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The Word “Fat” and its Effect on Children Across America. By Josie Houghman
The word fat has been weaponized by people of all ages for hundreds of years, and the effects of being called names is damaging for people of any age. Now that people are starting trends such as “#bodypositivity” it is clear that the media has a big role to play in the continuous battle people are fighting every single day. Lizzo, the big body queen known for empowering big people and little people alike is proof that no matter how much effort you put into making other people feel good you still aren’t safe from the pressure the media puts on people to “get skinny” no matter how healthy you are on the inside.
Lizzo is vegan, and she does work out, from her home gym to getting out there and dancing and singing for hours on stage in front of thousands of people but despite everything she does to prove she is healthy, ruthless things are said to her such as calling her “pig” and to “kill herself”. In March of 1954 Life magazine featured an article titled “The Plague of the Overweight”. After that article, the media boomed with fad diets and shady ways to lose weight because the culture in the media portrayed what society liked, and at that time it was skinny women. The current parental generation was raised by Baby Boomers and Gen X, and the media took off around the time these people became parents, so the ability to use media to bash parents for lifestyle choices they were making for their children and for themselves was fueled by doctors and nurses as well as other parents during the most developmental times in babies and young children.
This caused many parents to accidentally promote eating disorders and mental illnesses attributed to food struggles not only for their children but for themselves as well. As children, the current parental generation had access to multi-media. Between the beginning of CD’s, to the ability to record music onto cassette players, and even the access to colored television in their homes on a daily basis. Children all across the world are subject to societies beauty standards from such a young age due to the fact that those standards are engrained in everyday life. From doing your hair for school, to wearing a certain pair of shoes because they are what’s “in” makes it almost impossible to escape the everlasting pressure students face every single day, their appearance. When did the word “fat” even become an insult, and why does it have such an association with the media? Fat, defined as “having too much flabby tissue; corpulent; obese” is used as a noun and adjective. Fat is found in Old English from a verb meaning “to cram, load, adorn” but surprisingly, in the 1300s fat was used to describe land that was “fertile” or “abundant”.
