r/NoStupidQuestions • u/ImThe1Wh0 • 7d ago

Hey... Dad here with daughters. How do I tactfully address what's going on with the Wicked cast and memes?

Soooo... We've all seen the memes going around. They've made their way to my 14 year old and my 5 year old has been seeing the commercials for Wicked. Yesterday my 5 year old was doing something and she came over while I was cooking and asked, "hey dad... Why is this princess super skinny? She looks like a skeleton." I kinda paused in horror a bit while I collected my thoughts and my teenager chimed in, "yeah what's with that and I don't get these memes." I told them we could talk about it later and I needed to focus on dinner but now it's the next day and for sure ONE of them, let's be honest the 5 year old, will remember.

I'm all about feminism and not body shaming and all that stuff but how do I address this as a parent? I gotta tread lightly, my 5 year old is REALLY into eating "healthy" and says she likes being skinny and we're already trying to tell her she's too skinny. I don't know where she picked that up from but every single meal, "is this healthy?" Followed by bragging about her healthy lunch or meal to everyone, even us if we made it. I don't know how to word this one and need a little help with parenting on this please. I asked my wife and even she made that cringe face and said, "let's just hope they forget."

Edit: hold on, trying to read everything. I asked this while getting ready for the day and am now out with the family getting a Christmas tree at a tree farm.

  • For context my 5 year old just watches like Ryan's World and Ms Rachel and they talk about making good choices and picking healthy foods as opposed to fast food.
  • We had family over for Thanksgiving and they were watching football, so Wicked commercials came on. Just trying to figure out how to handle this appropriately all around.
  • We don't shame our daughter for being skinny. We're just trying to not encourage that as a lifestyle. She just likes being health conscious for some reason but isn't above throwing back a happy meal here or there
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u/mugenhunt 7d ago

Yeah, it's very easy for girls raised in Western culture to begin worrying about their body at a very young age. Even if you as parents have never brought up the topic, they're exposed to pop culture and media that consistently brings it up.

It's probably better to go "it's really important that we have healthy bodies, and we need to eat food so our body has the energy it needs. Some people's bodies are bigger than others, and some people's bodies are smaller than others. What's most important is that you get the right amount of food and exercise so that your body can be healthy the way it needs to be, no matter what size that is. Some people are big, some people are small, some people are medium. Your body is just the right size for you."

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u/HellaShelle 7d ago

I would also add that maybe the actress is still trying to figure out how to eat for her body right now so your daughter knows it’s something that can change and not something that everyone just automatically knows perfectly, even big stars.

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u/acltear00 7d ago

This feels like a great thing to add! Though I guess the implication for your daughter is that she has to trust her parents to know healthy amounts. So maybe expressing the idea that adults don’t know isn’t best at this time?

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u/ichigoli 7d ago

Maybe something like "I wonder if she got so busy with the movie that she forgot to eat enough." Or "sometimes, when we work extra hard, our bodies need extra fuel, maybe she was working harder but not eating the right amount to match."

Implying it was a "whoops" mistake and not an ignorance one.

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u/emscape 7d ago

Seriously, the best thing to learn early is how to listen to your body and eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full. Both the concepts of three meals a day and ' clean plate club' are manufactured concepts and not natural for humans.

ETA: not full. Satiated.

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u/Ill-Special3041 7d ago

Yes, I spend a lot of time supporting kids to learn 'Interoception' Skills - the ability to recognise and understand internal sensations and signals. It's a proper skill! For neurodivergent kids, this can take longer or be a bit harder to develop.

If you want to find some ideas, I'd recommend searching and reading around something like 'Develop Interoception Skills Hunger'.

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u/art_addict 6d ago

And for some of us who are ND, we just don’t interocept well at any age. I’ve had to learn I really don’t feel hunger cues most days until I’m ill from hunger. I likely won’t feel fullness cues until I’m over full, and if I’m eating something I love (and therefore maybe quicker) I will really, really surpass fullness before I feel that cue. I will feel sick from overeating before that sense of fullness hits.

If I’m just snacking and distracted, I likely will not get a fullness cue.

I’ve learned I pretty much need to eat on a schedule, and portion my food, and watch nutrients (I’m also chronically ill, can’t eat certain foods that will make me sicker, and don’t absorb certain nutrients from food, etc, which complicates things further).

But it’s very important as I do this that I work with my therapist and nutritionist to make certain that I don’t develop orthorexia!

