[trigger warning: weight in general, fat shaming. please enjoy this utterly trigger-free otter instead.]
Given the First Lady's campaign against childhood obesity, this could have been an interesting article about how parents need to be educated, considering that parents are apparently unable to objectively view their childrens' weight. (Hardly surprising, but important to the discussion.)
Instead, the article becomes an interesting view of someone's thesaurus.
Let me preface this by saying that we have fairly nonjudgmental words for what is being discussed here: overweight, meaning "having a a BMI of 25.0 to 29.9", and obese, meaning "having a BMI of 30 or higher". Those are medical terms, people. We should strive to use them when appropriate.
What we should not strive to use are:
82 percent of the mammoth mommies underestimated their weight when looking at the silhouettes; 42.5 percent of overweight women did the same. About 13 percent of normal-weight women thought of themselves as thinner than they were.
• 86 percent of the corpulent kiddies underestimated their weight, compared with 15 percent of normal-weight kids.
"Mammoth mommies"? "Corpulent kiddies"? I understand it's alliterative, but really? That was fucking necessary? You asshat.
• 47.5 percents of moms with fat kids thought their children were at a healthy weight.
• 41 percent of the children thought their moms could lay off the donuts and lose weight.
"Fat kids"? Was "obese" taken? "Lay off the donuts"? Really, that's how it was phrased in the survey?
Fuck you. That was unnecessary, unkind and unprofessional.
As America gets fatter, people could get a warped attitude toward their fattitude, lead researcher Nicole Dumas, an internal medicine resident at Columbia, tells USA Today.
Fattitude? FattiFUCKINGtude?
Maybe next, Tom Henderson* can do an article on why he's so stupid, because 100% of me agrees he should be dropped in a box with 1,000 irritated scorpions- and a bird spider.
*When I went to add the Tom Henderson tag, I found I already had one. For good reason. He's the idjit who thought 9 year old girls might be having consensual sex with adults.
To add insult to injury this guy isn't even funny, and it's clear that's what he's trying to be: clever/funny.
ReplyDeleteOh, there is only 50% poster thingy showing.
ReplyDeleteBefore he publishes anymore articles I suggest he send them to you for editing. As serious as this topic is, you made me laugh! He needs some help and I think maybe you should offer.
ReplyDeleteGawd, I started to read the comments; Bad Plan. Drink Drano, it's less painful.
ReplyDeleteNot only is this a hateful article, the study itself is troubling. Unless they just haven't gotten around to publishing the study about children and daddies yet. Seriously, everything that's perceived to go wrong with a child's life and health and choices and whatever is all on Mommy? Because I'd be willing to guess that the majority of the 111 kids in this study have a Daddy or equivalent in their lives.
ReplyDeleteGaaaaah. I don't even a response except to wish I could issue some kind of public stock sentence for abuse of human dignity and language.
ReplyDeletePaprika is planning on getting a tattoo that reads "words mean things" and THIS is exactly why I heartily endorse the sentiment.
Fun facts: The picture of the spider you link to is a female Theraphosa blondi, one of a class of tarantulas colloquially known as "hair kickers" and known to those who inadvertently piss them off as "OH GOD THE ITCHY FIRE OF DEATH THERE IS NO RELIEF!" The barbed bristles they kick can penetrate rubber gloves and cause permanent blindness.
So yeah. I think that Tom Henderson should do an interview with an annoyed tarantula's abdomen.
they come with weaponry? I just assumed bird spiders, being the size of dinner plates, killed through sheer terror.
ReplyDeleteseriously, assuming I survived finding one in my home, I would move- to another continent.
Trufax! "New world" tarantulas don't have very powerful venom (but zomg wtf BBQ hyuuuuge fangage), and like to burrow. They kick hairs as a defense against mice, frogs and birds.
ReplyDeleteFor serious though, they are really nice I promise. If you don't violate their boundaries, they won't even care. I've had pet tarantulas for almost a decade now, and other than some contact itchiness while cleaning tanks, have never been harmed.
Oh, and I have yet to hear my pet spiders saying shit like "fattitude," ergo no spider is ever as awful as Tome Henderson. Finally, and absolute I can embrace!
ReplyDeleteThere's even a vegetarian species. No face eating at all :P
i'm ignoring half this comment thread. i mean, i'm BUGophobic, not spiderphobic, except when it's a spider the size of my head.
ReplyDeleteCNymph brings up a good point - it's really, really REALLY rare to have a couple with children where only ONE of the couple is overweight.
it's just not as much of a social ill for men. for whatever reason.
also - those "silouettes" that they use? ARE NOT ACCURATE. i'm 5'8" tall; i weigh right at 220 as per my last surgery on March 3rd.
put me in the room with those silouettes. according to my weight alone, i'm "obese" and should match the "obese" pic.
but i stood AGAINST that one, and it extended SEVERAL inches past my body on both sides.
i EXACTLY [or, rather, as close as "exactly" as i could, suffering with my FF sized breasts] matched the "overweight" silouette.
and i know i'm not alone [also, when i did the silouette thing, as part of a study when i was still in school 2 years ago, i weighed MORE - i weighed, on that day, at 238. mostly because it was post surgery and 2 weeks in the hospital and i was on a fucking glucose drip the whole fucking time...]
they ALSO don't bring up people who are "overweight" because of MUSCLE. which happens, too.
also also, every OTHER FUCKING STUDY I'VE SEEN EVER about women and weight? shows that women tend to think that they're BIGGER than they are. not smaller.
erm. i also managed to mis-spell "silhouette" FOUR TIMES.
ReplyDeletesorry!
Yes, heaven forbid the studies that support changing the socialized behavior that allows/encourages the stigmatization of overweight and obese children be corrected. Those studies, though more numerous than this FAT CHILDREN FAT MOTHERS ZOMG! study, aren't as sexaaaay.
ReplyDeleteHere are just two.
And oh look. A study of adolescents that was not only quite larger than this child/mother study, but that found, quote, "no significant difference in BMI between females with incorrect weight perception and correct weight perception."
ReplyDeleteDoes... does that mean that this FAT CHILD FAT MOTHER study was... just nice and catchy for the media, and maybe not the be all and the end all?! NOES! It cannot beeeee!
a point on that adolesent study - the girls who had "incorrect perceptions" of their weight? almost ALL of them thought they were BIGGER than they were...
ReplyDeleteYes, without following the link again, I believe there was one or possible there were two females in the adolescent study who perceived themselves as normal or underweight, and were actually overweight or obese.
ReplyDeleteSo.
Yeah.
i think it was 2.
ReplyDeleteall the rest thought they were bigger than they are.
sigh.