I’m Fat — Give Me All Your Vaccines and Donuts

I hear Krispy Kreme is giving out donuts when you get vaccinated against COVID-19.

I also hear that people are Not Happy™ about this.

You don’t have to tell me what they’re saying about the message that giving away free donuts sends about health and the “COVID 15” and how fat people shouldn’t have been given priority status in the vaccines queues.

Thing is, the world has been telling us since the last pandemic that obesity (aka the math between height and weight) is a co-morbidity. You have been shouting from the evening news that I’m more likely to die, more likely to get sick, more likely to overburden the healthcare system by virtue of my body size and now, NOW you want to tell me that, actually, I’m just as likely to die as everyone else and therefore undeserving of special treatment.

But I suspect it’s even worse than that.

If I had to guess (because I refuse to read the comments), there are a lot of people spouting off about how, actually, they’d like me to die from COVID-19. And how, if I did, I’d deserve it.

But you know what I actually deserve? A donut.

[Image: the author, who is white and butch-looking with an uncharacteristically stern facial expression, shows off her Walgreens vaccination sticker. She has tattoos on her left arm and is wearing a tank top for rhetorical effect. A portrait of Helga Phugly from “The Oblongs” is also framed in the shot for rhetorical effect.]

I don’t even like donuts all that much, which is surprising, I know! Remember when people used to bring donuts to the office? Remember how all the men would take two and all the thin women would proclaim “oH i OnLy WaNt haaaaaaaaaaaaalf” and gum up a plastic knife with sad, smushed jelly filling trying to out-diet each other?

That’s the kind of energy you want to bring into this post-pandemic world? Really?

I’m tired of defending my humanity all the time, so you can go read about my relationship to the medical establishment over on my Instagram. I got my first vaccine shot as soon as I could. I have my second one scheduled for later this week, and will thus qualify for my donut(s). If I had one gripe about the free donut thing, it’s this: fat people are given so little respect, dignity, and pleasure in this world that donuts are the last freebie that we’re interested in.

Give me unbiased, compassionate healthcare.

Give me equal job opportunities.

Give me an anxiety-free clothes shopping experience.

Give me chairs without arms.

Give me mobility devices, medical equipment, and sporting gear that will actually fit.

Give me honest and shame-free fitness and sex education resources that specifically talk about how to negotiate moving larger bodies in fun, exciting ways.

Give me safe, uncomplicated travel.

Give me comfortable access to wellness services like massages and day spas.

Give me movies and TV and books about fat people with complex personalities existing in a real or fictional world.

Give me a chance to eat a donut or a slice of pizza or a salad or literally anything without it becoming a radical fucking political act.

Until then, I’ll take a plain glazed.