Guest Post: The All Bodies Directory

Today’s Guest Hoyden is Frances, from the fat acceptance advocacy blog Corpulent.

Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity explicitly states that “Weight Bias is common in health care settings”. Research has supported this, detailing anti-fat bias in health care professionals. The blog First, Do No Harm is filled with horror stories of the poor treatment fat patients have received from health care professionals. These stories reveal that many patients are told to lose weight as the first course of treatment regardless of their symptoms; sometimes, patients are told this even if their symptoms indicate an eating disorder. A bad experience with an anti-fat doctor can result in people not seeking the help they need to improve their wellbeing.

Going to get something as simple as a check-up, a consultation or a pap smear can be a hugely stressful event for a fat person. However, there are good health care professionals out there. There are doctors that will treat a fat person without demonising their fat body. But it’s hard to know where to look.

In light of this, I’ve set up the All Bodies Directory (Australia and New Zealand) – http://allbodies.wordpress.com.

This is a site that will collate health care providers from across Australia and New Zealand who treat all bodies carefully and respectfully. Listings will be organised by state, by regions and by specialisations. I want this to be a really valuable resource for the fat community.

The site will rely on user submissions, so if you know a body positive health care provider anywhere in the antipodes, please email me at corpulent.blog@gmail.com or submit over at All Bodies. Make sure you include the following information:

• Name:
• Area (e.g. GP, psychologist, OB/GYN):
• Private or public:
• Contact number:
• Address:
• Comments (optional):

Please feel free to plug this directory anywhere and everywhere. It only has value if people submit and use it, and I’d really love All Bodies to become a practical resource for fat people.

More about Frances: Frances Lockie is a fat acceptance advocate who is trying her best to take over the internet. In addition to the All Bodies Directory, she blogs at Corpulent (http://corpulent.wordpress.com) and normalises the fat female body at Hey Fat Chick! (http://heyfatchick.tumblr.com). You can also follow Frances on twitter

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