Fat Representation in Books for Kids
I for one am glad that I can use books for small teaching moments for my children. A fat character is an excellent opportunity to point out the need to control one&#x27;s consumption and to be mindful of health. Repeating this kind of message time and again helps cement in the child&#x27;s mind a foundation for why they mustn&#x27;t eat too much candy, cookies, etc. and gives them armour that will help them when their food choices are less controlled by their parents.<p>It&#x27;s amusing to me that the author has so much anger about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. She attacks it:<p>&gt; So tell me, why did adults think this was appropriate reading for little kids?<p>Well, it&#x27;s because adults didn&#x27;t want their children to become fat, you see.<p>&gt; His portrayal in the book follows typical straw man tropes of fat characters in that we’re supposed to assume that Augustus deserved what happens to him because he’s fat, eats a lot, and has overindulgent parents who let him do that to his body.<p>Just about everyone in that book gets some kind of comeuppance that is poetically appropriate for their personal sins. Charlie, the poor but honest boy, manages to get through mostly unscathed, on the strength of his character; this is the point of the book. Wonka wants a successor! Agustus Gloop would not have made a good successor, as he would have eaten all of the product.<p>&gt; When kids read fatphobic books…
&gt; …they become fatphobic too.
&gt; Literally no one is born with anti-fat bias.<p>I wouldn&#x27;t be so sure about that. Children have all kinds of &#x27;biases&#x27;, at least in the sense of ingroup vs. outgroup. Children that grow up with healthy people will see obese people (and I&#x27;m talking 300lb plus American-tier obesity) as an anomaly, and will ask, &quot;Daddy, why is that woman so BIG?&quot; in a totally innocent way. The reasonable response is something along the lines of &quot;eating too much will make you big, and it&#x27;s not good for you, but that doesn&#x27;t mean you should be mean to that lady, or treat her differently from anyone else&quot;.<p>When kids become &quot;fatphobic&quot;, we are arming them with important health information that can increase their lifespan and health, reproductive fitness, and more. If they follow through and live healthier lives, they will be happier people.<p>Imagine this. Let&#x27;s say we come up with &quot;Natural Dental Acceptance&quot;, &quot;natdent&quot; for short, a burgeoning movement for people who believe plaque is a protective coating for one&#x27;s teeth and that &quot;bad breath&quot; is fake news that can be sufficiently combated by chewing Mentos. I could imagine now the blog post claiming children&#x27;s literature is &quot;netdentphobic&quot; by claiming children need to brush their teeth etc, filling their heads with visions of &quot;mouth bacteria&quot; that nobody can even see. That&#x27;s the level of ridiculous this post is.<p>I wholeheartedly believe it&#x27;s possible to teach my children that being fat is unhealthy and undesirable while teaching them that fat <i>people</i> are just <i>people</i> like anyone else, not bad, not good, just people, and not to be treated badly in any way. Moral maturity brings with it the ability to understand that people are not their vices, and that people can be accepted without accepting their vices as being integral to their identity.