Being Healthy

 According to the English Oxford Dictionary, being healthy means having good health and not likely to become sick. But in recent times we use the word ’Healthy’ as a polite way of referring to someone as ‘fat’ or ‘obese’.

But doesn’t something seem off?

The meaning in the dictionary is different from the way we use the word now. If you call a person healthy, should they be offended because you are calling them fat or should they be happy that you think they have a lesser chance of getting sick?

Don’t you think this comes from the ideology of the ‘perfect body type’, or maybe the people with the ‘perfect body type’ might not be as healthy as the others are? We all know that the healthy body type for everyone is different. What maybe healthy for one might not be healthy for another.

Last week I asked my mother if I was born underweight, healthy or overweight. She spent a whole hour explaining to me that I was born healthy but not overweight.
It means the same to me, being healthy and being healthy but not overweight. How can you be overweight if you are healthy according to your body type? When I asked my mother, ”That means I was born healthy, right?” She was offended, and explained to me how I was not born ‘healthy’ but healthy. Still it does not make any sense to me.

But isn’t that what happens around us all the time? Aren’t we using the word ‘Healthy’ in a wrong way?

What if we use this word the way it was actually introduced to be used? There would be one less word to offend the people around us.

- Muskan Mishra