I wrote this article for Full zine.

* It's the surgery I hate, not the people who've had it.

1. It kills people
0.5 - 1% of people die within 30 days of undergoing the surgery. That's one person out of every hundred. In 2004 the National Institutes of Health estimated that 140,000 Americans had the procedure. This means that, statistically speaking, 1,400 people died within 30 days of having the surgery in one year alone. Mortality rates may actually be higher than that.

The figures are currently released by those who carry out the surgery, for example hospitals and medical institutions, and because these procedures are so popular and lucrative it's likely that they would downplay the risks in order to make weight loss surgery seem more appealing.

The other thing is that deaths attributed to obesity may actually be caused by weight loss, which also camouflages the real statistics. Because the surgery is so new, it's hard to get a picture of long term mortality, although I'd say that sectioning off an area of your stomach, inducing starvation and massive weight loss, plus surgical complications that can include pulmonary embolism, intestinal leak and deep vein thrombosis is unlikely to be very good for you in the long run.

2. It destroys people's health
Healthy fat people are being pressured to have this surgery with the promise that it'll make them healthier. In reality, the post-surgery experience involves a lot of disgusting shit and "sour belch"-related trauma, plus gallstones, fertility problems, hair loss and more. If you lose a lot of weight you'll still look weird and you'll also have a ton of excess skin that'll need cutting off in another operation. Add to the equation repeated hospitalisations, and life-long medical treatment. Oh, and I forgot to mention the psychological issues; if you were a fucked-up fatty before the surgery, you'll be a lot more fucked-up afterwards - better start saving for therapy now.

3. It suggests that there is a cure for that which is a normal part of human body diversity
It reminds me of aversion therapy for gay people.

4. It relies on a powerful yet false fantasy
The desire for fast, almost magical, seemingly effortless bodily transformation is at the heart of people's fascination with weight loss surgery. The truth - pain, its health-ruining effects, the grimness of being a helpless hospital patient - could not be farther from the fantasy. Weight loss surgery also demonstrates the depressing truth that most people would rather die, or ruin their health, than be fat.

5. It's being offered to teenagers
Weight loss surgery is being touted as a useful weapon against the global obesity epidemic(sic), and fat teens are now being targeted lest they turn into - horrors! - fat adults. Weight loss surgery is also being used as a gatekeeping device by medics who withhold other kinds of treatment from fat patients unless they lose weight. I don't know about you but I think teenagers should be spending their time smoking behind the bike sheds and getting off with each other at parties, not dying on the operating table before they've even begun their lives.

6. Weight loss surgery evangelicals are kind of creepy
Carnie Wilson and Sharon Osbourne are your role models.

7. After all that, it's not necessarily permanent
A gastric band might limit the amount of food you can eat, but it can't stop you liquidising your favourite calorific treats and slurping them down. Your body's genetics, your metabolism, are powerful things and a teeny-tiny band might not be enough to stop them bringing you back to your rightful size. By the way, Carnie's putting on weight again.

8. It promotes the myth that fat people, left untreated, will die of their morbid obesity
Obviously we are too stupid, too far gone, to be able to make decisions about who we are, how we want to live. Self-determination is not for the likes of us, so we're better off putting all that complicated stuff into the hands of the experts, those ill-informed medics who are ignorant of fat liberation or fat autonomy but who know what's best for us, who think they can fix us, and who profit greatly from our terrible, sad, unfortunate, disease-ridden bodies.

9. It rides on a wave of fatphobia
The ads don't say: "Ew, fat pig, you're gross!" It's more subtle than that, it's in the core beliefs, in the language, a denial that fatness could be anything but completely wrong, the absolute opposite of all that is right in the world, and that it must be eradicated. Inherent is the idea that fat people are treated as objects of pity, fear and disgust, a problem for whom the only solution is surgery. It's about presenting this view as the only view, it obliterates dissent against the authoritorial voice of corporate and medical power. It's full of self-perpetuating logic.

10. It is completely pointless
There are many non-invasive, risk-free ways of improving your health and quality of life if you are fat, so why bother with surgery? Consider a support group, wellness activities, activism, therapy, consciousness-raising before you choose surgery. Trash your scales, treat yourself to some fat liberation books, learn to value your bodacious bod. Life as a fatty can be really good, don't ruin it, baby.