I will admit that contemplating challenging my own anti-fat bias, including trying to challenge it in my parenting, makes me weary down to my bones. Not because it's not crucial, but just because it feels so Sisyphean, having grown up with fat parents, watching them struggle continually with their physical and mental health, which was so painful to witness and not be able to do anything about. At the same time that they were both struggling, particularly my dad, I was desperate to find some kind of constructive way to live inside my own body, some role models to look to, and not having any luck at all. The years I have spent policing my own body have been as much about my own experience of being in it as being reactively fearful of putting my kids in the same position that I was in. The irony, of course, being that the more I have focused on and struggled with my own weight the more I have actually recreated the same dynamic I grew up with. And now my kids are grown(ish)-- 15 and 20-- and I fear I've missed my chance to actually interrupt this deep-seated, generational anti-fat dynamic in our family.
Sometimes I feel like missing from this whole conversation is the enormity of the grief that arises when you face the number of years you've spent running on this hamster wheel and the resulting damage to yourself and the people you love.
I have my first in-person physical in three years on Monday and have been dreading the weigh-in because I know I've gained weight in the pandemic. But I'm also the most physically active and happiest with my body that I've ever been.
Until I read Virginia's answer to the last question, I had no idea I could just... ask not to be weighed. THANK YOU.
I am currently beginning this reckoning with my own fat phobia. The guilt, shame, grief, are overwhelming and it's rough. You mean, to be truly anti-fatphobic that I have ACCEPT and be OK with the fact that I'm fat??? Like for real? And I will probably never be thin again? It's terrifying. And at the same time, I am actually able to feed myself the amount of food my body needs. For the first time in decades I'm not underfeeding myself and it feels good.
I'm so thankful for folks like Virginia Sole Smith, Aubrey Gordon, Lindsey Ashline, The Fierce Fatty Podcast and everyone else in this movement. I am devouring podcasts, media and newsletters. My brain has been pickled in diet culture messaging for 40 years, and I'm trying to re-pickle it in the culture they says it's ok to be in a fat body.
Apr 26, 2023·edited Apr 26, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
This was so interesting! I'm especially digging the whole emphasis on bodies changing. I actually didn't experience puberty as particularly transformative (both because I am asexual and because I was very thin--neither my body shape nor my hormones changed very much at all). I rarely thought about my body at all: it was just a receptacle for my mind.
So I feel like I was even *less* prepared when I hit my mid-20s and my body started changing quite a lot. I started gaining weight, which gave me hips, boobs, and a belly I'd never had, and then I hit my late 20s/early 30s and started just noticing my body in ways I had not before--how eating certain foods made me feel (goodbye, deep-fried foods I loved! you make me feel shitty now!), how sleeping wrong would make my neck hurt the next day, how freaking fragile the human back is, etc. And every time I looked in the mirror, I saw someone who looked different than my mental image of myself that had remained relatively unchanged for the first ~25 years of my life.
No one ever told me that your body keeps changing in between puberty and menopause. I found it so disconcerting when mine did! It would be so incredibly helpful to talk about how all bodies change and that's...just what bodies do!
(Also the stuffed I learned about how pregnancy changes your body--beyond the obvious--when my sister started having kids...wow! I had thought myself well-informed but there was so much I didn't know until she started saying things like, "Oh, my hair is falling out," or whatever.)
I think part of why it's so hard for me to push back on doctors is because I was raised to revere them. I'm supposed to trust their knowledge and experience, and I think maybe that when they made me feel bad about myself, I just assumed they were doing their jobs. I am just unpacking this as I write this. It reminds me not to let them talk to my kids in that "shame on you" kind of way.
Love Virginia and love the valuable insights she shared in this conversation, especially how she identifies the classism and white supremacy inherent in anti-fat bias, the "wellness" movement, and societal notions of what "good parenting" looks like.
I'm a 40 yo white woman who's spent the last five or six years working to dismantle my own anti-fat bias. I am now a student therapist with a particular clinical interest in working with folks on same. As I've done more and more of this work, it has become jarring to wade into comments sections (why do I do it?!) and see that health-ism and anti-fat bias are thriving, so huge thanks to AHP for curating this community where the comments are thoughtful and reflective of a community that is open to challenging our own biases and long-held beliefs.
Exciting stuff! I love the idea of my job not being to conform to an arbitrary, at times harmful, standard but making the world safe for my (and others') bodies.