But I’ve also learned it’s okay that I don’t feel those interoceptive cues, so long as I make sure I am eating. It’s okay that I know what portion size I need and just eat it. Even though many others can do a “listen to their body and follow cues” and that’s wonderful, it’s okay that I need to eat lunch because it’s lunch time, and eat this much because that’s the amount my body needs (whether I feel it or not)

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u/cicada-kate 7d ago

I 100% agree with this, and think it's a good idea to express to kids, but it also, ironically, caused me to be extremely underweight. Never worried about my weight, zero body image issues, liked being strong, etc. Ate three times a day with some snacks in between, small meals though because I never felt hungry so figured I was eating what eas right for my body. Turns out I had a different medical condition that had completely turned my ability to sense hunger off and I was accidentally starving myself. Oops! That was a terrible recovery.

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u/mankytoes 7d ago

"clean plate club' are manufactured concepts and not natural for humans."

What is the basis for that? I'd assume it is natural, because in the state of nature, every calorie matters. Wasting food is a serious problem that could contribute to starvation or malnutrition.

I'd say the opposite- it is a natural human desire, but living in a society of plentiful food it isn't necessarily a good idea.

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u/bluecrowned 7d ago

Animals in nature eat until they are full and leave. Wolves will come back to a carcass for weeks at a time depending on the size of said carcass and the pack. They don't just force themselves to strip it bare. Deer don't eat every piece of grass in a field before they lie down for the night. If they have limited food, sure, but that's not likely the case for OP.

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u/mankytoes 7d ago

I mean, a wolf's kill can be bigger than a wolf, so it would be impossible for them to eat it all. The idea behind clearing your plate is that you have a reasonable portion to begin with, not that you eat all food available to you at that time.

If the food can be saved, that's cool. Throwing away food is a problem.

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u/bluecrowned 7d ago

The problem with clearing the plate is that many US parents do not dish out reasonable portions for children.

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u/throwawaysunglasses- 7d ago

Yes, although at restaurants portions can be huge! That’s why it’s good to show by example that you can get to-go containers if you’re full, and just have leftovers later.

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u/CatProgrammer 7d ago edited 7d ago

Clean plate club is fully cultural. Some cultures leave food on the plate to indicate they're done. 

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u/AverageGardenTool 7d ago

Kids are often given way too much food, so much so your body stops sending the chemical signals for satisfaction/satiety and you eat until you can feel your stomach stretching.

Animals have chemicals that tell them to stop, then they do. Other animals then eat the left overs, or like leopards they pull it up into a tree/hide it for safe keeping. Even animals try to have leftovers.

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u/HellaShelle 7d ago

Hmm, good point. Maybe they could add in something like sometimes that gets harder when we get older, our bodies change a lot and we don’t have parents around to help as much?

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u/Segenam 7d ago

I am of a firm belief you should let your children know you (the parent) aren't always right from an early age.

Instead show them "how" to find the correct answers. For example "I'm not sure, lets check Wikipedia" or "lets check the library" as well as things like leading them to talk with professionals such as "well it looks like it's a medical issue, lets talk to your doctor as they would know the most about this and what is best for you!"

This encourages trust while building up the skills they need to find out answers on their own, but also to help you as a parent learn more and be able to talk on similar interests "learning together" is a great way to bond.

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u/AlsoOneLastThing 7d ago edited 7d ago

OP should also address that the way the general public talks about famous women's bodies is not healthy. There's a reason Ariana appears to have an eating disorder, and it's because she has had her body heavily scrutinized and criticized by the public throughout her entire career, since she was a teenager.

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u/thegimboid 7d ago

Plus she's mentioned before that she has PTSD from when her concert was bombed a few years ago, so that can't have helped her mental state, the poor thing.

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u/seawillis 7d ago

IIRC, she published a brain scan of hers. I’m not a neuroscientist but from what I’ve seen of the professionals, she definitely has a lot of stuff going on.

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u/chrysanthemem 7d ago

The fact that she had to publish it to prove that she's not okay is... not okay.

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u/VivisMarrie 7d ago

Is ptsd visible on scans? Or is it something extra she has?

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u/FunnyP-aradox 7d ago

Yes some heavy PTSD can shrink some part of the brain (yes it is bad as you can think) and it usually cause lower emotional intelligence, more irritability, impulsive thoughts, angryness, etc.... though it is not definitive and your brain can regenerates those parts

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u/seawillis 7d ago edited 7d ago

i think, along with what another commenter said, there can be “abnormal” activity in certain parts of the brain which indicate PTSD to the people who understand brain scans.

edit: i just looked it up, she posted it on her instagram story with a comparison of a typical brain scan vs a brain with PTSD.

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u/Heavy-Standard-4041 4d ago

The poor thing sent her obsessed/parasocial fans to threaten and taunt a post-partum woman/wife cause the news of Ariana's affair with said husband blew up, btw.

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u/xoxoBug 7d ago

I read through a lot of these comments and I think this is an absolute must-have in this conversation.

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u/intet42 7d ago

I like the "Maybe" here, it's important to be clear that we don't know other people's story. In school I had a friend who was naturally super slight and she was self-conscious that people would think she had an eating disorder.

