Cosmo thinks cancer is the ultimate weight-loss plan

Oh, Cosmo. Maybe you can try blaming this on Mercury Retrograde or something, because there’s no real earthly excuse for a fuck-up this big.

Maybe you saw this tweet earlier today:

Seems like totally normal women’s media clickbait, right?

The article is an account of a fitness blogger’s myriad health problems over the past two years, including a battle against cancer which lead to a 44-pound weight loss.

The blogger, Simone Harbinson, endured through a kidney infection before testing positive for cancer in her appendix. Then she “contracted an infection that required her to be quarantined,” suffered a collapsed lung and slipped a disc in her back.

So yeah, I imagine she’d have a difficult time working out through all that.

But rather than finding a headline or social plug that captured Harbinson’s endurance or strength or road to recovery through body positivity, it focused on her weight loss. And what’s worse, it made her story seem like a lose-weight-quick crash diet scheme rather than a life-threatening experience she’s just now coming to terms with.

Cosmo’s since deleted the tweet in question — and of course it’s human to err — but I’d hope that a magazine that prides itself on female empowerment would do a better job of highlighting a survivor’s inner beauty.