Yesterday I talked about a song by Tim Minchin that celebrates his imperfect body. But my trip on the Tim Minchin love train ended abruptly when reader Jayem pointed out his song “Fat Children”. While he is trying to create a cautionary tale about obese kids, what he has actually done is create a cautionary tale about everything that is wrong with the “War on Childhood Obesity” currently being spearheaded by Michelle Obama, which should really be called the War on Obese Kids. Let’s examine the messages through the lyrics of Tim’s song:
1. Assume that fat kids are poor athletes
Macca’s [cookies] might shut them up now that they’re seven
But they wont forgive you when they’re getting picked last for PE
Yup, fat people are unathletic (As you can plainly see in all of the pictures and videos in the comments here). Thanks for reminding me. I was so busy training for my next dance championship that I forgot that I’m a waddling out of shape slug. Thank god Tim was here to remind me.
2. Ignore actual science and just repeat bs, because if enough people repeat a lie, that makes it true right? Try not to think about how the diet industry has manipulated you into being a spokesperson for a product that makes almost 60 billion a year with a 5% success rate.
So you’re telling me that your family
Has a history of obesity
You got a polycystic ovary
You say “its just the way God made me”
You can blame it on biology
You can blame your physiology
You can point to genealogy
And your social anthropology
You can say you are an ectomorph
That you just cant get the kilos off
Its unlikely, statistically
To be a physical thing
Of course Tim Minchin has the medical and scientific background to shrug off actual scientific research, make broad generalizations, and give us all a lesson in statistics. Wait – no he doesn’t. Cite your research Tim or I’m going to assume that you are just parroting what you’ve heard from the diet industry. Don’t worry, you can protect yourself from any backlash with your air of smug superiority.
3. Blame the parents
Boombalada motherfucker
Have you noticed that your kids are fat?
What you gonna do about that?
What you gonna do?
NOBODY knows what causes childhood obesity. There is quite a bit of controversy about the whole concept. But let’s ignore all of that and blame the parents. Even though we know that there are socioeconomic issues at play. Even though parents raise several kids and not all of them end up fat. Tim decides to ignore all that and just start scolding adults he doesn’t know who didn’t ask for his opinion.
4. Stereotype
Do not feed donuts to your obese children…
But stop feeding your boy KFC…
you are in the queue at Burger King…
Yes of course all fatties eat fast food all the time. Sometimes we even commit the ultimate sin, the in -public EWF: (Eating While Fat). One of the Public Displays of Fatness, sometimes people (like Tim) get the idea that it’s appropriate to make judgments about our eating, or assume that one visit to a fast food establishment means that that’s where we eat all of our meals. Of course, if your kid is thin Tim doesn’t care what you feed them because this isn’t about having healthy kids, it’s about having thin ones.
5. Confuse correlation with causation
She’ll [your daughter] be dead of a heart attack
Before your grandchildren are ten
He’ll [your son] be dead of an aneurysm
Before his own children ism ten
People of every shape and size have heart attacks and aneurysms. But why have a discussion about healthy kids of all sizes when you can terrify parents that their kid is going to have a heart attack so that they get them dieting at as early an age as possible. Thanks Tim, hell of a job.
6. Induce a disordered relationship with exercise and a poor body image at as young an age as possible. Be absolutely sure that kids know that if they aren’t thin, they deserve whatever bad treatment they get.
Send them down to the park
If they don’t wanna go, make em
Tell them they have to jog
Until their jogging shorts fit em
If they hesitate, ask firmly
If they still resist, hit em
And here is was thinking that we should find activity that kids really like and encourage them to develop a life long love of movement, am I an idiot or what? Thank god Tim was here to tell me that I should let kids no in no uncertain terms that they won’t be worthy until their body is a specific size and that if they don’t achieve that size they deserve to be hit.
7. Body shame toddlers and elementary school children
He weighs 40 kilos and hes only three
He looks like a clean-shaven Pavarotti
Like a moose whos eaten too much mousse
Your 6 year old miniature Jabba the Hut
Eating half melted Mars Bars from the folds of his gut
Fuck off Tim. Seriously, fuck right the hell off. I know this is supposed to be “comedy with a helpful message” but it’s not funny and you aren’t helping anyone. Making fun of three year olds? Six year olds? Seriously?
We can end the war. We should end the war. We can choose to be for healthy kids of all sizes. We can focus on making sure that kids have access to healthy foods and safe, fun, movement options that they enjoy. We can help them achieve not just physical health but also the mental health that can only exist when they are not constantly stigmatized and shamed from the time that they are toddlers. There is nothing, NOTHING, that can be accomplished by being against obese kids that can’t be accomplished by being FOR healthy ones instead. Let’s be for healthy kids of all sizes.
Dances With Fat 
Wooohoooo! You TELL HIM girl! This is pretty much my thoughts exactly when I came across it. Pretty piss poor in my humble fat-arsed opinion and it saddened me a good deal because up til the point I heard this song I was really enjoying his perspective on a lot of things.