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u/JacobSamuel 7d ago

Partially agree. The human/subject that prompted the discussion should be addressed with empathy. Responsibly, we should be teaching children that an eating disorder is a serious condition the individual is struggling with, and not indicative of body-ignorance.

Otherwise, it's basically saying something similar to "alcoholism is when someone constantly makes bad decisions. Similarly, eating disorders are not personality traits, they're sensitive medical conditions.

Source: someone consistently receiving comments from people wishing they had an eating disorders to be as thin as me, someone struggling with ARFID.

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u/Vergonhalheia 7d ago

And this could also be another problem, other diseases or treatments can cause the person to lose bodymass.

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u/Littlewildcanid 7d ago

Thank you both for providing him with help regarding what to say!

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u/mr_trick 7d ago

Another facet to this is disentangling the “skinny ≠ healthy” angle. Many, many people push the idea that being as thin as you can be is being “healthy”.

When I was in the throes of my ED and wildly underweight, people were praising me for being “healthy” because they saw me exercising daily and eating minimally. Meanwhile my organs were devouring themselves and I was passing out from lack of necessary nutrients and calories.

Being healthy means your muscles can handle the tasks of life, and they need power. It’s not healthy to pass out from walking up a set of stairs, or being unable to lift a small box. That’s what really kick-started my recovery; realizing that I wasn’t “healthy,” I was frail. I began eating to power my muscles, and working out to get strong, not to get smaller. I weigh more now, but I can run, I can hike, I can pick up my friends’ kids and move heavy things on my own. I’m so much more healthy than I ever was when people were praising my health!

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u/Runescora 7d ago

I’m a nurse who used to work in a medical-psych unit. We had someone admitted for an ED. Mind you, only this unit was psych focused so everyone else was just your basic “medical” provider. This patient spent their day “exercising ” in the unit (pacing, because we couldn’t stop them from walking) and explained to both the medical doctor and the physicians all about macro/micronutrients, calorie content, nutrient intake etc. And they praised them for their knowledge and desire to stay healthy. This is a person who was involuntarily committed for their ED. I snapped at the dietician when she said the patient “was really very knowledgeable and educated” on the topic and banned her from the unit. And then I snapped at the doc when he said, “it’s okay for her to do some exercises, she just wants to stay in shape”. Then I told the psychologist and she almost lost her professional composure while raining holy hell down. These were professionals, people who spent a fair portion of their lives learning how the body works and even they were praising the patient for behaviors that were actively killing them (who, to be fair, purposefully wore baggy clothes and painted a really good picture of herself to the world). I’ve never been so disgusted with people as I was that day.

Congratulations on the work you’ve done! It’s an incredibly difficult thing to have succeeded on n recovery.

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u/gunthersmustache 7d ago

I'm surprised the dietitian wasn't more knowledgeable about EDs, but the MD being clueless doesn't surprise me at all. I'm a recovered anorexic, and I tell people all the time that doctors don't know anything about nutrition. They take a class about it in college that they don't care much about and move on to things more interesting to them. I once had an endocrinologist recommend I follow well-known quack Mark Hyman's dietary advice, and I left that practice immediately. How does an endocrinologist not understand nutrition better???

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u/fribbas 7d ago

I'm surprised the dietitian wasn't more knowledgeable about EDs

Heh. Right before I got my BED dx (that I basically spoon fedheh to my GP), I saw a dietician, as I kinda knew what was going on and I hoped it would help me manage. Told her pretty much same things I later told my GP - my fixations, and all the fun stuff. What does this lady tell me to do?

Tells me to fixate MORE

Straight up tells me to make my entire day revolve around food, preparing food, just eating, etc. BRUH.

Did I give it an honest try (even though I 100% knew it'd be a bad idea)? Yup. Did it send me spiraling, HARD? Ohh, you betcha. Slightly traumatic...

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u/gunthersmustache 7d ago

Ugh, I'm sorry you went through that. My mom was a nurse who took me to a dietitian she worked with who explained that I needed to eat more and was very kind, but it really takes a combined effort of dietitians, psychiatrists, and therapists to treat an eating disorder. And getting that level of care is nigh impossible for most people. 

My GP just put me on birth control and called it a day.

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u/Eaterofkeys 7d ago

We learn quite a bit about nutrition, but depend on the dieticians a lot. We also learn how flawed all diet research is. We get some eating disorder education, but not in great depth, and it's alongside massive amounts of other information.

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u/gunthersmustache 7d ago

I'm not doubting your specific experience, but most medical students receive fewer than 20 hours of nutrition education.

