts your small-minded life.”