New Media Target: Overweight Children

I was an overweight child. I am an overweight adult.

I am amazed at how politically correct it has become to comment publicly on how fat a child is. The new "childhood obesity" campaign is simply a resurrection of the anti-smoking, anti-hydrogenated oils, anti-whatever public campaigns aimed at specific groups of people for various reasons.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not against children having healthy weights. In fact, I wish I had been blessed with a healthy weight as a child. What I am against is the ignorance of the media towards overweight children and the perpetuation of persecution of overweight kids -- only now liberated from the school yard and placed on television, in magazines, on the internet -- under the guise that there is a concern for getting kids to eat healthier, to increase activity.

I am a survivor of childhood bullying aimed at my "less than human-ness" because I was overweight. My earliest memories of my station among peers was in second grade when some older boys playing tether ball after school one day elected to elighten me to the fact that I was different from everyone else because I was a fat kid.

There is a television commercial now that shows a mother who is busy about her day, tossing a cookie into the mouth of her overweight son every time he tries to show her something he made at school or tells her he finished a chore. In fact, to emphasize the source of the boy's fatness, the commercial soon degrades the mother to where she simply throws cookies into the boy's mouth whenever he walks into the room.

Just like in the schoolyard, commercial producers and anti-obesity campaign directors continue the bullying of fat children, pointing them out as schoolyard freaks who need to change. Only now, they make money from it.

What strikes me is that these adults are the very same kids (only now grown up) who played on the schoolyards when I was in second grade, who taunted me and all the other fat girls and boys who accepted me as their playmate. Only today, they have the political license to make degrading commercials such as the one I described above.

Some people also want to blame the schools for making "unhealthy" food available to children. To correct their erroneous ways, vending machines with sugary drinks and snacks have been restocked with "healtier" alternatives. I find it interesting that some middle school children have elected to smoke cigarettes even though there are no cigarette vending machines are allowed on campus. Hmmmm.

Yahoo news recently published an article that described a study that looked at parenting styles and childhood obesity (http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20060606/hl_hsn/strictparentingcanproduceoverweightkids). The conclusion was that children raised by authoritarian parents (versus authoritative, permissive, and neglectful parents) were more likely to be overweight than those reaised under the other three parenting styles.

I think this points to something greater than vending machines stuffed with sugary treats lining middle school hallways (by the way, I wonder how much $ the school districts gleened from those vending sales!?) or the mother who throws treats to her obese child. That "something greater" is what I live out every day of my life.

Starting

I have a long-time desire to publish a written work, either a novel or poetry or well, anything. Problem is, I just can't get started. I know, I should sit and write daily regardless of what comes out. Problem really is, I think I'm afraid that what comes out won't be perfect the first time.

Crazy, I know, because it won't come out perfect. I just need to dive in and do it. I've done enough self-reflection over the years to realize the root of my fear:

My mom picked me up from kindergarten one day and she praised a picture of a snowman I'd drawn. She said, "Why don't you show Daddy?"

So when we got home, I proudly marched up to my father who was sitting in his avocado-green leatherette chair and proudly whipped my out my 17"x11" manilla colored paper depicting a wintertime landscape of snowflakes falling on a snowman.

"That's not what snowflakes look like," he said, analyzing the white circles I'd painstakingly spaced equally across the winter sky with a white Crayola crayon.

...and that's all I remember of that moment.

I think the trauma of the situation has stifled my ability to create, for fear that the first iteration of whatever it is, will not be perfect. I've created lovely paintings inside of my head, and written musicals and novels in my mind...all to be admired and enjoyed by the only one who won't criticize.

As a stepmom of four children, I have had the opportunity to conscienciously protect and encourage the child-like creativity in them over the past 10 years. The challenge now lies, however, in nuturing my own inner child towards creating...once again.