OPINION:
Forget Atkins. Move over cabbage soup. There’s a new diet in town, one — inadvertently as it may be — prodded into the media limelight by Cosmopolitan magazine, and its name is “Cancer.”
It’s a gottta-see-it-to-believe-it moment, that’s for sure.
Here’s the background: Cosmo tweeted an image of a woman in a pink sleeveless top, tanned and smiling — and physically fit, of course — beneath this eye-catcher of a headline: “How This Woman Lost 44 Pounds Without ANY Exercise.”
Wow, you say. How did she, you ask.
Well, Cosmo’s handy-dandy tweet included a link to her story tells all. And the headline there was a bit more somber-toned.
“A Serious Health Scare Helped Me Love My Body More Than Ever,” that one read.
And as readers of the story were quick to note, one of the woman’s serious health scares was none other than cancer.
So Cosmo’s snappy story promo of weight loss? Well, it didn’t go over so well with social media types, who saw the magazine as taking its normal Level 10 obsession with physical image and blasting into the stratosphere.
“Cancer is not a diet plan,” tweeted one reader, offended by Cosmo’s Twitter promotion of the story. “Delete this.”
Another tried a blunter route toward self-expression: “@Cosmopolitan Are you insane? #cancerisnotaweightlossprogramitsCANCER.”
Good point.
“Hey @Cosmopolitan,” tweeted another, “as a cancer doctor, I’m horrified. How incredibly disrespectful and insensitive. You owe a lot of patients an apology.”
Come on, Cosmo. This is just over-the-top ridiculous. What’s next, a story of a woman who suffered umpteen blood transfusions — with a promotional tweet of how to detoxify, without buying a juicer?
Please read our comment policy before commenting.