Geschatte leestijd: 4 minutenFat shaming doesn’t work. Even telling someone well-intentioned that they are obese often has the opposite effect. However, I think fat shaming will only disappear when overweight disappears.
Fat Shaming
I have an instinctive dislike of overweight. There, I said it. Bring on all the politically correct and angry reactions.
Perhaps I can alleviate some of the anger by explaining myself further, although there is nothing changing in the core of the above confession. When I see someone who is (very) overweight, my instinctive reaction is one of disapproval, of condemnation. That initial reaction lasts very briefly. I am very aware of the reprehensible nature of this reaction. Being ready with your judgment about someone else is a very unpleasant trait. More importantly, everyone has their problems, challenges, and weaknesses. I just don’t visibly carry mine, otherwise I might also be constantly judged by others. The fact that I have never had to worry about unwanted body fat myself is purely luck and hardly my own merit. Fat shaming by me is like someone who was raised with a silver spoon and thinks poor people just don’t try hard enough. In practice, I assume, or at least I hope, that this short-lived and instinctive reaction is filtered by such relativism and does not manifest in behavior, actions, and words (except for the above introduction).
Angry commenters on the article about plus-size models may now think that my “fat filter” is not functioning particularly well. However, my point in that article was that I had reservations about what you might consider a form of fat worshiping.
Horror Kids
The trigger for this article is a piece in the New York Times. The piece advises parents, family members, and friends of overweight children on how to talk about this (or not talk about it). Health care providers are also advised on their choice of words. For example, you should never use words like ‘obese’ or ‘fat’ in a conversation with a child, but use more neutral words like ‘weight’ and ‘BMI’. Most people will understand the word ‘fat’. But the word ‘obese’ could also lead to stress and concerns about the future. Scaring with stories about an obese uncle or aunt with overweight and their diabetes would also not work positively.
This also applies not only to children. Even with adults, you should carefully weigh your words if you truly want to help the other person. If it is even your place to start this conversation. The most important point from the cited studies is the fact that fat shaming simply does not work. People know they are overweight and don’t need you to point it out to them. Many of the studies look at the effect of bullying on the weight of and by children. There is a link shown between bullying and later overweight and eating due to stress [2]. Bullying because of weight therefore increases the chance of further overweight in later life and a negative self-image. Another cited study found that 90% of children in a weight loss camp (which should definitely not be called a ‘fat camp’) were bullied. Although this mainly happens by peers, a third of overweight children are also bullied by family members.
You should not expect children armed with this knowledge to stop fat shaming. I certainly don’t assume that they bully someone for their weight because they think that person is not aware of their overweight. Children bully because it makes them feel better about themselves, not to make someone else feel better. Little sadistic beings who knock others down to hide their own insecurity. They are devils. As a former little devil, I can speak from experience.
The gist of the article in the New York Times is that parents and caregivers form a kind of compassionate, constructively thinking buffer. Emphasizing positive aspects of the child to mentally arm them against bullying by that one characteristic. A major challenge.
Fat Shaming, Parent Blaming
It is of course a good thing to at least explain to parents, family members, and caregivers how not to contribute to the problem, but to the solution. Whether this compensates for the behavior of peers will depend on the circumstances.
Regarding the role of parents, I often have an instinctive reaction: “Shameful that those parents let it come this far!”. About ten years ago, I witnessed at my daughter’s dance classes a girl with overweight collapse her chair. It was a special evening in the context of Sinterklaas, so parents were allowed to come and watch. I think there were about 20 pairs of eyes present to see how the four legs of the plastic children’s chair slowly spread apart like Bambi on ice. Everyone pretended to have missed the whole incident, but I can imagine what the mother must have felt at that moment. The child itself seemed too young to be embarrassed about it, fortunately. But that could also have been a facade.
I remember thinking instinctively that I blamed the parents for this situation. But how fair is that? Maybe her child got heavy from the same diet that gave my daughter a normal weight. And even if it’s about the eating pattern, there are often more factors at play than ignorance about nutrition and ‘poor discipline’. The increasing numbers of obesity show that it is simply more difficult to maintain a healthy weight with the current abundance of easy and ’empty’ calories.
Given the average speed of cultural changes, I think not too much should be expected from educating people about fat shaming. I therefore have more hope in science and developments that combat overweight itself, not the way we react to it. Another alternative, of course, is the ‘WALL-E scenario’. A future in which we are all too fat, sorry ‘heavy’, to walk. If everyone is fat, no one is fat. Fat shaming solved.
References
- nytimes.com/2017/11/20/well/family/fat-shaming-weight-stigma-bullying-childhood-obesity
- Puhl RM, Wall MM, Chen C, Bryn Austin S, Eisenberg ME, Neumark-Sztainer D.Experiences of weight teasing in adolescence and weight-related outcomes in adulthood: A 15-year longitudinal study. Prev Med. 2017 Jul;100:173-179. doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2017.04.023. Epub 2017 Apr 24. PubMed PMID: 28450124.