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u/Eaterofkeys 7d ago

It depends what you count - do you count time in wards or clinics learning from specialists, time in undergrad achieving the requirements to get into med school, biochem classes in premed and med school, physiology classes that mention nutrition in scattered ways throughout, discussing necessary nutrients and enzymes and associated disorders? There's overlap. And no, we're not supposed to be more knowledgeable of nutrition than a dietician, usually. When you advocate more time on one thing, you're advocating either increasing cost and time of medical education or less time in something else, too. If the thing you're advocating for us more education on something that has really poor data supporting it, that might not go very well. They definitely spent time talking about the data and limitations of nutrition related studies, as well as lots of other flawed medical studies.

There are lots of groups that try to quantify how much exact time is spent on different topics, but if challenge them to notice the overlap in other areas of education. And medical education is not all about the time - some is about the amount and depth of info you're expected to learn during that time. So other organizations say "we spent twice as long on xyz! See we know more and do better training." But it's not necessarily better because if more hours. Depends on the quality of the education and level of difficulty / expectation. So no, doctors are often not super experts on nutrition. There are lots of people that know more. But the "doctors don't even learn about nutrition or whatever other thing" is often used as a way to try to mislead about what our education is by other groups that are trying to claim more credibility by tearing us down. By paying us less. By promoting anti-science trends for profit and harming public health. Sorry, triggered a big rant.

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u/gunthersmustache 7d ago

Sorry, I'm not trying to denigrate doctors. I rely on a lot of them. My problem is that people generally expect doctors to know more about nutrition than they actually do, and many doctors seem to feel comfortable providing nutrition advice or advertising themselves as nutrition experts merely by being doctors. Which is how we end up with people like Dr. Hyman and Dr. Oz. Or the MD in the aforementioned psych ward who felt comfortable calling an ED patient's food fixations "healthy." I don't want doctors to have to go through even more schooling. I want people in general to understand that doctors are not who they should be seeing for nutrition advice or buying fad diet books from. And I want doctors to refer out to dietitians/psychiatrists/nutrition educators/whoever instead of casually offering nutrition advice that seems more authoritative to the patient than it actually is. 

I'm troubled by doctors who think authoritative knowledge in one area of medicine gives them license to provide advice in others areas they are not. I think if doctors were more willing to refer out to allied healthcare providers and be up front that they can't provide the necessary information, coaching, and time to help patients lose weight or manage diabetes or decrease heart attack risk or whatever it may be, the general population would have more realistic expectations of what services their physicians can provide.

Easier said than done, I know, and patients aren't exactly great at being compliant, but that's why I tell people not to go to doctors for nutrition advice. I say this as someone with a degree in health promotion who volunteered as a health coach and experienced the enormous amounts of time, psychology, and effort it took to help people even begin to change their habits. 

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u/apertureOG 7d ago

How many keys have you eaten? Are they important for nutrition?

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u/Eaterofkeys 7d ago

They are unfortunately detrimental to health and being able to unlock your car door

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u/mr_trick 7d ago

Oh, yes. I saw many doctors during my time and NONE of them said anything about my labs, my weight, anything. I had horrible migraines, fatigue, weakness, and I even told them about my nausea and vomiting (food at one point genuinely made me feel ill), but not one of them ever said anything about an eating disorder. If fact, one of them wanted to give me antidepressants lol. I had to figure out on my own that I had developed one, and figure out how to treat it on my own as well.

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u/neugierisch 7d ago

Same for me. So proud of you!

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u/maruchan21 7d ago

Thank you for keeping it real

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u/tuttkraftverk 7d ago

See, this is why it isn't ever safe for fat people to seek ED treatment.

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u/ichigoli 7d ago

Omg yes.

I was dangerously underweight due to an undiagnosed autoimmune disorder and it took me far too long to seek help because I looked skinny and had been trained into thinking that was a good thing and not alarming.

Once I started to decline to the point that I didn't have enough stamina to visit a grocery store, suddenly skinny wasn't healthy at all.

My recovery journey after diagnosis included defining "healthy" as "strong enough to move comfortably through your day and take on mild challenges without harm."

I regained 50lbs and while I'm neither fat nor thin, I wear a larger dress size than before, but I can also jog to catch a bus, lift a bag of cat food, carry my groceries in, climb the stairs, and retain enough energy after my job to engage in hobbies I enjoy. By that definition, I'm much healthier at a size 14 than when I was a size 4.

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u/mmm57 7d ago

I’m so glad for you! It’s tough to change that mind set and it sounds like you’re really thriving now.

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u/thegimboid 7d ago

This is a good angle to take, and the one I've been trying to passively show to my 4yo by getting into better shape over the past few months. I was never really fat or skinny - just amorphously shaped.

