How Did Kids Become Scared of Fat?

Just like the myth commonly spun that body image issues only affect girls, many people often assume that body image issues only come to the fore once kids hit puberty. Whenever I talk to people about body image and kids, they’re either surprised it’s even a thing, or they’re blaming social media before the conversation’s even begun.

Last year it was revealed the number of pre-teens with anorexia has doubled in the last decade. Another study found children as young as five are restricting their food intake. Common Sense Media reported in 2015 that 80% of girls have already been on a diet by the time they hit the ripe old age of ten years old. And experts warn children as young as three are saying their body is a problem. I’m pretty sure most three year olds aren’t plugged into Instagram 24/7 with an obsession for the Kardashians, so we need to start looking at the bigger picture here.

I grew up in the 90s when camera phones and social media didn’t exist (it took fifteen minutes to wait for dial up to even connect to the internet), and while that took the pressure off to some degree, it also meant there was far less opportunity to see a wider range of people in a wider range of bodies. I may not have had a camera phone, but I certainly had my share of body hang-ups.

Three decades on I’m now a mum to two daughters of my own, aged five and nine, and I’m acutely aware of the messages around them reinforcing the idea that thin equals good and fat equals bad, and that their body is the most important thing they have to offer the world. Thirty years after The Beauty Myth was first published, the body is still being commodified, although now it doesn’t just affect women – it affects children and people of all genders as well.

From the Disney princesses with one type of body to the education around “healthy eating” that often perpetuates the idea that health is a look rather than a lifestyle, our children are bombarded from all angles and taught to fear fat from a young age. There is so much rhetoric around “the childhood obesity epidemic” that it’s no surprise a study found many children are more scared of getting fat than they are of getting cancer or their parents dying.

Despite many doctors, therapists and academics arguing the NHS National Child Measurement programme that sees children weighed in schools (and letters sent home if their weight falls into a “high BMI” category) isn’t very helpful in promoting health and is probably causing more harm than good, it continues. Newspaper headlines scream about the “epidemic” and terrify parents into putting their children on diets – which the diet brands are only too happy to facilitate with free membership for children as young as eleven and glitzy weight loss apps teaching kids to see their body as a before photo. Indoctrinate children to the religion of diets while they’re young and you’ve got a lifetime to take their cash and keep that multi-billion-dollar industry spinning. Quite a clever marketing strategy really.

We are so focused on blaming social media for our kids’ body image issues that we are missing what’s right beneath our noses: the ads for diets thousands of kids are walking past on their way into school every day – something the #FreeFromDiets campaign that I founded is working to eradicate. Diet culture is everywhere, including on the school gates and in the kids’ book bags. While there are rules to stop “junk food” being advertised within 100 metres of a school there is nothing to protect children from exposure to advertising rhetoric that equates being healthy, beautiful, successful and happy with being thin. And while the diet clubs pour much needed revenue into the schools by hiring out their halls, the schools themselves don’t always realise the myriad of potential problems that come with permanently hanging a banner on a school gate advertising a weight loss brand.

So where do we even begin with counteracting some of these messages? There is a glimmer of hope. It lies in the amazing work done by activists, campaigners and academics calling out the BS online and the fact many parents want to avoid passing on their own body image issues or weight bias attitudes to their children (I know this because my DMs are filled with adults wanting a different future for their kids). It lies in the schools requesting body image resources to tackle some of these subjects in class and the people donating to the #FreeFromDiets Crowdfunder to take body image workshops for teachers into schools around the UK. And it lies with YOU. Because even if you’re not yet a parent yourself, if you’re ever in contact with kids there is a whole heap of positive stuff you can do to help the children in your life avoid feeling like their body is wrong.

You don’t need to walk around like you’re Beyoncé but cutting out the negative body talk will go a long way to making a difference about how the people around you (including children) feel about their body. Taking the negative connotations away from the word “fat” will also go a long way – so much of the time parents’ responses to a child saying “I’m fat” is to rush to say, “No you’re not,” rather than explore where these feelings might be coming from in the first place.

I’ve heard many adults ban “the f word” completely which, while it may be well-intentioned, still perpetuates the idea that fat equals bad, rather than being a descriptive word just like tall or short. And while we might be aware of the importance of following a diverse range of accounts on social media, this means nothing if it doesn’t also apply to the toys your kid plays with or the books they read too.

Calling out the bad stuff when we see it is also important – I regularly make a point of chatting with my daughters about some of the messaging that pops up on TV or on the YouTube videos they love to watch, and I hope this helps to stop them taking things at face value. We can’t be with our kids all the time, but we do have the ability to help them build resilience to the constant barrage they’ll inevitably face once they go out into the world. Hopefully this way, unlike many of us, the next generation of children will never need to re-learn how to be friends with their body in the first place.