I had a recent epiphany-like emotional breakdown of gratitude for my body after a major brain operation (weirdly I did not have this feeling carrying and birthing two babies). But in recovery I was finally like, omg, I see you, body, doing so much to carry me, carry us through this life, thank you thank you thank you, how can I make it easier for you? I'm still working my way through it but it has changed the way I talk to and about my body. Making the world safer is the natural next step.
So many thoughts about this topic, an area where I’ve focused some of my own unlearning, as Rachel Cargle calls it, the last several years. I’ve come to believe that each of us unpacking our own anti-fat bias is critical to making our society safer for everyone. Especially since it is often rooted in anti-blackness and racism.
As someone who is a thin person, a thin white woman specifically, it’s been hard to come to terms with how much of this bullshit I’ve internalized. I used to be a runner, a fairly decent one, and had the kind of body you’d expect from someone who ran 70 miles/week. But now in my late 40s, a chronic illness and menopause have come for me and my body has changed. I am still straight sized and maintain my unearned thin privilege. But the 35 lbs I’ve gained have really, really fucked with my head and laid bare all of the shit I’ve inhaled over the years. Making peace with myself and learning to live IN my body, something I don’t think I’ve ever truly done, has been life changing. I hope I get healthy enough to run again. But I hope I never let go of the ability to be with myself as I have been while I’ve been sick. What I’ve learned has changed how I talk with my friends about our changing bodies at this age, and given me the courage to initiate conversations with healthcare providers on the topic, since how my weight has changed opened the door to the dialogue. I can’t wait to read Fat Talk and continue my education.
Eye-opening. So helpful to re-frame for our kids — and ourselves. As a woman in her 50’s, I now see that all the newsletters about staying fit after midlife (and frankly, all those insta photo’s of toned, fit, thin women in bikini’s and men in gym shorts who “look so much younger” (read thin)) are just another damaging contribution to fat shaming culture for those of a certain age. The disordered eating, extreme exercise and attention to appearance that is necessary to “look healthy and young” (meaning thin) once you reach a certain age ramps up dramatically. It’s all proffered as wellness, but the older we get the harder it is to be that version of “well.” I am going to unfollow a lot of accounts, subscribe to Virginia Sole-Smith and read the book. We need this. Thanks!
I am not a parent, but I worked as a nanny for over two decades, and during that time my weight fluctuated. I also struggled with an eating disorder and grew up with very rigid (ahem, abusive) policing around food. I have worked with so many different kinds of parents, and all of them wanted what was best for their children. I think that is one of the most important things for all parents to recognize: that it's never going to be perfect; that they are often themselves struggling with their own experiences and internalized fatphobia, and also that food and eating can be so hard with kids even without the added element of body shame. Letting go of the worries around whether your child is eating enough, or is eating the "right" things, is a whole conversation in itself.
From my experiences as a nanny, I have come to believe that the most powerful way we can engage with kids is by talking about things and admitting that we (adults) don't always have the answers, and assuring them that every single person struggles with making meaning. That means that caretakers must process their own feelings in an honest way, and reckon with any internalized bigotry we may have on any level. With young children especially there is this cultural habit of trying to assure and smooth things over instead of confirming what children can literally feel is true. They're so intuitive. We can teach them to trust themselves around food by trusting them. We can teach them to trust that their body is okay the way it is by trusting that our own bodies are okay, whether or not they align with any ideal. I think so often the goal is perfection with caretaking kids. I think that what Virginia says here about confirming kids' feelings is so right.
I also think there needs to be a focus on many many other things besides people's bodies. So often the focus, especially for women and femmes, is on the body and appearance, and in such a commodified way. As a collective I wonder what it could mean were women and femmes to focus less on their appearance and more on their innate intelligence and power- though I fully understand both that these things are not mutually exclusive and that there are consequences for those of us who refuse to buy into the idea that our appearance has anything to do with our value at all.
I really love that Virginia dives into the medical aspects and consequences of fatphobia and discrimination, because it is SO real. I was on Weight Watchers when I was eight, and that had serious consequences not only for my mental but for my physical health. Sometimes I wonder if, had I not ever dieted, my body would be healthier now. I don't wonder, actually. I know that's true. Depriving ourselves of nourishment has real consequences, but it is also symbolic in such a profound way.
Anyways, thank you for this. Can't wait to read Virginia's book!