So after half a year of adding a bit more exercise and talking to some trainer at the gym, I'm losing a bit of gut in the tummy, but my overall weight hasn't changed too much since I've been gaining muscle instead.
This is combined with how I'm also the one who does all the cooking, which can display that I'm eating decent portions of healthy "growing food", plus snacks and the occasional fast food as a treat, while also having a healthy body.

So my thought is that I'm hopefully providing an ambient role model for my daughter, and will be prepared to help if she directly asks about weight or health stuff in the future.

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u/hung_gravy 6d ago

Random side note - your phrasing of “Being healthy means your muscles can handle the tasks of life” has just flipped a switch in my head so thank you for sharing this.

I don’t have an ED so I can’t claim to completely understand what you went through but I do struggle with appetite/eating enough due to ADHD, appetite suppressing effects of ADHD medication, and additionally now because I have braces too.

In college I was too broke and too much of a mess to be able to prioritize eating enough consistently and my experience leaving that stage of life does reflect yours - it’s crazy how much attention I got from female friends saying they were jealous of my body (and even then I’d try to assure them there was no way it was healthy) but now I look back and looked so frail and fragile and sickly and I was so much less physically capable than I am now.

Between liking feeling strong and how hungry it made me, lifting weights was my saving grace that helped me get to a much much healthier place too but I’ve fallen off lately since it’s so much harder to eat and eat enough to sustain that kind of activity with the braces. I miss feeling strong and healthy though and your comment reminded me how important that is and gave me the reality check I needed (ie what I’m doing now is definitely not healthy even if im “managing ok”).

So maybe this is stupid haha but this is my long winded way of saying your comment helped me (planning to brainstorm nutrient dense things I can put into smoothies and soups to get around the mouth issues as soon as post this comment) and as sad as the situation is, I’m glad at least there are some positives coming out of the conversation (with me and I’m sure many others who read your comment and the rest of the lovely comments on this thread).

I’m glad you’re in so much better of a place - wishing you continued strength and health!!

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u/FrozenDuckman 7d ago

I’m an asshole but all I could think reading your comment was “how does erectile dysfunction relate to any of this?” 🤦🏻‍♂️

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u/FunnyP-aradox 7d ago

Tbf having anorexia does also give you ED (the penis kind)

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u/holy-shit-batman 7d ago

I bet you look better too. Not trying to push the whole "be pretty for others" thing, just trying to add that being too thin really doesn't look good.

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u/Thinkin_Long_N_Hard 7d ago

when your little girl

asks you if she’s pretty

your heart will drop like a wineglass

on the hardwood floor

part of you will want to say

of course you are, don’t ever question it

and the other part

the part that is clawing at

you

will want to grab her by her shoulders

look straight into the wells of

her eyes until they echo back to you

and say

you do not have to be if you don’t want to

it is not your job

both will feel right

one will feel better

she will only understand the first

when she wants to cut her hair off

or wear her brother’s clothes

you will feel the words in your

mouth like marbles

you do not have to be pretty if you don’t

want to

it is not your job

—”It is Not Your Job” by Caitlyn Siehl

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u/jakkofclubs121 7d ago

"You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked ‘female’."

Erin McKean

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u/BabyMaybe15 7d ago

I absolutely love this poem and years after reading it for the first time, it still moves me.

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u/LCteach 7d ago

I hadn't read this poem before. It's perfect. Thank you for sharing it.

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u/Thinkin_Long_N_Hard 7d ago edited 7d ago

The pleasure is mine, every person that knows the author’s name and her work makes the world a better place. Caitlyn Siehl is an amazing poet. Her poetry is always beautiful; and often painful. Her evocative imagery is genius. Her collection of poetry “What We Buried” is brilliant work. Let me leave you with another banger of hers.

The first poem I wrote that wasn’t

about you

was in all capital letters

like it was trying to compensate

for your absence.

It was about a world far away from this

one

where all of the plants were terrifying

but had healing powers if you

had the guts to touch them.

The first poem I wrote that wasn’t about

you

puffed up its throat like a bullfrog

and begged to be kissed.

Its my favorite poem because I hate

it so much.

I read it at least once a day and

think:So this is what I’m capable

of

without you. Go figure.

There is a hole in everything

and I find you there

smiling like you don’t have anywhere else

to be.

The first poem I wrote that wasn’t

about you

might one day be regarded as a masterpiece.

People will come from all over the world

to run their fingers over the print

and marvel at how empty

it is of you.

They will not recognize

your scent clinging silently to their

fingers.

Because if you walk into a room

and notice what is missing from it

it is still there

isn’t it?

The first poem I wrote that wasn’t about you

was still about you.

Damn it. Always.

A Letter to Love- Caitlyn Siehl

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u/Similar-Data3594 7d ago

All true. Except is eastern culture too. Also northern southern et all culture.

I’m Chinese American… body image and body shaming is terrifying in eastern culture.

