I work at a daycare with infants.
One of our baby girls is fat, in the 99th percentile for her age. She is super cute and sweet. Lately, she has been sick with various breathing issues, so she has been reluctant to take her bottles. Normally, sheāll take 4 ounces of formula at lunch and 8 ounces in the afternoon. Today, I was lucky to get to her take 5 all day.
There was a substitute covering a lunch break in my classroom today. We emphasized to her that we need to keep trying to get the baby to drink her bottle until she finished it. She said, āWhy are you guys so worried about taking her bottle?ā
My coworker replied, āThatās where all her nutrients are. She needs the nutrients and the water.ā
To which the substitute replied, āBut sheās so fat. She doesnāt need it.ā
Thin privilege is a small, pretty baby getting better childcare because the caretaker doesnāt think sheās too fat to be allowed to eat.
This reminds me of a cousin of mine who ended up with her kids being taken away from her by social services for a number of reasons but mostly for nearly killing her baby daughter. How?
By starving her. She insisted that her baby was ātoo fatā and had an aim to remove any and all āchubbynessā so her baby would be thin. Sheād already been warned by her doctor about the baby not getting enough food, but insisted she knew best.
After several months of this her baby passed out cold one day and was rushed into hospital where the doctors found her to have severe malnutrition, a low body temperature and low pulse rate. They asked my cousin what sheād been feeding her daughter and she said āone bottle of skimmed milk a day. I donāt want her growing up fat.ā
Even after nearly killing her daughter my cousin maintained her view that fat = bad and ended up with all her kids taken from her because she was starving them and neglecting them.
When your fatphobia leads you to starving your own children then youāve got serious problems.
(Note. She still, to this day, maintains the view that she was right and the doctors were wrong. āThey just want fat kids so they can keep employed treating them for all those diseases that being fat causes.ā = her actual words.)
My mom had me dieting with her when I was eleven. She had me eating less than 600 calories a day because she was worried I was going to āget huge.ā She even grounded me once because she found out my friends were bringing me lunches! I ended up passing out, going to the ER, and getting two IVs at once BC I was so goddamn dehydrated. Soooooo surprised they didnāt call child servicesā¦ And looking back, this was the root of my anorexia. Iām nearly 22 and still fighting it. Please donāt starve your fucking children.
For fucks sake babies are SUPPOSED to be fat, what is wrong with people? Itās just stored energy, and growing children need stored energy - an 11 year old is just about to hit some major growing years. Damn.Ā
Fatphobia
Is
Real
and it kills
This is no joke. people will literally starve their own babies cause they donāt want them getting fat. A parent brought in their six month old baby who was having breathing issues and kept getting sick. the parent was asked if the baby was eating regularly and the parent straight up told the doctor that they only feed the baby once a day. ONCE A DAY. A FUCKING BABY. they even had the nerve to say because they didnāt want the baby to get fat. people like this are real. they would rather have a dead baby than a fat one.
My youngest son is a very big boy and has been since he was born. When he was 10 months old I took him for his well-baby check and vaccinations. The nurse noted his weight and said, quite casually, āHe is in the 99th percentile for weight so he is at risk for obesity. You may want to keep an eye on that.ā I said,Ā āHe is exclusively breastfed. He refuses to eat any solids yet.ā What did she expect me to do? What would it mean to ākeep an eye onā an exclusively breastfed babyās weight?Ā
She backed off saying,Ā āWell he looks fine!ā ā proving once again that weight bias is not truly about health ā But I know many other parents who are not as informed as I am about weight science and size diversity would react to this interaction by policing their childās food intake, if not as an infant, then when he was an older child. This is exactly the type of seemingly-inconsequential interaction that starts the ball rolling on a lifetime of dieting, disordered eating, negative body image, and weight-based abuse for too many fat people.
Years later when he was five, another doctor measured his weight and height and commented that he is off the charts on both, butĀ āat least he is in proportion.ā And if he was notĀ āin proportion,ā I am sure I would have been advised once again toĀ āwatch his weight.āĀ
I no longer allow healthcare providers to weight my children unless it is absolutely medically necessary. They are unable to control their weight talk, which is a known harm for children.
We need to completely eliminate weight talk from medicine, especially when it comes to children. Even the smallest exposure can have terrible consequences.
Wtfā¦
A friend from college had been going to the doctor because she was having trouble breathing. She was told to lose weight. Over the course of several years, she went back to the doctors time and time again, telling them that sheād been sticking to the diet but because of her breathing problems she had been unable to even walk for more than 20 minutes at a time. The doctor got her into an exercise programme and told her that she just needed to really try to lose weight because that was clearly the reason for her breathing problems. By the time they found the tumour on her lungs, it was inoperable. She only lived three months after diagnosis. She was 25. Sheād had the tumour for over five years. The doctor was so focused on the fact that my friend was āfatā, that they refused to look for any underlying cause. They killed her.
Weight-first treatment KILLS. Fatphobia KILLS.