I just found this to be a really cheap shot pandering to the lowest common denominator for the purposes of elevating his own career and I had thought such an act was beneath him, but sadly not. It is such a simplistic effort and gutless in the extreme. I can only hope at some point in the future he understands the ramifications of his efforts with schoolyard bullies and the impact they can have on a child and how efforts like his only incite them. I also hope for HIS daughter’s sake that she never battles weight and self image problems. I’d hate for that to be the catalyst for his lightbulb moment.
“I also hope for HIS daughter’s sake that she never battles weight and self image problems. I’d hate for that to be the catalyst for his lightbulb moment.”
Worse yet, if it happens that way but doesn’t catalyze a lightbulb moment for him.
Sunflower
Wow. There is a lot of thinly-disguised hate in that song. Thanks for taking it apart.
I actually had a roommate two years ago who was stick-thin but lived off of Burger King, Wendy’s, and Subway. Her capacity to maintain an idealized body while minimizing the nutritional value of her food was never something to be envied, for me.
On the subject of songs, I’d like to hear your take on the lyrics to (I’m embarrassed to admit that I listen to this) Lady Gaga’s “Born this Way”.
Wow. I wonder if he pushes kids into puddles at the park and yells out “HEY STUPID!” at Disneyland just to see who turns around, then laughs when someone does. Because that’s the same bullying mentality he’s using here.
My dad was a bully to me when I was growing up, saying things like, “You’re such a pretty girl, why aren’t all the guys after you?” in one breath, then “You are really, really heavy, and I’m sick of dealing with it” in another. He’d roll his eyes at me if I ordered anything but a salad at a restaurant, but when I try to cut way back to please him, he’d tell me he didn’t want me to be like all those other silly girls who obsessed over their food, that I should just be “myself”. I guess it never occurred to him that being Myself would include being fat.
Believe me, I know all about bullying and the Shame Them Skinny approach that people like that stupidly dippy Michelle Obama is using (and to be honest, I thought she was a laughingstock BEFORE she became the self-righteous First Lady). They can all suck it hard because all of their finger-waggling and tsk tsking means nothing to me. My main concern is how to raise my daughter, who is 18 months old right now and will eventually enter in the Perfection Threshing Floor of the teenage years. If I can’t reach her with words, maybe I can reach her with a good example, once I get my own head straightened out a bit more…
Yorkie,
I applaud you for your efforts and I think the best thing you can do for your daughter is to try to keep an open dialogue when she comes of an age that she understands and by setting a good example of loving yourself. Even if you have a hard time “straightening out” your own thoughts, what you can control for the time being is the way you talk about yourself when she’s in earshot, as well as not obsessing about the food you eat. Our children are far more observant that we give them credit for at times. Keep up the awesome work! You’re doing great!
~Karen
I’ve just come back from a lunch with neighbours where I did a bit of food policing in my head. I’ve become very interested to the different reactions people get when they eat, ever since I was in a rehab hospital where breast cancer patients with post-chemo weight gain were put on diets – you could tell who they were because they had a big yellow sticker next to their place – while the thin lady next to me ate her way through desserts meant for other patients without anybody saying anything.
So today I watched a normal weight woman eat a full lunch and then three pieces of cake and two other desserts. Her food is her business, her health her own and her food intake rightfully passed unremarked. But I couldn’t help but remember times when I reached for a second biscuit (cookie to you Americans) and got a chorus of clucks and disapproving comments all around me for daring to eat something with so many calories.
I remember getting a lecture from my sister about my food portions and how I simply “ate way too much” and so did her husband. I didn’t say anything but I couldn’t help but think that there were times her own son out ate me but see, that was acceptable because he’s so skinny and tall he has to wear women’s jeans so yeah, of course it’s okay to eat way more than a society approved sized person would eat (entire frozen pizzas or full boxes of macaroni or two package of ramen noodles), so long as you’re skinny and look like you need to gain weight but if you’re not, heaven help you because you can’t eat more than that society approved size person and if anything, you should be eating less so that you can get to that society approved size.
And I should note, it’s really sad that before I put in society approved said, I typed normal but that wasn’t right because I’m not abnormal, my size just isn’t approved by society. Amazing how it’s still there and I have to really think sometimes before I type or at least before I hit submit.
I don’t think you are wrong in your assumption about the first lyric (“Macca’s [cookies] might shut them up now that they’re seven
But they wont forgive you when they’re getting picked last for PE”) implying unathleticism. But it could also mean just the stigma of being (presumably) overweight. At least that’s how I interpreted it based on my own childhood experience.
I agree with everything you said, but I think you hit the nail on the head with the point about “access to healthy food options”. As a product of the public school system here in the states, there weren’t many healthy options in school (where some kids are dependent on getting a balanced meal). It’s getting better I think with legislation about coke machines and whatnot… but seriously. Perhaps I’m also a little jaded because I worked in a candy store as a teenager? I also grew up in the south, which has a rich (literally) food culture. You would be amazed at what people say to me, as an adult vegetarian, at home. People are serious about their butter and meat down here. People do not eat goddamn vegetables (my spousal equivalent does survey research and many people really freaking don’t)! And people ask *me*, “Well, what do you eat?”
