This Makes Me So Incredibly Angry. I Remember Being A Child And Being Ashamed Of My Body. I Was Told

This makes me so incredibly angry. I remember being a child and being ashamed of my body. I was told at 5 years old (by my mother and grandmother) that I was too fat for a bikini. I remember hiding under the table to sneak food. I remember aunts making (negative)comments about my body when I was a kid. I remember already thinking something was wrong with my body at a young age. I remember in high school my so called “best friend “ ( no not Mindy) telling me that guys don’t like girls who are as big as me. I remember trying to make myself throw up because I was ashamed of how much I ate. I remember being told the after school snacks at my grandparents house weren’t for me because I “didn’t need them” I didn’t put a lot of things together about the sexual abuse at the hands of my uncle and my eating together until an adult but even if that wasn’t the case-I still should not have been shamed for my body and should have been allowed to learn to make choices for myself without being shamed by members of my family. (For the record I have a different body type than the family members who were making comments about me-they are all about 5 feet tall as adults and I’m 5′7 and I was a naturally chubby kid to begin with-and their comments only served to make me feel bad about myself-they also made negative comments about my mother-who was “bigger than them-and by “bigger”-she had big boobs and a curvier figure but was hardly the definition of “fat” but since she wasn’t “stick thin” like them-that’s what they called her (actually they called her hippo hips and thunder thighs)-and I heard those comments too and I remember crying about it. I’m not making an excuse for her-but I know my mother took out her insecurities on me so I got a double whammy. And I worry that kids on this new app will have to deal with this too and I know how awful that is.

repost @bodyposipanda

This week in Fucked Up Diet Culture News: @ww launched a weight loss app aimed at children as young as 8-years-old. Nope, not a typo, Weight Watchers are really out here recruiting those lifetime members before they’ve even left the playground. The app teaches kids to categorise foods into a traffic light system (aka a slightly more colourful way of splitting food into moral categories of “good” and “bad”), & track all the greens, yellows and reds they eat a day. It also shows them progress charts, as well as “inspiring” before/after weight loss photos of other kids - one shows Vanessa, age 8, with a quote from her mother about how impressive her willpower is, she says no to foods she used to love and never breaks a goal! It breaks my fucking heart that WW doesn’t know how dangerous it is to praise that kind of all-or-nothing restriction in anyone, let alone a child. But the thing is, they do know. They know that around 95% of diets fail (even when they’re packaged as lifestyle changes or traffic light systems). They know dieting is the biggest contributing factor to the development of eating disorders. They know children’s bodies are supposed to grow and change. And if they cared about the mental well-being of kids everywhere, they’d know how dangerous apps like this are. But hey, all of that is hard to hold onto when you also know that $69 a month adds the fuck up, am I right?

So what can we do? Speak up. Educate ourselves on diet culture, intuitive eating and how to actually promote size inclusive health for children (@laurathomasphd@chr1styharrison @evelyntriboleare a good place to start). Sign the petition in my stories to have the app shut down. Fiercely protect our kids - teach them that their bodies (and other people’s) are worthy of love & respect & nourishment at any size, that food doesn’t need to be feared, that movement should be for joy, not repentance, and that they are so much more valuable than anything the outside could ever show. Oh, and for the record @ww, you can go fuck yourself forwards, backwards and sideways. Feel free to categorise the 3 ways into a traffic light system if it helps. 💜💙💚🌈☀️

This Makes Me So Incredibly Angry. I Remember Being A Child And Being Ashamed Of My Body. I Was Told

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