Fat Kids Picking On Thin Kids
It must be childhood obesity week. On the heels of the news about the possible plateu in child obesity comes a comic from The Joy of Tech called “Fat Kids, The New Norm.” The comic depicts five kids, four of whom are fat, taunting a fifth child, who is thin. The fat kids are shown as mean and unattractive bullies, picking on the thin kid by saying things like “He probably does sports and stuff instead of watching TV and playing videogames! Dumbass!”
The accompanying poll (winning answer choice bolded) allows you to choose if this comic is:
Inspiring me to calculate my Body Mass Index… how may calories is that going to burn?
Encouraging obese bullies to organize themselves… please don’t gang up on the messenger!
Needlessly cruel to the healthy kid… outliving them all is the best revenge.
Making me realize that my red shirt and white track pants with the green stripe is not a good look, … it’s over the 95 percentile in fashion crime.
Prophetic given the rising rates of childhood obesity… I blame Willie Wonka and his eatable dishes.
Making me hungry… there some chocolate bars in that kid’s lunch box if you need them.
So what do you think this comic is? And what do you think of the issue of childhood obesity. Blown out of proportion? Not a big deal? Or a problem that we should try to solve without shaming the children in question?
Thanks to Michael for the link, and for pointing out the small irony in that this comic is about videogames making kids fat, but doesn’t address the fact that the Wii Fit has just been released.
Posted by mo pie
I think the comic could be used as a satire to highlight the terrible bullying faced by fat kids by pointing out how absurd bullying seems when it’s done to a thin kid. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the intent.
As for childhood obesity, I think the “epidemic” is misnamed. It’s really an epidemic of childhood malnutrition. When you read articles about the “obese” kids, they always mention how the kids eat only junk food, don’t exercise, etc. Often, the article mentions that the kids are poor, living in a minority neighborhood, and don’t have nearby grocery stores that sell produce, PE class and are unable to play outside safely. Although some articles do mention “obese” kids from middle-to-upper class, white areas, it’s also usually mentioned that those kids have many options available to them like private gyms, speciality organic stores, etc, that their parents are able to take advantage of to help them lose weight. Usually, the reasons given for the relatively wealthy kids’ “obesity” come down to either overindulgent or inattentive parenting.
I think that with kids as well as adults, HAES should be practiced. It’s a terrible shame to see children facing the horrible health consequences of living in a “food desert” (see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert) or not being able to play outside for safety reasons. Gaining weight is a natural result of meals of fried chicken and McDonalds, but the weight is not the real problem.
Actually, I was a thin kid picked on by the fat and not as thin kids. I was a very skinny kid, but I ate tons of food and never put on any weight. I remember coming home from school almost every day, in tears, and not wanting to go to school the next day. This lasted from elementary school, all the way up until the end of high school. It wasn’t until I graduated, got into a relationship and started taking birth control pills that I put on weight. So the idea of fat kids picking on skinny kids isn’t as absurd as you make it seem.
As for childhood obesity…I think in most cases, like J. said, it’s malnutrition. Kids in the US are eating things with a lot of HFCS, etc…and our PE programs are dismal.
Clearly, the only solution is for us to humiliate fat kids. THAT’ll make them lose weight! Idiots.
Oh, the irony of a geek website highlighting “bullying” as a way of influencing social norms.
Bullies come in all shapes and sizes, but bullying fat kids definitely seems to be more accepted and tolerated because many people think it will be a catalyst for shaming the kids into losing weight. That’s really not the norm.
Unfortunately, this overblown child obesity pandemic is causing the real bullies to be the media and the medical community, who keep perpetuating fat myths and stereotypes to humiliate parents into slimming down their kids, and to cause strangers to hate on kids in internet comment sections.
This comic could be good satire; but we all know when it comes to fat, the joke’s on us.
Bullying is bullying. Whether it’s fat kids doing the bullying to thin kids (as what happened to my daughter for years prior to her gaining weight from Seroquel for BPI) or vice versa.
It was amazing to watch the transformation that weight gain did for my daughter in her school. The bullying from the girls stopped. She finally had friends. Except then the boys bullied her for being fat. At least she had friends that stuck up for her because she was “one of them.”