Thanks for this! I have just ordered the book and look forward to reading it. I had never once considered not having my kids weighed at the pediatrician before even though I do try to forego my own weigh in at my doc. Both of my kids are “late bloomers” (my daughter just started menstruating at 16) because, in part, they were micropreemies born at 25 weeks. Every aspect of their development has not been on the growth chart. It used to strike me that in the first 12 months every parent tried to get their kid to grow so there would be no question about failure to thrive. Then at age two it was like suddenly every convo I’d hear about a kid’s size was concern over gaining too much weight. I couldn’t figure I out what changed.
Ok, I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately, especially as all these new drugs are coming out (Ozempic etc) and we are told it's such a breakthrough for obesity. I guess I'm a huge newbie to this conversation and what follows is my brain dump of where I'm at.
I was raised DEEP in the diet culture of the 90's, like many of us, I would imagine. My Dad struggled with weight his whole life until he passed in 2020. One of the most vivid memories I have right before he died was sitting at the dinner table with him and my step-mom. He reached for the potatoes and she swatted his hand away from the dish and admonished him for wanting some carbs. The man dying from stage 4 lung cancer. I had to walk away from the table and sob. I can remember my grandfather making these horrible diet shakes (maybe it was SlimFast in a blender with ice?), and all the diet foods of the 90's, like I can't believe it's not butter and low fat everything. That crap doesn't help anyone be healthy, obviously. And so, I get that. And I get that the "image" we are sold isn't realistic.
And then... there's the puritan-ness of it all. I think this must be related to the ongoing workaholic issues I've been working on. I've really been examining whether I want to achieve something because I LOVE it, or if it's just yet another way I tell myself I'm a "good" person, because I equate that with working harder than everyone else. Spoiler alert, I don't really want to work 24/7. LOL. The anti-fat conversation fits right in here....Like you aren't a "good" person unless.... you're skinny. Writing that (as a fat person) makes me tear up.
I don't know how to fix this in my brain. I know it'll be a long journey of challenging what I know to be healthy and "good."
Anyway, I'll that said, I guess I just wanted to throw out what I was thinking in case someone else can relate. I'm with you. <3
I'm looking forward to reading all of your thoughts and responses too, because I know I'll learn something.
I haven’t even read the Atlantic piece on what dads do but if it’s anything like my own experience firm yes absolutely true. My mom never fat shamed me. But when I was stuggling to get loosey-goosy non commital guy to commit to me (who may have had his own mental health issues and was 20 so understandable!) my dad absolutely made it clear that it was bc of my weight. Again and again he would ask if any guys liked me (this was the 90s so ) or expressed interest. He was absolutely obsessed with my weight. He meant well I guess.
Excited to read this piece here and to have the relative safety of THIS comment section. I just want to applaud Virginia for her work and for her willingness to take a lot of anti-fat and demonizing from the terrible comment sections other places. People are so deeply committed to misunderstanding this work or having their anti-fat bias challenged and writers like Virginia get so much undeserved shit.
Apr 26, 2023·edited Apr 26, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
I’ve watched my mom struggle with her weight my entire life. I’m now 27 and I am the heaviest I’ve ever been, although I’m still in straight sizes and a white woman, with all the privilege that brings. But my mom will comment on my body — and her own body still — and it’s really hard working through my own bullshit that I’ve ingested over the years and trying to put boundaries around her comments or gently reinforce the idea that all bodies are good. She got a lot of this from her mom and was certainly less critical of me than her mom was of her but it’s still bullshit and so fucking hard. Growing up she never criticized any potential weight gain, but she did always say how jealous she was of my thinness. And I realize that she didn’t think that that was bad but all it’s done is reinforce the fact that my smaller body was better. I’m now struggling with the fact that I don’t look like I did when I was 16.
What I find challenging about Virginia’s position is the conflation of anti-fat bias with healthy eating. Of course no one should be shamed about their bodies, ever.
At the same time, some foods promote health and others do not. This doesn’t have to be about being fat or not, it’s about health. I see she’s trying to disentangle this, but in so doing she can tend to argue (not as much in this interview but I’m others I’ve read recently) that all food is the same in its impact on our health.
In fact, processed foods are pretty uniformly accepted as not promoting health (juice included)--and there’s a huge lobby and political machine behind getting more processed foods into Americans’ bodies. I think it’s ok and even essential to acknowledge and discuss health with kids. It just shouldn’t be put in the context of how our bodies look.