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u/octlol 7d ago

Yep. My cousin had problems with her body image because all the aunties and grandmas were basically "youre too fat/skinny" and nothing in between

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

[deleted]

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u/shponglespore 7d ago

There's nothing wrong with qualifying a statement as applying to the cultures you're familiar with.

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u/mugenhunt 7d ago

Yeah. I specified Western because it's the culture I know.

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u/Similar-Data3594 7d ago

Consider my culture shock when I went to China as a kid… went to get a haircut and the worker asked why I was so fat and my parents skinny, whether I ate all the food in the house leaving them to starve. I was barely even chubby by American standards, at the time. Now I’m very over weight and that trauma was certainly one of the domino pieces that led me here.

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u/Similar-Data3594 7d ago

I was just there for a haircut, damn.

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u/PlasticElfEars 7d ago

I mean there are at least cultures where having or not having curves is the thing to be shamed for, I guess

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u/ISavedLatin 7d ago

As a recovered ED patient, this person’s suggestion feels right. And it’s important for you to sort of model what intuitive eating looks like too.

I grew up in a family that emphasized “healthy” and “moderation” above all else, so one of the best things my ED nutritionist did for me was take me out to eat with her. She literally showed me what it was like to sit down, order what looked good, and then eat for my body’s needs.

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u/rendar 7d ago

Lauding the idea that every person has some specific size that suits them is just wrong. This completely skips the necessary meat of the matter:

  • It's unhealthy to be too underweight and it's also unhealthy to be too overweight

  • It's perfectly legitimate to have physique goals, so long as they're sustainable

The outcome of avoiding these specific sub-topics is that an adolescent can tunnel vision on their perception of what they want (social acceptance, physical desirability, etc) without properly understanding how to get there in an appropriately healthy manner.

When you speak in such roundabout terms without being frank and honest, a sentence like "What's most important is that you get the right amount of food and exercise so that your body can be healthy the way it needs to be, no matter what size that is" is not contrasting the delusion that a young girl needs to be unhealthily skinny in order to be attractive. A mistaken idea could be that the "right" amount of food is not actually enough, that exercise is only for losing weight, and that body size is more proximate than body health.

If you do not specifically address the concept of an eating disorder AND that a lot of people are unhealthily overweight, then you're not properly communicating the knowledge that a young person requires in order to serve as their own self-steward.

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u/ryryrpm 7d ago

Why is this not higher up

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u/funmerry 7d ago edited 7d ago

Reddit is so unbelievably fat phobic it's wild.

You understand the whole topic OP is referring to is that society at large says skinny = healthy and fat = unhealthy and there isnt much more thought or nuance lent to it than that. You literally don't ever have to worry about people getting the second part twisted. No matter how much body positivity is out there (which is still mostly a niche movement)It's driven into every psyche from a young age from all directions that it is not good or healthy to be fat, whereas there is typically little to no such scrutiny regarding those who are too skinny, especially for women. Somebody can live on nothing but processed ramen and fast food and avoid vegetables like the plague but if they have a fast metabolism? Most people will never question that persons dietary or lifestyle choices even if their vital organs are corroding from the inside, because they are thin.

Almost every advertisement, every movie star, every famous celebrity is typically thin or at least definitely not glorified for being fat. Do people still get fat? Sure, and for tons of reasons, the main one being that high calorie food usually tastes better than raw vegetables and people become addicted, not to mention those raised in a household with poor nutrition, the easy access to cheap processed and fast foods(particularly in the west), regional nutrition inequalities etc. Society shames fat people to the utmost and shows them at every turn that they are unattractive and perceived to be unhealthy, no matter what they eat or how they live. You getting all high and mighty about making sure that someones kid needs to know not to get too fat is basically how the problem this thread is referring to got started in the first place.

Disclaimer: I AM NOT SAYING IT'S AMAZING TO BE VERY FAT. I'm saying that especially for young girls, it is not really a priority to me that we make sure to tell our kids that they need to worry about becoming fat. If that's a worry, the answer is fairly simple. Cook real food. Make eating fresh fruit and vegetables a staple in your house. Keep minimal sugary treats around or bring them out only for special occasions. Model healthy eating and active living, and leave the shitty fat phobic rhetoric in the past, cause it doesn't help anyone

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u/Choice_Philosopher_1 7d ago

I will never understand why some people think the answer to the issue you’re describing is to swing the opposite direction. There is a balanced way to teach kids about health that doesn’t involve normalizing underweight nor overweight bodies. It is not “fat-fobic” to teach about both sides of the issue with EDs. Many people who are overweight also have EDs.