Then all of that changed when her medication had to be changed to Lamictal. She’d nearly doubled her weight in a year and diabetes runs in our family. (both juvenile type I and type II) So she was switched from Seroquel to Lamictal because Lamictal is more weight neutral. (yes blood tests were done and showed that Seroquel was inducing insulin resistance)
Since she has lost weight, she has lost most of the new friends she made. She’s only in the 4th grade.
Don’t get me started on the wiifit thing. It’s difficult enough trying to figure out if your child is healthy if they happen to be a picky eater, have dietary issues, are on medication, etc. Using something that simply computes height, weight, age and age at measurement for bmi (which is how it should be done for correct bmi for children in order to find the closest percentile range for age) is still faulty for some children. What people don’t understand is that it is for a general reference point. It’s not an end all, be all. Nor should it be.
When a child shows up outside the optimal/normal percentile ranges, then other questions should be brought up. Like with my kids. That’s when our pediatrician found out that my mother was very small as a child (was the size of a 3 year old when she was six, much like my daughter and son) but later “caught up” to a normal height.
Now my daughter is 11 years old and 5’4″ and my son is 15 and 6’2″. They still won’t fall within the optimal/normal ranges for bmi for age under the child/teen bmi calculators because they are both “too tall” for their age. However, having a pediatrician that understands how the bmi works and how the percentile charts work and knowing our children’s history helps all of this make sense.
I was considered overweight for years because I was 5’7″ at the age of 10 and 150 lbs which made me overweight until I hit the magical age of 14 when I suddenly hit within the norms of the percentile per age.
No it is NOT I know plenty of people who eat crap every fucking day and couldn’t gain an ounce if their lives depended on it. Not everyone who eats crap gains weight and not everyone who eats healthily maintains a socially-sanctioned weight. Let’s please put that myth to rest, at least on theoretically size-accepting sites.
First of all, there is a difference between being a majority population and a social majority. Being or becoming a majority population–there are more people like you than not–doesn’t mean you be a social majority–meaning you are the valued, dominant people in a society. This comic conflates the two.
I think this comic uses that fantasy in several ways, none of which illustrate the point that bullying is a problematic social phenomenon that has to do with power and social control, regardless of who’s being bullied.
1) It perpetuates stereotypes about fat kids and thin kids. 2) It perpetuates the stereotype that fat kids are bullies and mean. 3) Finally, it reinforces thin privilege. It’s silly for fat kids to put down thin kids (See, look at how ridiculous that sounds!), but it makes perfect sense to make fun of fat kids (See how ridiculous they are? See how their values are skewed?). In other words, it’s a commentary on appropriate shaming rituals that reinforces stereotypes in order to shame people to keep them in line. It doesn’t make bullying look ridiculous. And it doesn’t make bullying fat kids look ridiculous. It makes fat kids look like ridiculous bullies.
Of course, this is off the cuff and I know nothing about that comic other than the image. Just my few cents.
Every article I read on childhood obesity touts the joys and wonders of playing outside, and laments the TV/videogame culture that has usurped it. Bullshit. My daughter and I live in a neighborhood with almost no other children (mostly retirees). Without playmates, there are just not many fun things to do outside that would qualify as exercise. When she does spend time outside, she’s bird-watching or flower & rock collecting, or some other quiet, introspective activity. Because she’s a brainy, introspective kid. Inside, she’s just as likely to be doing a craft or reading (or homework!) as watching TV or playing a videogame. Yet according to the media I’m a horrible parent, both negligent and overindulgent at the same time, because I don’t make her march around the backyard instead of reading Harry Potter.
I’ve been a member of the GeekCulture community for at least four years, so it’s really awesome to have these two communities intersect. I’m not sure I’m thrilled, though, for the reason. I’ll have to give my opinion later, because the site isn’t loading right now. Maybe it’s been weighed down by too many FA readers? (Pun intended.)
Fetchfox… the last paragraph of your post was a revelation. My mom took me to a dietitian when I was 10 because I weighed around 100 pounds. However, I was taller than my classmates – I wish I remember exactly how tall – so maybe I wasn’t as fat as my mom accused me of.