I will admit that contemplating challenging my own anti-fat bias, including trying to challenge it in my parenting, makes me weary down to my bones. Not because it's not crucial, but just because it feels so Sisyphean, having grown up with fat parents, watching them struggle continually with their physical and mental health, which was so painful to witness and not be able to do anything about. At the same time that they were both struggling, particularly my dad, I was desperate to find some kind of constructive way to live inside my own body, some role models to look to, and not having any luck at all. The years I have spent policing my own body have been as much about my own experience of being in it as being reactively fearful of putting my kids in the same position that I was in. The irony, of course, being that the more I have focused on and struggled with my own weight the more I have actually recreated the same dynamic I grew up with. And now my kids are grown(ish)-- 15 and 20-- and I fear I've missed my chance to actually interrupt this deep-seated, generational anti-fat dynamic in our family.
Sometimes I feel like missing from this whole conversation is the enormity of the grief that arises when you face the number of years you've spent running on this hamster wheel and the resulting damage to yourself and the people you love.
I have my first in-person physical in three years on Monday and have been dreading the weigh-in because I know I've gained weight in the pandemic. But I'm also the most physically active and happiest with my body that I've ever been.
Until I read Virginia's answer to the last question, I had no idea I could just... ask not to be weighed. THANK YOU.
I am currently beginning this reckoning with my own fat phobia. The guilt, shame, grief, are overwhelming and it's rough. You mean, to be truly anti-fatphobic that I have ACCEPT and be OK with the fact that I'm fat??? Like for real? And I will probably never be thin again? It's terrifying. And at the same time, I am actually able to feed myself the amount of food my body needs. For the first time in decades I'm not underfeeding myself and it feels good.
I'm so thankful for folks like Virginia Sole Smith, Aubrey Gordon, Lindsey Ashline, The Fierce Fatty Podcast and everyone else in this movement. I am devouring podcasts, media and newsletters. My brain has been pickled in diet culture messaging for 40 years, and I'm trying to re-pickle it in the culture they says it's ok to be in a fat body.
This was so interesting! I'm especially digging the whole emphasis on bodies changing. I actually didn't experience puberty as particularly transformative (both because I am asexual and because I was very thin--neither my body shape nor my hormones changed very much at all). I rarely thought about my body at all: it was just a receptacle for my mind.
So I feel like I was even *less* prepared when I hit my mid-20s and my body started changing quite a lot. I started gaining weight, which gave me hips, boobs, and a belly I'd never had, and then I hit my late 20s/early 30s and started just noticing my body in ways I had not before--how eating certain foods made me feel (goodbye, deep-fried foods I loved! you make me feel shitty now!), how sleeping wrong would make my neck hurt the next day, how freaking fragile the human back is, etc. And every time I looked in the mirror, I saw someone who looked different than my mental image of myself that had remained relatively unchanged for the first ~25 years of my life.
No one ever told me that your body keeps changing in between puberty and menopause. I found it so disconcerting when mine did! It would be so incredibly helpful to talk about how all bodies change and that's...just what bodies do!
(Also the stuffed I learned about how pregnancy changes your body--beyond the obvious--when my sister started having kids...wow! I had thought myself well-informed but there was so much I didn't know until she started saying things like, "Oh, my hair is falling out," or whatever.)
I think part of why it's so hard for me to push back on doctors is because I was raised to revere them. I'm supposed to trust their knowledge and experience, and I think maybe that when they made me feel bad about myself, I just assumed they were doing their jobs. I am just unpacking this as I write this. It reminds me not to let them talk to my kids in that "shame on you" kind of way.
Love Virginia and love the valuable insights she shared in this conversation, especially how she identifies the classism and white supremacy inherent in anti-fat bias, the "wellness" movement, and societal notions of what "good parenting" looks like.
I'm a 40 yo white woman who's spent the last five or six years working to dismantle my own anti-fat bias. I am now a student therapist with a particular clinical interest in working with folks on same. As I've done more and more of this work, it has become jarring to wade into comments sections (why do I do it?!) and see that health-ism and anti-fat bias are thriving, so huge thanks to AHP for curating this community where the comments are thoughtful and reflective of a community that is open to challenging our own biases and long-held beliefs.
Exciting stuff! I love the idea of my job not being to conform to an arbitrary, at times harmful, standard but making the world safe for my (and others') bodies.
