Blogs

Part II: Sharing Size Diversity and Acceptance with Children

by Jay Solomon
August 11 2009

Is the Problem Childhood Obesity or Our Attitudes towards Fat Kids?

We’re constantly warned about the “Obesity Epidemic” in our country, and the rising frequency of childhood obesity. “We’ve got to stop our kids from getting fat!” we hear shouted by the government, health professionals and the medical establishment. There are even cases of the government taking children away from their parents because the parents are “not responsible” enough to raise their children without allowing them to get fat.

Those of us disturbed by the above met at NAAFA because we were concerned about the effect that all of this rhetoric and all of these actions were having on children. Children hear what we’re saying - they listen to us (by us, I mean parents). When they hear us obsessing about our weight and concerned about getting or appearing fat, they begin to obsess about the same things. 50% of 9-year-old girls and 80% of 10-year-old girls have dieted, according to Largesse, the Network for Size Esteem. Those numbers are disturbing, and indicative of the consistently wrong messages that we’re sending children. We are raising children to hate their bodies and themselves - and it has to stop.

How We Advocate for Children

NAAFA’s child advocacy discussion focused on how we can convey to children that people come in all different shapes and sizes and why we shouldn’t judge people based on those sizes. In addition, the idea arose to teach kids that it’s not okay to bully or tease other kids for being fat and to teach them that they should love their bodies and themselves. Perhaps these messages seem simple or maybe to some even unnecessary, but body hatred is part of our culture, and as much as we experience it in our generations, we should do our best to change things for our children.

“Telling fat kids that they’re fine the way they are is horrible,” some counter. I would contend that telling them there’s something wrong with them is horrible. Teach children good values about health, nutrition and regular exercise and they’ll be just fine, whether fat, thin or in between. Moreover, we need to tell children of all sizes that everyone has a different body size and that our bodies change as we grow up, and that we should be concerned with our health and loving ourselves, not our sizes.

There are a lot of messages that we wanted to reach kids with, and we brainstormed numerous ways of getting these messages to them and discussed the channels we’d have to go through to make it all happen. None of it will be easy, and it’s just the beginning of a very important project to bring the right messages about size diversity and positive body image to our children - messages that, largely speaking, they are not getting right now.

Good Little Boys and Girls

I think that many average Americans have two hopes related to their children in this department. The first is that their kids will not be fat, and the second is that their kids will not be bullies. Something I’ve come to understand is that, though we may be able to have a hand in the outcome of either of these things, we certainly can’t determine the way they’re going to go. We can raise our kids with all the right values, but when push comes to shove (so to speak) we can’t be sure that they won’t be involved in bullying. Similarly, we can convey healthy lifestyles and habits to our children or even neurotically control their diets like MeMe Roth, but that’s no guarantee that they won’t be fat either.

Let’s say one does end up with thin kids that aren’t bullies. Will that person’s children be able do what’s right and stand up for the fat kid that’s getting bullied because he understands that teasing people about their size is wrong. And what if one has a fat child who gets bullied about his or her size. Will that child have been given the right messages about body image and size esteem and know that s/he is just fine the way s/he is?

Teaching our kids the right values is incredibly important to ensure that they all grow up healthy and happy. We owe it to them to work hard to see these positive changes come about in the way children are engaged in relation to issues of size. I for one was proud to be apart of this NAAFA Children’s Advocacy program.

As this project is only in its nascent stages right now (and belongs to NAAFA, not More of Me to Love), I will skip discussing the specifics of the ideas, but I do hope that you’ll share anything you can about ways to reach children effectively and the kinds of messages we should bring to them. What kinds of things do you tell your children about Size Acceptance?

Enjoy Part I: Dr. Linda Bacon’s Reflections on Size Acceptance and Thin Privilege

As an historian, Jay understands the degree to which our aesthetic judgments are shaped by our cultural surroundings, and he has studied and written about the importance of rights, respect and acceptance for all people.

Comments

• Kush | posted August 11, 2009

  The three unanswered questions on child obesity are:

  1) Is there a quantifiable change in the health of children?
  2) If the answer to the first quesiton is “Yes”, is that change indicative of a health problem (even if this indication is not causal)?
  3) If the answer to the first two questions is “Yes”, how should the issue of childhood obesity be addressed (and how does that differ from how it is addressed today)?