Parents, please provide plenty of healthy food and positive comments for your children. Don’t criticize them for things they can’t change, because it WILL affect their attitudes about themselves and about the world, often in a negative direction.
I don’t think anyone should bully anyone. I definitely don’t think a child should be shamed for their weight. I am so tired of hearing children make fun of other overweight children.
God, this is just BEYOND infantile. Ok lets see here, we have:
1. The stereotype that fat kids are all mean, and bullies.
2. That fat kids are stupid, I mean who would actually insult someone for playing sports instead of video games, I mean say it in that way.
They’d say it more slang like, “That jock loser could never pwn me at (insert video game here)”
3. The idea that those who typically are the bulliers, thin children towards fat children, really are victims. Which is absolutely disgusting.
Although there certainly are a good number of thin people, who do whine that they are called names for being thin, or that everyone thinks they’re Anorexic and that’s so mean! None of that, matches up to the endless prejudice fat people get not only from their peers, but the media.
I don’t understand it at all. It’s like a angry teenager, thinking they’re clever cause they’ve reversed a situation, to make people think about it from another angle or something. I mean, this level of sheer stupid, just…I cannot understand it, just …AHHHHHH!!
Jackie…wow…just wow.
“None of that, matches up to the endless prejudice fat people get not only from their peers, but the media.”
If you want to talk about who has more of a right to get angry about being discrimated against, you might want to remember that prejudice against African Americans was and is way worse than any discrimination against overweight people. I don’t understand why anyone would trvialize ANY kind of discrimation, whether it be against the overweight, the underweight or any other group.
It seems that it ‘whining’ if it’s a thin person saying that they’re getting called names, but it’s legitimate if the person is overweight.
Discrimination is discrimination, regardless of who it’s against or who is doing the discriminating.
Anon, while I completely agree with what you said, the point here is that we’re talking about thin kids vs. fat kids in regards to bullying. Not thin kids vs. fat kids vs. african american kids vs. asian american kids vs. what-have-you.
I realize that, but the point made by Jackie seems to be that since more often fat kids are picked on by thin kids, than thin kids picked on by fat kids, it’s somehow less of a discrimination and the thin kids should just stop whining about it.
I agree that we don’t have to trivialize anyone else’s experience in order to articulate our outrage at our own or others’.
If we are going to fight discrimination and oppression, we have to watch we don’t participate in the same sort of shit that’s thrown at us all the time. And the “oh, stop your whining, it’s not a big deal” is thrown at us and other oppressed groups of people who speak up CONSTANTLY. It’s a classic tactic to trivialize experience and shut someone up, and we should not fall prey to those tactics.
Just like the crap you face for being fat isn’t the crap you face for being black, the crap you face for being thin isn’t the same as the crap you face for being fat—and I mean this both literally and symbolically—it doesn’t mean it’s not crap. It’s just not the same crap.
Sorry. I just see that thin sad kid in the comic there, and think about all the times I’ve seen kids who look just like him, laughing and teasing me. It’s like having a image of a black person lynching someone who’s white.
Sure there’s discrimination, but it’s not the same level of discrimination. I’m sorry, but I don’t really see thin discrimination as much of a problem as fat discrimination.
Unless I’ve been missing my news shows, and they’ve suddenly started a Thin Epidemic, and telling everyone how being thin will kill them, and they need to do everything they can to fatten up so they’ll survive. No, I don’t think thin people experience as much discrimination as fat people.
Besides, you saw that it was suitable to bring up that the discrimination against African-Americans is much more than the discrimination towards fat people. So if you are free to compare discriminations against each other, then why shouldn’t I?
Actually…when I was a baby, my mother was accused by the doctor of not feeding me properly. They actually were calling it ‘failure to thrive’ but the fact was, at that time in my life from the time I was a baby, all the way up until I finished high school, I seemed to have my dads genes.
This whole thing really pisses me off. I’ve never, ever, made fun of an overweight person, and yet, some of you seem to feel that skinny kids (like I was) aren’t getting discrimated against, aren’t having their feelings hurt, and aren’t coming home from school crying just as hard as the overweight kids who got teased. Just because there are more overweight kids getting teased than there are skinny kids getting teased, doesn’t make it any less shitty.