I had a recent epiphany-like emotional breakdown of gratitude for my body after a major brain operation (weirdly I did not have this feeling carrying and birthing two babies). But in recovery I was finally like, omg, I see you, body, doing so much to carry me, carry us through this life, thank you thank you thank you, how can I make it easier for you? I'm still working my way through it but it has changed the way I talk to and about my body. Making the world safer is the natural next step.
So many thoughts about this topic, an area where I’ve focused some of my own unlearning, as Rachel Cargle calls it, the last several years. I’ve come to believe that each of us unpacking our own anti-fat bias is critical to making our society safer for everyone. Especially since it is often rooted in anti-blackness and racism.
As someone who is a thin person, a thin white woman specifically, it’s been hard to come to terms with how much of this bullshit I’ve internalized. I used to be a runner, a fairly decent one, and had the kind of body you’d expect from someone who ran 70 miles/week. But now in my late 40s, a chronic illness and menopause have come for me and my body has changed. I am still straight sized and maintain my unearned thin privilege. But the 35 lbs I’ve gained have really, really fucked with my head and laid bare all of the shit I’ve inhaled over the years. Making peace with myself and learning to live IN my body, something I don’t think I’ve ever truly done, has been life changing. I hope I get healthy enough to run again. But I hope I never let go of the ability to be with myself as I have been while I’ve been sick. What I’ve learned has changed how I talk with my friends about our changing bodies at this age, and given me the courage to initiate conversations with healthcare providers on the topic, since how my weight has changed opened the door to the dialogue. I can’t wait to read Fat Talk and continue my education.
Eye-opening. So helpful to re-frame for our kids — and ourselves. As a woman in her 50’s, I now see that all the newsletters about staying fit after midlife (and frankly, all those insta photo’s of toned, fit, thin women in bikini’s and men in gym shorts who “look so much younger” (read thin)) are just another damaging contribution to fat shaming culture for those of a certain age. The disordered eating, extreme exercise and attention to appearance that is necessary to “look healthy and young” (meaning thin) once you reach a certain age ramps up dramatically. It’s all proffered as wellness, but the older we get the harder it is to be that version of “well.” I am going to unfollow a lot of accounts, subscribe to Virginia Sole-Smith and read the book. We need this. Thanks!
I am not a parent, but I worked as a nanny for over two decades, and during that time my weight fluctuated. I also struggled with an eating disorder and grew up with very rigid (ahem, abusive) policing around food. I have worked with so many different kinds of parents, and all of them wanted what was best for their children. I think that is one of the most important things for all parents to recognize: that it's never going to be perfect; that they are often themselves struggling with their own experiences and internalized fatphobia, and also that food and eating can be so hard with kids even without the added element of body shame. Letting go of the worries around whether your child is eating enough, or is eating the "right" things, is a whole conversation in itself.
From my experiences as a nanny, I have come to believe that the most powerful way we can engage with kids is by talking about things and admitting that we (adults) don't always have the answers, and assuring them that every single person struggles with making meaning. That means that caretakers must process their own feelings in an honest way, and reckon with any internalized bigotry we may have on any level. With young children especially there is this cultural habit of trying to assure and smooth things over instead of confirming what children can literally feel is true. They're so intuitive. We can teach them to trust themselves around food by trusting them. We can teach them to trust that their body is okay the way it is by trusting that our own bodies are okay, whether or not they align with any ideal. I think so often the goal is perfection with caretaking kids. I think that what Virginia says here about confirming kids' feelings is so right.
I also think there needs to be a focus on many many other things besides people's bodies. So often the focus, especially for women and femmes, is on the body and appearance, and in such a commodified way. As a collective I wonder what it could mean were women and femmes to focus less on their appearance and more on their innate intelligence and power- though I fully understand both that these things are not mutually exclusive and that there are consequences for those of us who refuse to buy into the idea that our appearance has anything to do with our value at all.
I really love that Virginia dives into the medical aspects and consequences of fatphobia and discrimination, because it is SO real. I was on Weight Watchers when I was eight, and that had serious consequences not only for my mental but for my physical health. Sometimes I wonder if, had I not ever dieted, my body would be healthier now. I don't wonder, actually. I know that's true. Depriving ourselves of nourishment has real consequences, but it is also symbolic in such a profound way.
Anyways, thank you for this. Can't wait to read Virginia's book!