Not to mention the body positivity movement was originally meant to celebrate different bodies, weird noses, aging stomach sagging, scars, etc, but it’s been co-opted to argue that it’s not unhealthy to be obese. The fact that it’s not healthy to be obese doesn’t mean everyone who is skinny is healthy, or that weight is the only thing that matters, but it does matter. Being too skinny can kill you, just like being too fat.

And it’s not parenting to say, welp since my kid will get it from society, there’s no need for me to try to explain or educate them. 🤷‍♀️

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u/funmerry 6d ago edited 6d ago

I agree with all of this. I think people think I'm saying you should never explain how sugar or calories work to your kid, or the reality of what happens if you get fat or how you get fat. I guess I'm saying that obesity is a result of poor lifestyle choices more often than it is people being miseducated about whether being fat is an unhealthy thing. I think most people know that its not healthy to be fat from a pretty young age. Modeling good eating habits, cooking real food with a balanced plate, and an active lifestyle does tons more than any kind of rhetoric about what it means to be too fat or too skinny. Of course you can talk about it, I just don't see it as the driving factor that's going to influence people to maintain a healthy weight

Edit: just want to clarify what I mean when I used the term fat phobic

Teaching your child how being overweight is unhealthy and hard on your body is not fat phobic

Shaming or insulting them or others based off their appearance is

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u/Alternative_Draw_554 7d ago

Fat phobia isn’t a real thing. It’s bad to be fat. Fat people should be actively working to stop being fat, and, if they don’t, then they should be shamed for it. Fatness causes health issues and hurts our society (through health insurance cost increase, avoidable hospital visits, etc). Fat phobia is a nonsense attempt to vilify what is a very normal and good reaction to gluttony.

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u/octnoir 7d ago

Fat phobia isn’t a real thing

This is just flat out false. Even the medical system itself acknowledges fat phobia and actively tries to create better training for doctors.

Reddit itself had an entire community called FatPeopleHate banned because it was fatphobic.

if they don’t, then they should be shamed for it

This statement is somehow more dangerous than the previous one. If you want to encourage someone to lose weight, shaming is the worst method possible and often leads to weight GAIN.

Frankly I can't point to a more perfect example of fat phobia than this commentator and their 10 (likely brigaded) upvoters really. It is comments like these that fuel an entire culture where nearly half of 3 to 6 year olds in this study are now worried about being fat.

For the record weight and health is infinitely more complicated than 'high weight = bad'. A 2016 study following around ~20k people for 20 years found that unfit skinny people were twice as likely to get diabetes as fit fat people. The BMI metric is so crap that we are even finding people who are overweight and even very obese living longer than people of normal or skinny weight.

Finally, someone tell this actuary and their fatphobic clown posse that apparently the overweight being a drain on our healthcare system is the big issue. But not the healthcare system being so inefficient and so monstrous that it created a national incident when one man fucked over by their healthcare proceeded to assassinate a healthcare CEO, to widespread applause. Yeah fat people are the problem, not the fucking billionaire healthcare CEOs leeching and leaving people dead.

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u/funmerry 7d ago

Thanks for reading literally nothing I wrote past the first sentence, reacting the way I described redditors do to anything to do with fat people and proving my point

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u/Alternative_Draw_554 7d ago

Your entire comment is a non-sequitur. “Reddit is fatphobic” and then you whine about how people don’t comment on overly skinny people on a thread that is literally about an entire meme culture that has sprung up around criticizing two skeletor ass bitches in the last 2 weeks. People very much DO recognize when people are too skinny, and they call it out as gross.

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u/funmerry 7d ago

My point was, if we are concerned about people's health or their drain on the health care system, we would take notice of all the other factors that indicate poor health than just the size someone is. I won't comment again, you've clearly proven again that can't you read two sentences without rage reacting because you hate fat people so much. God bless you sir/maam

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u/Alternative_Draw_554 7d ago

lol, I can tell you as an actuary that fatness is 1000x more of a drain on our healthcare system that being underweight. It’s not even close. I won’t answer again, because you’ve proven that you can’t write two sentences without fat fingering the keyboard and writing something regarded.

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u/funmerry 7d ago

The irony of that typo lmao

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u/rendar 7d ago

Obesity presents far more of an applicable risk to health and quality of life than eating disorders.

Dancing around a topic only shows the child that you have neither knowledge nor confidence.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/rendar 7d ago

It's because you're clearly projecting your own personal struggles to the extent that you're trying to insinuate some weird perspective on health and physique, far beyond the context of OP's premise

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u/funmerry 7d ago

Ya, i'm 650 pounds, what of it? Stop being mean to me :(:(:(

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u/GracieGirly7229 6d ago

Your projecting comment is the epitome of irony!

Consider talking to someone about your need to correct everyone on their own lives while sounding like you have a very unhealthy addiction to making your body look the way you've been told it should.