If you all really wanted to get something done for body acceptance and body positivity, you would want to make allies out of the people who were teased horribly in school for being skinny.
I’m overweight now. Not very overweight. Not to the point where I’m getting dirty looks, or comments for it, but I’ve noticed not getting hit on anywhere near as often as when I was skinny.
I can see it from both sides. I see it from the skinny and teased perspective and from the overweight and ignored perspective.
I still don’t see a mass of thin kids, being told their bodies are wrong, wrong, wrong by the media. I’m sorry, but it’s not the same.
First of all…don’t apologize for your opinion. Second of all…why is it a matter of how many are picked on for whatever reason? Fact is, it happens. And FA could easily create allies with other groups who get discriminated against based on appearance. The more people who get behind FA and Body Acceptance, the more leverage you would have for making changes in society. Instead, you’d rather seperate yourselves from other people who are discriminated against.
I guess I just expected more from a blog where the writer was considered by some to be more moderate and FA lite compared to other FA blogs.
It’s not the blog-owner’s fault for my views. I don’t think you should be blaming her.
FA lite, as I’ve heard it be referred to, means a fat acceptance site that allows talk of dieting as well. Alot of other FA people don’t like that, cause if you’re dieting it’s presumed you aren’t accepting your body as is.
We try our best to make the movement inclusive to thin people, the problem is that we feel a bit disgruntled when someone thin suggests they have delt with the same level of discrimination that fat people have. It’s like a White person telling a Black person how they’ve delt with so much reverse discrimination.
You’ll never start experiencing less discrimination if you exclude possible allies from your movement because they’re thin and you think their level of discrimination is less important because it happened less often.
As for dieting…I know I’m going to get hit with a fat-hate bingo point for saying this, but while I don’t believe in dieting, I do believe in healthy lifestyle change and I really don’t believe that a person who is trying to live healthy is not accepting of their body. I love myself and my body, and therefore, it’s that self-love that prompts me to desire to only put healthy things in my mouth, and to move my body because it feels good. If weightloss results, fine. If not, fine.
As a person who was skinny through high school but who is overweight now, I can tell you that I became overweight due to three things. 1) birth control pills. 2) anti-depressants, and 3) eating junk food all the time.
Now, obviously that isn’t the case for everyone who is overweight. If an individual is overweight and healthy, fine. But for me personally, I’m overweight because I ate too much food that wasn’t healthy. And it isn’t self-hate to start eating more healthfully and to exercise.
I became fat from birth control pills and anti-depressants, and don’t eat junk food all the time.
It seems that because you’ve been frustrated that we haven’t welcomed you with open arms here, now you’re trying to psudeo-lash out at us, out of anger.
It’s not self-hate to start eating more healthfully and exercise. Neither is it self-hate to not eat as healthfully as you should all the time, or perhaps God forbid, allow yourself to sit on your ass once in awhile.
Stating hate rehtoric isn’t the best way to get in with the fat acceptance community. I’m sorry we didn’t hold your hand and cry with you cause someone called you a bad name. I’m sorry, that you are unable to realize that whatever you’ve experienced is only 1% of the constant hatred fat people are exposed to every single day.
And now you’re giving us the, “But it’s for your health..” lecture, like we’re all dumb little babies who just can’t figure out that we need to exercise or eat right. Yeah, whatever hope you had personally, for being accepted by our community you’ve just ruined.
And it’s not because you’re thin, it’s because you’ve exhibited that you do belive in hating fat people. Including hating yourself, otherwise you wouldn’t have bothered to write your hate tirade here.
I hope in the future you can understand that SIZE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW YOU EAT OR EXERCISE! I can’t belive you actually decided to troll that old statement out again. You know what’s disgusting about it, you don’t know what self-hate is. If you did, you wouldn’t so flippantly attribute it to people who are BRAVE enough, not to hate themselves. People who are BRAVE enough not to hate themselves because society insists they should, because they’re not STARVING THEMSELVES to meet a ARBITRARY IDEA OF BEAUTY.
