Being a Fat Medical Student: My Journey Toward Inclusion

“What are you doing? You can’t wear those here!” the nurse called out as she breezed past me in the OR hallway at 7:05 a.m. It was the third comment that morning about my scrubs. I told her the turquoise set was the only plus‑size option the hospital stocked. She raised an eyebrow, muttered something under her breath, and walked away, leaving me to scramble into a room where I already felt out of place.

Before I set foot in medical school, my primary‑care doctor – herself a larger‑bodied practitioner of Health at Every Size (HAES) – warned me. “Brace yourself for the disgust that’s baked into medical education,” she said, urging me to keep my head down and power through. She was right about the sting, but wrong about the only way forward.

I have been on the receiving end of body‑shaming – from classmates snickering about BMI scores to attending physicians rolling their eyes when a patient’s weight is mentioned. I’ve watched a parent berate a nine‑year‑old daughter for her size, and I’ve felt the bruise of a lecture‑hall chair digging into my abdomen. The lack of a Patagonia fleece in my size, the white‑coat dropdown that never showed a plus‑size option – these small omissions are loud reminders that the profession doesn’t expect doctors to be big.

Research backs up what I live every day. Studies consistently show physicians hold strong implicit and explicit weight biases. A 2019 investigation even found “preliminary evidence of discrimination against facially unattractive and obese applicants” during radiology resident selection. Yet the data on medical‑school admissions are thin; we still don’t know how much bias decides who gets in.

Interestingly, after the pandemic forced interviews onto Zoom, the number of larger‑bodied students rose at several schools. When you can’t see a candidate’s silhouette, size‑based assumptions disappear – at least for a moment. It makes you wonder how many capable, compassionate future physicians have been screened out simply because they didn’t fit a skinny mold.

When I walk into a sign‑out, the conversation often drifts to BMI, with jokes that feel like arrows aimed at my own body. “They’re all huge!” a resident shouted once, gesturing at a patient list. It’s as if my presence is a secret, a glitch in a system that assumes every clinician fits into a narrow size‑range. I wish those off‑hand comments would be replaced with genuine curiosity about lived experience.

Not every interaction is a lesson in bias, though. On a psychiatry rotation, I cheerfully said “Happy Friday” to a security guard. He followed me into a small vestibule, eager to tell me he’d lost fifty pounds on a GLP‑1 drug and urging me to ask my doctor about it. The well‑meaning advice landed like a slap, because it ignored the fact that my body isn’t something to be “fixed” – it’s part of who I am.

These moments have taught me that advocacy starts with speaking up, even when it feels uncomfortable. I’ve begun sharing my story in class, asking professors to include discussions of weight stigma in ethics curricula, and pushing for hospitals to stock inclusive scrub sizes. Small changes, like a simple “plus‑size scrubs available” sign, make a world of difference for a student who already feels like an outsider.

Representation matters. When patients see a clinician who looks like them, trust can blossom. When trainees see colleagues of all bodies thriving, the culture slowly shifts. I’m not looking for a special treatment; I just want the same respect, the same resources, and the same space to learn as anyone else.

So here’s the promise I’m making to myself and to the next generation of doctors: I will not stay silent when weight bias rears its head. I will keep asking, “What if we designed health care for every size?” because the answer – a more compassionate, effective system – is worth the effort.