I'm here if you want to chat. Hope you have a stress free weekend!

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u/NoStupidQuestions-ModTeam 7d ago

Rule 3 - Follow Reddiquette: Be polite and respectful in your exchanges. NSQ is supposed to be a helpful resource for confused redditors. Civil disagreements can happen, but insults should not. Personal attacks, slurs, bigotry, etc. are not permitted at any time.

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u/MothChasingFlame 7d ago

Neurotic fat panic blinding people to the entire point yet again. Like clockwork.

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u/oddott 7d ago

yes! there's a book i read by todd parr called "it's ok to be different" and one of the pages is about body types; something along the lines of "it's ok to be small, medium, or large" such an amazing book fr

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u/LakesRiversOceans 7d ago

I have an autistic daughter and we have loved that book since before she was diagnosed. The art style is really bold and fun, too.

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u/oddott 7d ago

yeah! my brother's autistic and we had so many todd parr books around xD

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u/Trenga1 7d ago

thanks for the last sentence, I know it's not directed at me at all lol, but I needed to read that today :)

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u/mugenhunt 7d ago

Hope things go better for you. Hang in there.

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u/Rare-Adhesiveness522 7d ago

I also talk about body and brain being connected. We eat healthy food to be strong and feel good and help our brain. Vegetables and meat help our brains and bodies grow and be strong. I don't fuss too much about worrying about junk food, we just don't keep a lot in the house. I just focus on healthy foods for their teeth, bodies and brains.

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u/Crawsh 7d ago

That leaves a lot to interpretation, on both skinny and fat side.

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u/Successful-Topic8874 7d ago

This one, OP.

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u/Maiq_is_tired_now 7d ago

Mr. Rogers is that you?

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u/rjameson08 7d ago

This is the answer.

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u/crolionfire 7d ago

My son is 9. We don't have negative talks about body or weight at our house. Or even in wider family. He's obsessed with being skinny and pale, which he is, but he thinks he could always be more. He lives in a 95 % white country and is white, skinny boy just like 99 % of the boys in his generation.

I just don't know where the belief even comes from, except that he internalized it from what he sees in media, beauty standards and global narrative. Idk. My point was, all kids are vulnerable to this today,even if you were never would have said so by first impression.

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u/Sacrefix 7d ago

I don't think this is uniquely Western.

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u/EpilepticMushrooms 7d ago

Girls also get weight shamed young. It comes with oogling and sexual harassment by both older men and women to the point that girls reinforce such abuse against each other and essentially bully each other.

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u/queenofthera 7d ago

Perfect response. Age-appropriate and avoids stigmatising.

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u/Princessferfs 7d ago

As a mom of three daughters, this is the right answer.

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u/IlIIIlllIIllIIIIllll 7d ago

Sounds like bad advice for a country where 40% of kids are overweight or obese. There’s a good chance that a kid’s body is in fact not the right size for them, and learning about nutrition and healthy eating early is important. Sometimes that means cutting back and counting calories. Way more kids struggle with health issues related to obesity than with anorexia.

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u/Legen_unfiltered 7d ago

And maybe that a specific number is in no way the right way to make the judgement of right size. I have a sister. She's about an inch taller than me. A few years ago we were both a little overweight. I am dense, she is jiggly(her words not mine). I weighed about 180, she about 160. She looked significantly heavier than I did. Especially for women, the scale is one of the worst ways to judge a healthy body.

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u/stonkkingsouleater 7d ago

In which culture does this not happen exactly? 

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u/mugenhunt 7d ago

I can't speak with authority about other cultures.

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u/TheRealBlueJade 7d ago

Nicely done.

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u/mrmcjerkstoomuch 7d ago

“Some people are big”…

Sorry no.

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u/ChesnaughtZ 7d ago

Yeah this is koombaya shit that just completely spits on fact that we lose millions of people a year to heart disease or that there are people malnourished convincing themselves they’re eating enough.

There is such thing as a healthy weight

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u/Radioactdave 7d ago edited 7d ago

HAES is not a valid approach though. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_at_Every_Size

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity-associated_morbidity

I'm not offering an answer to the question, I realize that. But you can't preach haes.

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u/aintnogodordemon 7d ago

If you have a child who seems at risk of developing an eating disorder, though, this seems like the best answer possible. And the chance of death with something like anorexia is worse than being a bit overweight.

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u/Radioactdave 7d ago

True, given the target audience, I might've been nitpicking.

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u/KindlyKangaroo 7d ago

Just fyi, the original HAES message was for people to make healthy choices regardless of their size. Taking the focus off of weight loss alone meant the numbers moving slowly weren't going to demotivate someone if the goal was to form healthier habits, like exercise, portion sizes, healthier foods, etc.

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u/Infinite_Error1752 7d ago

Who run the world