I don’t know how long you’ve been fat, but clearly you haven’t been fat long enough to have an appreciation of the COURAGE AND STRENGTH it takes not to beat one’s self up, despite thousands of claims that if someone is fat they should beat themselves up.
You should watch the HBO documentary THIN, about girls who are in an eating disorder clinic. They have it for rent on Netflix now. Perhaps you might understand more what we’re fighting here. Unless, you think a 5 year old being told how to watch calories and exercise at the expense of their childhood, is an example of healthy behaviour.
Sorry Mo Pie, just I’m so angry that someone could be so goddamned stupid, to think that they’re going to be respected at all by throwing out fat bingo remarks. Cause they’re upset that they were called a name in high school. I just, it makes me want to *headdesk*
Wow…you completely took my post the wrong way. When I was talking about getting fat from eating junk, I was talking about *me*, not you, or anyone else who is overweight.
I also never said that I think it’s bad to not always eat healthy or sit around from time to time. I do it often, actually. I eat cheesecake and sit around playing Age of Conan quite often.
I’m not really sure what sort of hate rhetoric you think I was spouting, as I was only talking about my own experience.
I never gave you a ‘it’s for your health’ lecture, so I’m not sure where you got that from. I’m also not sure what makes you think I hate fat people. I don’t hate fat people and I don’t hate my fat self.
“I hope in the future you can understand that SIZE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW YOU EAT OR EXERCISE! I can’t belive you actually decided to troll that old statement out again. ”
Again, I was only speaking about my own personal experience of how *I* got fat. I think it’s totally possible to be fat and healthy,and a lot of fat people are just fine and in fine health, but I also know that I, personally, am not healthy right now.
I’m not sure where you got that I was attributing self-hate to people who are brave enough to not starve themselves or accept societies standard of beauty. I never said that you or any other overweight person was hating themselves.
As for 5 years olds being told how to watch their calories was an example of healthy behavior…well…you kind of pulled that out of nowhere. I never said I think kids should be shamed or told to watch calories or any other such thing.
I didn’t come here to be “respected” for being upset at being called names in high school. I came here because I don’t believe that anyone should tell any fat person what to do or how to do it, but that I also don’t believe that if I try to change something about myself, it’s self-hatred. I’m not here to convince anyone of that either, because I fully believe that if that’s self-hate to you, then that’s your opinion and your entitled to it.
So yeah…if you think I’m just another troll, thats fine. I just don’t think it’s fair of you to put words in my mouth or to claim I’ve said something that I didn’t say.
I think you read my post and attributed a tone to it that wasn’t intended. My post wasn’t meant to sound angry, flippant or anything other than calm. Sorry if I hit some kind of nerve. It wasn’t my intent.
Well you should understand that we do get alot of people who think that lecturing us about our health is somehow benficial to us, and that they tend to do it under the guise of talking about their own experiences.
Perhaps you need to spend some more time around the community, if you don’t know what issues are triggering yet.
I’d rather not. I’m pretty turned off by the community now. I wont be posting again, and I wont be back.
I do, however, wish you and everyone else in the FA community luck in your pursuit. It would be a much better world if no one discriminated against anyone for anything.
“SIZE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW YOU EAT OR EXERCISE”
Actually, for some people that is true. For others, its total BS. I – like quite a few other people I know – gained a bunch of weight when I stopped doing a lot of exercise and started eating more (for various reasons). When I started eating less (not starvation, just less) and exercising more (not insanely, just 5-6 hours a week) I lost weight, gained muscle, and incidentally stopped having a bunch of weight-related problems (joints, etc), also like many other folks.
So while may be some folk with medical issues, to whom “calories in – calories out” doesn’t seem to apply… there are in fact many other people to whom basic thermodynamics does in fact work. I’m not trying to say that lifestyle changes like this are easy or necessarily convenient, just possible (and basic bio-chemistry as well).
PLEASE NOTE: I don’t care if you’re fat, skinny, “normal,” or whatever. I was a good person when I was heavy, I like to think I’m still a good person now that I’m fit. I’d probably be a good person if I regained my weight, too. I’m sure that you’re a good person as well. This kind of value judgment has absolutely nothing to do with any of the statements I made above.