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Imagine you have a painful, debilitating disease that’s hard to get doctors to even take seriously, never mind work with you to treat. Well, you’re envisioning having endometriosis – a thickening of bleeding tissue in a woman’s pelvis that can attack at any time of the month.
Now, imagine that the doctors who are supposed to be helping you, looking for better treatments and pain management, instead waste their time ranking patients by their looks.
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Yeah. Take a minute for the rage to recede enough for you to see words instead of red.
Endometriosis affects 1 in 10 women, and the average wait between the onset of symptoms and a diagnosis is a shocking 7.4 years. That, combined with the fact that it can affect fertility, means that it’s no surprise plenty of diagnosed women would be ready and willing to enroll in a research study.
Not, however, one where “scientists” try to draw a parallel between the hotness of a woman and the severity of her symptoms.
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The study, published in 2013 in Fertility and Sterility, was titled “Attractiveness of women with rectovaginal endometriosis: a case control study,” and the researchers claimed their results showed patients with endometriosis were more attractive than those without.
Seriously.
The “gross” and “sexist” (not my words, but yeah) study included a physical examination that measured BMI, hip-to-waist ratio, and breast size, and ranked women on their attractiveness levels (based on nothing but male opinion).
The study included just 31 patients who, it should be noted, were not informed of the researcher’s hypothesis when agreeing to participate.
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Though the authors tried to defend their hypothesis by speculating that increased estrogen levels could lead to both attractiveness and endometriosis, most scientists dismiss it as being absolutely pointless, not to mention regressive and harmful.
“I fail to understand how a small group of Italian doctors rating attractiveness of women with different stages of endometriosis contributes anything to medical science,” OB Dr. Jen Gunter wrote when the paper was first released.
She had more to say, all of which is in line with what most people should be thinking.
“If women with severe endometriosis truly do have a lower BMI there could be a multitude of reasons, some of which may actually be important, but this hypothesis is not answered by this study. In fact, this study of 31 women contributes nothing to the medical literature and Fertility and Sterility should be ashamed they accepted it for publication.
“Objectifying women has no place in medicine. It is even more horrifying that such a publication comes from a department on OB/GYN.”
Can I get an AMEN?
