Time picks on fat kids
With the presidential campaign in a lull, Time magazine this week devotes its cover story to that old standby: “Childhood Obesity: Threat or Menace.” Actually, the title on the cover of the June 22 issue is “Our Super-Sized Kids,” only slightly less trite than “Generation XL” or “Fat for Life,” the banner headline on a similar Newsweek story published eight years ago.
How did I remember that old Newsweek story? I didn’t, until I looked it up. What I remembered was the cover photo, which like Time’s showed an unpleasingly plump boy holding an obscenely overlowing ice cream cone. But whereas Newsweek’s chubster was set to gorge himself on a one-scoop cone, Time’s tubby tyke had been served with two scoops. Double the pleasure — and embarrassment. (Actually, Time was cutting back: Its 2004 article about obesity showed a fat kid with a three-scoop cone.)
As a former fat boy, I cringed when I saw both photos, and only party because the kids looked like me when I was 10 or 11. Posing a fat kid with a giant ice cream cone is tasteless and cruel (even if the models were paid for flaunting their adiposity). Worse, the iconography of the covers refelected the fallacy that fat people are gluttons. (Interestingly, that was not the burden of Time’s story, which spread the blame for childhood obesity to include high-tech convenmiences and evolutionary biology.)
I have written at length elsewhere about how even balanced journalism about childhood obesity may aggravate the ostracism of fat kids that seems to have survived the recalibration of the bariatric bell curve. Maybe bullies don’t need an excuse to pick on fat kids, but pack journalism about the obesity epidemic gives them one by making the fat kid not only “different” but a national menace.
I’m not one of those devotees of “fat culture” who believe that urging people to lose weight is like pressuring deaf people to read lips — a form of genocide. On the other hand, do we really want a world without fat people?
But put that debate aside. Think only of the Time and Newsweek covers. Asking a fat boy to pose with a gargantuan ice cream cone is demeaning to him and to other chubby kids who might see the magazine — or have it brandished at them in the schoolyard. At least they didn’t show him patting his belly or slobbering. But there's always next summer.
This makes me sick. While I agree with the points you made, I think that all the hype in the media is even worse because it makes picking on fat kids seem like it's justified.
As science is slowly discovering, what makes one fat is a complex thing. It's not as simple as "don't eat that" or "go on a diet" for most. Furthermore, the idea that there are "good" and "bad" foods is BS.
A new study released by the AMA says that high fructose corn syrup, the stuff that's been compared to Satan himself, is no worse than ANY OTHER SUGAR at the end of the day.
Get a grip, people. It is NOT okay to treat these kids like they are circus freaks. What parent allows their child to be used that way???
Posted by: Juliet | June 19, 2008 at 03:04 PM
Weight is the new smoking. It's that simple.
Lo these ten or more years ago, when the screechy-preachies "won" their Supreme Court "victory" over "Big Tobacco", they announced at their press conference that their next target would be the American diet, and they even outlined how they'd do it.
Abusing and humiliating overweight kids, with the able-bodied assistance of the U.S. Press, was one of their specifically-mentioned strategies.
Clearly, they're true to their word. Face it, folks... The only thing Orwell got wrong was the decade.
Posted by: BadKarma | June 20, 2008 at 08:47 AM
Ad campaigns and articles such as this Time cover depicting fat kids are extraordinarily harmful to the very kids they are supposedly trying to help. Fat children are already the targets of merciless bullying. This cover story simply gives the bullies permission to do more of the same.
The results of a study released last year show that there’s been a 40-fold increase over nine years (1994-2003) in the number of kids diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which has created an explosion in sales of antipsychotic meds made by Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Pfizer. Then between 2003 and 2006, that number doubled again to 4.4 million children on drugs for bipolar disorder.
Some say the treatments are bringing needed help to troubled kids, others say that they are exposing children to serious risks, including weight gain and diabetes. These figures do not even include the children receiving medication for ADD and ADHD which have the same side effects, weight gain and diabetes. The expanded diagnosis of bipolar disorder has made children the fastest-growing part of the $11.5 billion US market for antipsychotic drugs.
So basically we are giving our children drugs, the side effects of which are weight gain and diabetes then we are blaming the parents and the children themselves. What? Why is no one looking at the drug companies and physicians who are doing this to our children? Why is no one looking at the fact that more and more doctors are influenced to prescribe drugs by drug company inducements? Why is no one looking for ways to help our children without condemning them to a lifetime of taking drugs which only lead to even more complications?
I am a member of NAAFA, an organization which supports Health at Every Size (HAES). In the "war on obesity," we are the Peace Movement. There is a critical need to create environments in which children and adolescents do not feel shame or guilt about their bodies but, rather, are motivated to enjoy healthful eating and active living habits regardless of their body size or shape. HAES says that healthy habits are good for EVERYONE, no matter what their size. Eat healthy, nutritious foods and enjoy occasional treats. Pay attention to your natural hunger and satiety cues. Move your body in ways that feel good. And love yourself just the way you are! We come in all sizes, accept it!
Posted by: Peggy | June 20, 2008 at 04:15 PM
I feel completely vindicated. As youngsters, we always picked on fat kids . Now, we find that demonizing them is politically correct.
Posted by: Russ Julseth | June 20, 2008 at 08:30 PM
You may be right that cover stories -- specifically cover photos -- like these might result in more bullying of overweight kids. (I was one, too.)
But having "it brandished at them in the schoolyard"? I have my doubts.
When was the last time you heard of a playground bully reading Time or Newsweek? Or reading anything, for that matter? They don't steal their dads' Playboys for the articles.
Strike that: they don't steal their dads' adult-oriented website passwords to do Internet research.
Posted by: Rick Sincere | June 21, 2008 at 02:26 PM
Didn't the Nazis use a similar form of propaganda to demonize the Jews right before the Nazi Holocaust? Fat people are the new Jews. Americans, you better wake up fast or there will end up being a Holocaust on American soil, and the collective blood will be on your collective hands.
Posted by: Darth Chaos | July 13, 2008 at 05:58 PM