Thanks for this! I have just ordered the book and look forward to reading it. I had never once considered not having my kids weighed at the pediatrician before even though I do try to forego my own weigh in at my doc. Both of my kids are “late bloomers” (my daughter just started menstruating at 16) because, in part, they were micropreemies born at 25 weeks. Every aspect of their development has not been on the growth chart. It used to strike me that in the first 12 months every parent tried to get their kid to grow so there would be no question about failure to thrive. Then at age two it was like suddenly every convo I’d hear about a kid’s size was concern over gaining too much weight. I couldn’t figure I out what changed.
Ok, I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately, especially as all these new drugs are coming out (Ozempic etc) and we are told it's such a breakthrough for obesity. I guess I'm a huge newbie to this conversation and what follows is my brain dump of where I'm at.
I was raised DEEP in the diet culture of the 90's, like many of us, I would imagine. My Dad struggled with weight his whole life until he passed in 2020. One of the most vivid memories I have right before he died was sitting at the dinner table with him and my step-mom. He reached for the potatoes and she swatted his hand away from the dish and admonished him for wanting some carbs. The man dying from stage 4 lung cancer. I had to walk away from the table and sob. I can remember my grandfather making these horrible diet shakes (maybe it was SlimFast in a blender with ice?), and all the diet foods of the 90's, like I can't believe it's not butter and low fat everything. That crap doesn't help anyone be healthy, obviously. And so, I get that. And I get that the "image" we are sold isn't realistic.
And then... there's the puritan-ness of it all. I think this must be related to the ongoing workaholic issues I've been working on. I've really been examining whether I want to achieve something because I LOVE it, or if it's just yet another way I tell myself I'm a "good" person, because I equate that with working harder than everyone else. Spoiler alert, I don't really want to work 24/7. LOL. The anti-fat conversation fits right in here....Like you aren't a "good" person unless.... you're skinny. Writing that (as a fat person) makes me tear up.
I don't know how to fix this in my brain. I know it'll be a long journey of challenging what I know to be healthy and "good."
Anyway, I'll that said, I guess I just wanted to throw out what I was thinking in case someone else can relate. I'm with you. <3
I'm looking forward to reading all of your thoughts and responses too, because I know I'll learn something.
I haven’t even read the Atlantic piece on what dads do but if it’s anything like my own experience firm yes absolutely true. My mom never fat shamed me. But when I was stuggling to get loosey-goosy non commital guy to commit to me (who may have had his own mental health issues and was 20 so understandable!) my dad absolutely made it clear that it was bc of my weight. Again and again he would ask if any guys liked me (this was the 90s so ) or expressed interest. He was absolutely obsessed with my weight. He meant well I guess.
Excited to read this piece here and to have the relative safety of THIS comment section. I just want to applaud Virginia for her work and for her willingness to take a lot of anti-fat and demonizing from the terrible comment sections other places. People are so deeply committed to misunderstanding this work or having their anti-fat bias challenged and writers like Virginia get so much undeserved shit.
I’ve watched my mom struggle with her weight my entire life. I’m now 27 and I am the heaviest I’ve ever been, although I’m still in straight sizes and a white woman, with all the privilege that brings. But my mom will comment on my body — and her own body still — and it’s really hard working through my own bullshit that I’ve ingested over the years and trying to put boundaries around her comments or gently reinforce the idea that all bodies are good. She got a lot of this from her mom and was certainly less critical of me than her mom was of her but it’s still bullshit and so fucking hard. Growing up she never criticized any potential weight gain, but she did always say how jealous she was of my thinness. And I realize that she didn’t think that that was bad but all it’s done is reinforce the fact that my smaller body was better. I’m now struggling with the fact that I don’t look like I did when I was 16.
What I find challenging about Virginia’s position is the conflation of anti-fat bias with healthy eating. Of course no one should be shamed about their bodies, ever.
At the same time, some foods promote health and others do not. This doesn’t have to be about being fat or not, it’s about health. I see she’s trying to disentangle this, but in so doing she can tend to argue (not as much in this interview but I’m others I’ve read recently) that all food is the same in its impact on our health.
In fact, processed foods are pretty uniformly accepted as not promoting health (juice included)--and there’s a huge lobby and political machine behind getting more processed foods into Americans’ bodies. I think it’s ok and even essential to acknowledge and discuss health with kids. It just shouldn’t be put in the context of how our bodies look.