We live in a culture where every inch of our physicality – every curve, pound, bulge, bone – in both public and private life, is obsessively monitored, catalogued, critiqued, and leveraged for cash. The worst thing you can be is always fat, the best thing you can be is never fat, and the richest thing you can be is formerly fat with a weight-loss book deal. So it’s almost alien to imagine that any human being on earth wouldn’t recognise a fat person when they see one. But, according to a new study published in the British Journal of General Practice, one demographic group struggles with just that blindspot. That group is parents, and it happens solely when they’re looking at their own fat children.
Researchers studied almost 3,000 families in the UK, categorising children by BMI as “normal weight, overweight (above the 85th percentile), or very overweight (ie equivalent to obese in the US, above the 95th percentile).” They then asked parents to guess which category applied to their kids.
According to Forbes magazine, almost all of the parents guessed wrong:
“It turned out that parents were extraordinarily poor at determining whether their children were overweight or obese. Of the 369 kids who were very overweight, only four parents thought they were. When the researchers analyzed the numbers further, they saw that for a given child with a BMI in the 98th percentile, a whopping 80% of parents would say that the child was normal weight. It would take a child being in the 99.7th percentile for the parents to even say the child was overweight, let alone very overweight.”
It’s interesting – I’m so used to hearing stories from women who inherited eating disorders from overly critical moms, or men whose hypermasculine dads thought fat was inherently feminising and shameful. So, you know what my first thought was when I read about this study?
Honestly? Good. Fine. Great.
If these parents can’t perceive that their kids are fat, that’s two fewer people in the world to teach each of those kids that they are broken and have no value. Two fewer parents to instil food anxieties before kids are even in double digits, to drastically restrict calories while they’re still growing, to undermine their ability to ever have a healthy relationship with food. And, don’t worry – the rest of society can certainly perceive that those kids are fat, they will notice, and they won’t be shy about making it known as early and as cruelly as possible.
I’ve been a fat kid. There is no shortage of messaging. At no point did any of that messaging make me thin, and it certainly didn’t make me healthy.
That’s not to say that, as a parent, you shouldn’t devote your life to protecting your children’s health. You should. You must. It is, arguably, your only mandatory job. But there are ways to fight for their health and longevity without undermining their humanity.
Because I know that navigating the intricacies of whether or not to abuse and shame vulnerable children is confusing for some people, I’ve come up with some Hot Tips for raising a fat kid:
1a. For the love of gruyere, if you suspect that you might be the parent of a fat kid, DO NOT MENTION IT TO THEM. Talk about it among yourselves as much as you like. Talk to your spouse! Talk to your pediatrician! Talk to your inlaws! Talk to the erotic phone psychic! Just dial a bunch of numbers and talk to whoever picks up the phone (they will definitely have some opinions on fat people)! But, as I said before, your kid is going to get the message – from their gym teachers, their peers, their overbearing grandmas – and what they could really use from you is a little unconditional cheerleading and the overwhelming sense that they are OK. Protecting your child’s health also means protecting their mental health.
I literally do not remember a time when I wasn’t aware that I was worth less than other people because of the size of my body. It took me almost 30 years to shed the ingrained certainty that I was a work in progress – and, concomitantly, since I didn’t seem to be making much progress at all, a failure. Why indoctrinate your child into that paradigm a moment sooner than necessary? Do you know how pointless it feels to try to take care of yourself when you’re told that you’ve already failed? And, on the flip side, do you know what a joy it is to take care of something you love?
1b. For that matter, how about don’t comment on your kid’s physical appearance at all, particularly if you have a girl? Your daughters will have the better part of a century to internalise the fact that they are being scrutinised, evaluated and ranked everywhere they go, and even positive commentary feeds into that. Instead, why not compliment their sense of humour? Geometry skills? Jumpshot form? Kindness? Compliment what they do – not just what they are.
2. Stop trying to make your kids thin and focus on making your kids healthy. Feed your kids nutritious food and take your kids on a hike. Or have a danceoff with them, or throw the frisbee, or destroy them at tennis because they have ridiculous short arms. Give them fuel and ways to burn it – because exercise is fun and satisfying, not because their bodies are gross and messed up and in need of repair. All of that applies whether your kids are fat or not, by the way. Thin kids deserve nutrition and exercise, too.
3. If your kid comes to YOU with questions, concerns, or anxieties about their weight, be kind. Make sure they know that body size has nothing to do with worth or intellect or potential, and that they can prioritise health without chasing an arbitrary number on the scale. Then do the tennis thing and all that other stuff in #2, above.
4. For that matter, be kind to yourself. Stop telling yourself you’re ugly and gross. Your kids hear you.
5a. Finally, if you really care about promoting health on a large scale, support policies that help make affordable, nutritious groceries available in low-income neighbourhoods. Fight to make those neighbourhoods safer and cleaner, so that families feel comfortable letting kids play and run outside. Lobby for a higher minimum wage, so that parents don’t have to work multiple jobs with unreliable hours, and they can have time to cook and eat at home with their families. Health is often a privilege, and it holds no inherent moral value.
5b. And fight for the dignity and humanity of fat people. Research has indicated that body shame and fat stigma can actually exacerbate weight gain. If widespread weight loss is really your pet project, let fat people live their lives free of abuse and ridicule.
They’ll weigh a lot less without you on their backs.