By the time they enter kindergarten, most American children believe that being "thin" makes them more valuable to society, writes journalist Virginia Sole-Smith. In her book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture, Sole-Smith argues that efforts to fight childhood obesity have caused kids to absorb an onslaught of body-shaming messages.
The Pervasive Nature of Diet Culture
Diet culture is a pervasive force in modern society that equates thinness with health and moral virtue. This ideal is perpetuated through various channels, including media, advertising, and even well-intentioned health initiatives. The consequences of this cultural obsession with weight can be far-reaching, particularly for children who are especially vulnerable to internalizing these messages.
According to Sole-Smith, the chronic experience of weight stigma is similar to the research we see on chronic experiences of racism or other forms of bias. This raises your stress level and keeps you in a constant state of fight-or-flight, leading to elevated stress hormones.
The Harm of Anti-Fat Bias
Sole-Smith argues the issue of childhood obesity has become a "proxy," which obscures larger, systemic problems, including childhood hunger and poverty. "We as a culture have really zeroed in on weight, because we think that's the piece that we should be able to control. But not only do we not have very much control over weight, it also won't fix anything else," she says.
Anti-fat bias creates concrete barriers between fat people - fat kids and fat adults - and access to health care. The fact that the first thing we're all asked to do at a doctor's office is to get on a scale immediately gives the doctor this number to focus in on that doesn't tell your full story about your health, but that narrows the focus of the conversation down to weight. And if you're fat, that means that that's really all the doctor is going to focus on is weight loss, weight management. What are we doing to get your weight down? What this does is it means that fat folks often receive subpar health care compared to thin people with the same conditions. They may be delayed on getting actual treatment because they're told they have to pursue weight loss before they're a candidate for medication or surgery or whatever would be the recommended course of action for a thin person. It also means that folks then understandably delay going to the doctor. They're more likely to doctor shop. So that impacts your health, because you're not getting your regular preventative care appointments. You don't have doctors you have strong relationships with. By the time you finally do show up, you're probably less healthy because you haven't benefited from that preventive care. But this isn't a failing of fat people - this is a failing of the system.
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Thin Privilege and its Implications
Thin privilege is a concept that is tricky to get our heads around, because if you have it, you don't really see how much you have it. It's a lot like white privilege in that way because you don't see how much it's benefiting you. But what we're talking about with thin privilege is the fact that if you are someone who can wear "straight" sizes [0 to 14], you can walk into The Gap or Target or whatever and find your size easily on the rack. It means when you go to the doctor, your weight is not the first and often only thing that's talked about. It means you can sit on an airplane and not worry about buckling the seatbelt. You can go to a restaurant without worrying, Will they have booths that are too tight for you to get into while the chairs have arms that are too tight? Physical spaces are built for your body. And whatever your own personal struggles might be … your body is not a target for the world in the way that someone in a bigger body is. What's also sort of nuanced and tricky about thin privilege is the fact that you can be fat and still be benefiting from thin privilege relative to someone fatter than you. Sole-Smith identifies as "small fat." She wears like a 16, 18, 20, and so she can order clothes - mostly only online, not so much in-person stores - but I can get clothes that fit my body pretty easily. I can take weight out of the conversation with a health care provider. I have certainly experienced medical weight stigma, but if I say "I don't want to get on the scale," they respect that decision. That's not available to someone who's in a bigger body than me. So that's where it's sort of helpful to think about how am I able to move through the world in this body in a way that someone else isn't? And why are we OK with the fact that the world is not built to include all bodies?
The Intersection of Diet Culture and Systemic Oppression
The thin ideal is definitely a white ideal. When we trace the history of modern diet culture, we really trace it back in the United States to the end of slavery. And Sabrina Strings' book Fearing the Black Body is the iconic work on this that I would refer people to. But her research talks about how, as slavery ended, Black people gained rights, obviously, white supremacy is trying to maintain the power structure. So celebrating a thin white body as the ideal body is a way to "other" and demonize Black and brown bodies, bigger bodies, anyone who doesn't fit into that norm. So this is really about maintaining systems of white supremacy and patriarchy.
Reclaiming the Word "Fat"
Sole-Smith says parents can combat American diet culture by reclaiming - and normalizing - the word "fat." Instead of shushing a child in the grocery store who asks why a stranger is so fat, she advises parents to explain that bodies come in lots of shapes and sizes, some fat, some thin. Sole-Smith, who herself identifies as "small fat," suggests using the word "fat" as a neutral descriptor, saying it helps "take all the power out of the word.
Questioning the BMI
The BMI, the body mass index, was developed in the 19th century by a Belgian astronomer and statistician. It was never intended to be a measure of health. He developed this formula to measure what he called the average man, by which he meant Belgian white men in the 19th century. Which is not any of us today. It's not a relevant body measurement anymore. And the formula has changed very little since then. It is still primarily a tool that's used for measuring population growth. It's useful to epidemiologists who are tracking population size across the country on a global level. But it does not tell us anything about anyone's individual health. It's only because the life insurance industry adopted it in the 1920s as a way of deciding how to price out insurance premiums that it got connected to health in the first place. And so it's become this metric that doctors start and end every conversation about our health with, when it really doesn't tell us very much. It doesn't tell us percentage of body fat relative to percentage of muscle, which is why you'll hear people talk about pro athletes who have "obese BMIs," even though they're all muscle. With children, it doesn't take into account where they are in terms of puberty development. It really gets weaponized against folks and it gets used, like I said, to determine access to health care.
Neutral Language Around Food
I don't say "junk food." I don't say "bad." I don't say "garbage." I don't say, "Oh, you have to eat real food. You're having too many treats." I never put treats in opposition to anything else. They're just also part of the meal. You may want to enlist the help of a therapist or a dietitian who can help you really get to this more neutral place. If you start to take a more relaxed approach and let these foods be part of your family's life, and make sure your kids have regular access to them, and you don't judge how many cookies they take, you let it play out. You will see that these become foods your kids can enjoy, but in a much less fraught way. And you'll find there are some that they actually don't even like that much. And they're leaving the bag in the pantry for weeks and not touching it or they're excited to see it for a few days and then the novelty wears off. It's a completely different way of engaging with food. I think that's one of the pieces of this that feels the most radical to a lot of folks because it's a level of permission we've never given ourselves.
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Challenging the Conventional Wisdom
Sole-Smith offers an alternative framework for parenting around food and bodies, and a way for us all to work toward a more weight-inclusive world-because it’s not our kids, or their bodies, who need fixing. With Fat Talk, Virginia Sole Smith hasn’t just given us a great book for parents of fat kids. She’s given us an indispensable resource for adults preparing kids of all sizes to navigate a world full of bodies, biases, and appearance-based judgment. If you’ve ever longed for a conversation about fat kids that’s rooted in facts, candor, and empathy, this is it. Fat Talk is a must-read for any adult who wants to build a kinder, more accepting, and more just world for the kids in their lives.
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