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, sheâll 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, âWhy are you guys so worried about taking her bottle?â
My coworker replied, âThatâs where all her nutrients are. She needs the nutrients and the water.â
To which the substitute replied, âBut sheâs so fat. She doesnât need it.â
Thin privilege is a small, pretty baby getting better childcare because the caretaker doesnât think sheâs 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 âtoo fatâ and had an aim to remove any and all âchubbynessâ so her baby would be thin. Sheâd 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 sheâd been feeding her daughter and she said âone bottle of skimmed milk a day. I donât want her growing up fat.â
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 youâve got serious problems.
(Note. She still, to this day, maintains the view that she was right and the doctors were wrong. âThey just want fat kids so they can keep employed treating them for all those diseases that being fat causes.â = 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 âget huge.â 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 didnât call child services⌠And looking back, this was the root of my anorexia. Iâm nearly 22 and still fighting it. Please donât starve your fucking children.
For fucks sake babies are SUPPOSED to be fat, what is wrong with people? Itâs just stored energy, and growing children need stored energy - an 11 year old is just about to hit some major growing years. Damn.Â
Fatphobia
Is
Real
and it kills
This is no joke. people will literally starve their own babies cause they donât 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 didnât 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, âHe is in the 99th percentile for weight so he is at risk for obesity. You may want to keep an eye on that.â I said, âHe is exclusively breastfed. He refuses to eat any solids yet.â What did she expect me to do? What would it mean to âkeep an eye onâ an exclusively breastfed babyâs weight?Â
She backed off saying, âWell he looks fine!â â proving once again that weight bias is not truly about health â 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 childâs 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, but âat least he is in proportion.â And if he was not âin proportion,â I am sure I would have been advised once again to âwatch his weight.âÂ
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.
WtfâŚ
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 sheâd 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. Sheâd had the tumour for over five years. The doctor was so focused on the fact that my friend was âfatâ, that they refused to look for any underlying cause. They killed her.
Weight-first treatment KILLS. Fatphobia KILLS.
I have 2 scary stories to share about fatphobic doctors & parents harming their childs/patientsâ health:
1. The 4 years old daughter of a friend of mine came to our house to spend the weekend. She gave me a letter from her mom that said that the child was in a glutenfree diet because she was getting âawfully fatâ when eating cookies or bread (my celiac ass; who gets dhiarrea and loses a scary amount of weight whenever I eat something with gluten was like â???â).
You can bet that I went to the supermarket with the kid and told her âgo & take whatever you feel like eatingâ and the poor child came back smiling with her arms full of biscuits and cupcakes.
She didnât got sick (as a celiac would get) and told me later that she hated the diet her mother made her follow; because her cousins didnât had to pass through that.
And whatâs the scariest thing about this story? Her mother was a NURSE. A fucking nurse who didnât have a clue of the harm that she was doing to her daughterâs body!
2. My little sister started to feel fatigued and dizzy at 9 years old. She felt nauseated at the sight of food and had abdominal pain that increased with physical activity.
Mom got her to the ER and the doctor dismissed it saying: âsheâs fat and probably is feeling ill after eating too much burgers, get her to make some exercise and she will be better in no timeâ.My mom didnât felt ok with the diagnosis and took my sister with a second doctor who also told her that âthe child was just fatâ.
My sisterâs skin was starting to get yellow as the days passed and the abdominal pain was getting awful so my mom (heaven bless her!) got her to the ER for the third time:
SHE HAD STAGE 4 HEPATITIS AND WAS ABOUT TO DIE.
She survived after a long and painful recovery who involved being in bed for a whole year (remember that weâre speaking of a 9 years old child). Luckily they saved her liver and she didnât went through a transplant⌠but let this sink:
If it werenât for my mother, fatphobia would have killed her. Fatphobia kills kids and teenagers, fatphobia kills inocent people everyday. It treats human beings as lesser than others and hurts them in their most vulnerable times.
Itâs a real shame that we all have so much stories to share about this issue. A REAL SHAME.
Future doctors, interns, and residents following me:
FUCKING TAKE NOTE OF THIS!
Donât let bias against your fat patients kill them!
(#and this is just when we actually go to the doctor and tell them we have problems #how many of us just give up #or wonât mention anything that seems like too much of a âfatâ problem)
iâd really like my thin followers to reblog this if you can. fat people are already here for each other, we need you guys to help us out too. this is something i never see anyone actually talking about in-depth, and itâs disappointing. be there for your fat siblings, too.
This is coming up more and more in my parenting groups now that our children are preschool/pre-k aged, and I see so many parents hemming and hawing about it. But listen: doctors âdiagnosingâ babies and children as overweight is a massive red flag. Even if theyâre really nice. Even if theyâre great in other ways. Look elsewhere for care if you can because this bias is so incredibly dangerous.
