We are living in a culture where the left-controlled mainstream media advocates for acceptance of all lifestyles.
We are inundated with messages of “tolerance” and tiptoe around anything that implies discrimination of any kind.
But there is one stigma still pervasive in our culture today, and it is of great concern for the well-being of our children.
“Fat shaming” is perhaps the most prevalent discrimination still going on in the U.S. today – especially for young women.
We are bombarded with images of body perfection in the media, and women especially are meant to feel guilty if they are the slightest bit overweight.
While the rest of our cultural stereotypes are decried by the left, and everyone is supposed to be accepted for who they are – even when they go to extremes like changing their biology – those who are overweight are mercilessly judged.
Women of all ages often spend thousands of dollars, much of their free time, and their sanity in the quest to be thin.
And this cultural stereotype tells women that they are not worthy or healthy if they do not match this model.
Raising our children in this hypocritical view is not only dangerous for self-esteem, it can be deadly.
Our young girls are targeted from an early age that appearances are more important than personality and intelligence – that being overweight means being lazy or unworthy of respect.
In fact, the diet and exercise industries, along with clothing and makeup companies, tell our girls that they will only find love and marriage, excel in their careers, or fulfill their hopes and dreams if they are thin.
So how can we raise “fat positive” children without encouraging poor health habits?
Contrary to the propaganda spread through our media, being overweight does not necessarily mean being unhealthy. In fact, this targeted blitz of fat shaming in our culture is killing our young women.
Mirror Mirror, a website on eating disorders, reports that 30 million people in the U.S., mostly women and even girls as young as 10, have an eating disorder. That number explodes to 70 million worldwide.
Hospitalizations for children under the age of 12 related to eating disorders has increased by a staggering 120 percent in a decade.
Young women with anorexia are 12 times more likely to die than women their age without the eating disorder, and women with anorexia are almost 60 times more likely to commit suicide.
Romper.com reported:
Raising fat-positive kids isn’t about actively making them fat. It’s about teaching them that this [discrimination] is toxic and unnecessary. It’s about giving them the tools they need to stand against it — and as a result, to treat both their bodies and those around them with empathy, kindness, respect, welcoming, and open-mindedness. Regardless of what those bodies may look like.
Women who are overweight often neglect their health by avoiding doctor’s appointments due to fat shaming by medical professionals, and mothers are even lectured by their physicians about the negative message their weight is sending their children.
But the real message that is being sent is that we should be ashamed of our bodies. Mothers, in particular, put on weight during pregnancy and most of us have a hard time taking it off while we are busy taking care of the needs of everyone else.
Mothers who struggle with their weight are often depressed and embarrassed, and this sends a far worse message to our children than one of accepting that we don’t have to be perfect.
We must emphasize — particularly to our daughters — that we should love our bodies, work toward health and not perfection, and when they are older, to embrace the physical changes that motherhood brings.
Romper.com continued:
Fat positivity teaches us to be critical of all varieties of body and fat shaming. It points out that, culturally and globally, some bodies are treated as “good” (and subsequently moral and desirable) while some bodies are treated as “bad” (and subsequently worthy of mistreatment).
There is perhaps no greater example of this twisted philosophy about who is “worthy” and who is not than the left’s push to create a “pro-choice” anti-life culture targeting the unborn, those with disabilities, and anyone else that is deemed to be “imperfect” or “inconvenient” and therefore not treated with basic respect and dignity.
And with the constant stream of leftist propaganda in the media to accept alternative lifestyles – including people who decide to change the very biology that God created them as – why on Earth are people who are overweight still stigmatized?
It is the worst kind of hypocrisy that people who struggle with their weight are somehow not worthy of compassion and understanding, but the left wants everyone to bend over backwards to accept those who live alternative lifestyles and who disfigure their bodies to switch genders.
For the sake of our children’s health and self-esteem, our culture must stop putting so much emphasis on weight and an “ideal” body image for women.
What do you think of the fact that there is still a culture of “fat shaming” in the U.S.? Do you think women in particular will ever see an end to discrimination over not being the “ideal” size as portrayed in the media? Leave us your thoughts.