How Journalism Goes Bad

So there is this article in my local paper about how a woman who survived hellacious breast cancer has now lost the weight she gained as a result of having her thyroid removed due to the cancer.

I started to write about how cranky I was that the newspaper chose to focus on her weight loss, but then I realized that this woman is probably happy to have her body to focus on in a way that she has control. I can only imagine that after having the cancer run riot over her body she would be glad to have a way to get her body to work with her ideas instead of against them. I mean who the hell am I to say how she should want to view her body given the almost hysterical cultural focus on outward appearance and fear of being labeled fat even if she did survive a horrible ordeal.

My problem is with the media and that this article could have been spun lots of ways, but since we have this crazed focus on weight, this was the focus of the article. Not her ability to reinterpret and view her body as in some way good or benign. This article is then not about the strength of this woman to fight for her life, win and then reinvent herself. It is about how wonderful it is that she now fits into standard beauty norms.

I see this kind of focus as dangerous. Women have other, more important issues to be discussing. These small details redirect our conversations in ways that could be more useful.

Interestingly enough as I went to post this I found that the headline in the paper “Breast Cancer Survivor Shares the Secrets of Making Weight Loss Stick” is different than the on-line version “Weight-loss tips from a true survivor: Donna Nelson beat cancer, got fit and is now featured in a new book from Weight Watchers.”