• Jay Solomon | posted August 11, 2009

  Hey Kush - I was hoping that you could expand on your first question. Is their a quantifiable change when? When they are taught size acceptance? Between when they’re fat and thin? If you can clarify that for me then I will be better able to address it and your other questions which I’m really appreciative you asked. Thanks so much!

• Kush | posted August 11, 2009

  “Is there a quantifiable change in the size/weight of children in the last 20, 30, 50 years?”

• Jay Solomon | posted August 11, 2009

  Just like the general population has been getting heavier over that time period, so too have children been getting heavier. However, in the same way that the average weight of an American adult has only gone up 8 lbs in 40 years - a sign that we’re blowing the “obesity epidemic” a bit out of proportion considering what the media would make us think - I’m willing to bet that the average weight of children of certain ages hasn’t increased so drastically. Does that mean there aren’t some very fat kids out there? No, of course not, but it does mean that the rising prevalence of childhood obesity isn’t the terror that we’ve been led to believe. The terror is children’s health - children of ALL sizes, which I’ll address after I offer you this article: http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/maybe-children-arent-getting-fatter-759/

  It’s from the Wall Street Journal and explains that evidence indicates that children are NOT getting fatter anymore - for a few years now, actually. Interestingly, the article mentions the difficulty of propugating this news because people are so entrenched in the opinion that our kids are still getting fatter.

  As for your second question, I’d like to mention a line from the article: “Some researchers warn against making too much of such findings, since rates continue to rise among certain subgroups of children, perhaps a particular gender or ethnic or income group.” The question is, why are subgroups of children (by ethnicity and income group) still getting fatter? Because, oftentimes, these are the children from lower income families and areas whose families have less access to nutritious food and live in neighborhoods where playing outside isn’t safe (those may sound like little things, particularly the latter, but studies show that the drop off in safe outdoor play areas has contributed to the increase in sedentary children).

  In any case, are these rates of fatter children indicative of a heath problem? you asked. Because you said, even if it’s not causal, I will say that children of all sizes, fat and thin, are unhealthy. They don’t exercise enough and they eat very poorly - children of ALL sizes. This is the health problem that we have and in many cases, particularly those of lower income ethnic communities, the rates of childhood obesity can alert us to a larger health problem that is visually manifest in some of those children. Does that mean that all fat kids are unhealthy? Absolutely not. Are all thin kids healthy? In the same way, heck no.

  Moving onto your final question which readdresses the original point of my article - and I thank you for raising the issue - how should the issue of childhood obesity be addressed differently than it is now?

  Now we are scaring our kids, fat and thin, about two things: the first is that being fat is horrible and the second is that if you’re fat that’s not good. Therefore, a disturbing number of kids are on diets (whether self-imposed or parentaly imposed) and many kids ostracize the fat kids and treat them horribly. Recently I’ve noticed a few suicide stories in the news because fat kids were being teased and bullied to that point. The way we change those attitudes, and whatever health problem we’re having, is two-fold (i.e. this is how we address childhood obesity). First, we teach kids about Size Diversity and Size Acceptance to make them see that there’s nothing wrong with being fat and that people come in all different sizes - just like they do colors, countries of origin, etc. - and that that’s okay. As we get them to stop hating fat (which starts, I’d imagine, with us stopping our hatred of fat) we simultaneously instill healthy values in them related to good eating and exercise (which is obviously top-down like good school lunch options, PE that has options for everyone to move enjoyably, etc.) and suddenly you’ve cured childhood obesity.

  Does that mean that kids aren’t fat anymore? Heavens no. There will still be plenty of fat kids. They just won’t be bullied or teased (at least in the ways they are now) and they - just like their thin peers- will be healthier. The problem goes away based on how you look at it and evaluate it as a problem - and after you identify the real issues.

  This is a long and difficult process that is grossly oversimplified here, but the issues remain the same. Fat people care about children - fat and thin. And this meeting was about making sure that those children were being cared for properly (both in mind and body) rather than putting them on diets and freaking them out (which, of course, isn’t all that goes on in regards to our kids health - I’m not saying that at all - but it is one of the darker manifestations of the conception of the problem).

• Kush | posted August 11, 2009

  I appreciate you addressing those questions.