Now this is not to say anything about obese kids, but rather malnourished kids paired with our bizarre foodtainment fixation. I think it’s pretty fucked up that I grew up in a generation were there was a chocolate-chip cookie cereal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-owGTJM7iI) and somehow fat kids (who are, I don’t know, minors and not typically making the food buying choices in the household) are to “blame” for being fat. Especially in light of P.E./Music/Arts all being cut to pieces…
I am absolutely disgusted by these lyrics. Also, does he not realize that an “ectomorph” is someone who is naturally thin. I believe the word he was looking for was “endomorph.”
Will we ever win?
Saddened…just blows my mind that people are capable of such hatred.
P.S.? I was not athletic and always picked last in P.E. in school. And I was thin. Very thin. Had nothing to do with my size, only my (lack of) skill.
Well, damn, Tim. I was a scrawny runt as a kid, so why the hell was I always picked last for gym? I must have deserved to be hit for *not* putting on weight, because many of the other kids decided I needed to be picked on, too.
Maybe the problem isn’t fat or thin. Maybe the problem is the abundance of intolerant assholes who think everyone should fit their myopic idea of what people should look like, based primarily on what comes easily to them…
This went a long way for me re: Tim Minchin. (Also, possible trigger warnings for folks, it is an interview done by Dan Savage, who promoted this song previously.)
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/skewer-mouth/Content?oid=8740260
On why he stopped playing the song:
“Ah, yeah. Look, I’m not trying to pretend it didn’t exist. I just stopped performing it. And some people like that song. And some people are upset by it. And people can listen to it if they want. You’re not putting people in a room and then trapping them there while you abuse them.”
It seems like his education on “health” is informed primarily on media news, and nothing he has ever researched or given thought to beyond the usual “common knowledge” wisdom and his own body issues. If you’ve been that deeply brainwashed and immersed, change probably isn’t an overnight thing. That he’s trying to understand, and be more considerate of his audience’s feelings, because he can feel that something is wrong with what he was putting out there even if he can’t understand it yet, that is enough or me to give him a chance.
I am glad you had that link because I have since lost it, but yeah… pretty much my feelings re: Tim Minchin. He is absolutely a brilliant song artist and entertainer. He’s intelligent and has proven he can be compassionate. Where as Dan Savage is pretty much just a fat-phobic douchecanoe. I would so get behind his “It Gets Better” Project if he wasn’t promoting these anti-bullying videos of encouragement, but then turning around and laughing at the fat kids 5 seconds later. I really used to respect him for his work, and now I can’t stand him. 😦
So it’s okay for Tim to have an “imperfect body” while he makes fun of a certain body type–in children, no less? He is a contender for Biggest Douchebag of 2011 for sure!
Hmmm… does he really qualify as a douchebag? After all, douchebags do serve a useful purpose in the world…
Douchebags are things that a woman shouldn’t put near their hoo-ha (that is a technical medical term, by the way) because douching is not good for the natural acidic environment of said hoo-ha, no matter what the commercials would have one believe. However, I’m open to other terms of endearment for this asshat.
Your 6 year old miniature Jabba the Hut
Eating half melted Mars Bars from the folds of his gut
I think this creepy paedo-gaze fat children are continually being subject to, by people who would not see themselves in that light, is more than just body shaming.
Their bodies are being appraised in a way that crosses boundaries that should not be crossed and could have serious ramifications for fat children that I dread to consider, having been one myself.
I am going to ask this for the umpteenth time to any passing fat haters, keep your hating for adults who can defend themselves, but please exercise enough self restraint to leave children out of this.
Thank you.
Agreed – hearing that verse would have destroyed me as a child or teen.
What a complete and total asshole.
Tim’s song doesn’t amuse me at all. I was a fat kid and I’m a fat adult. I got put through all manner of garbage in order to try to normalize my body. No one hit me, but there was plenty of abuse; some intentional and some from good intentions. It makes my blood boil to hear him offer violence to children even in jest. It is NOT funny.
If this tool really said ectomorph in his lyrics, then he’s a really stupid tool. an ectomorph is a thin person. Us fat folks are endomorphs. Dude needs a dictionary as well as a soul.
I read this blog a lot, but I have never commented. I was enraged by this song, particularly how he says letting your children be fat is child abuse—right before he says to hit them if they won’t excercise. How awful.
Ragen, I think you are amazing. I have read a lot of size acceptance blogs and yours is one of the only ones that really makes me feel good about myself. See, I still struggle with the whole dieting thing, but since reading your blog I focus more on my fitness than my weight. I’m really torn about losing weight and all of that, whether it is helpful or not, and I’ll admit I try to limit my calories. Thanks to you though, I find myself becoming more conscious of healthy choices than specifically low calorie ones. Maybe someday I can wean myself off of this dieting thing altogether. Because of you I am on an anti-artificial sweetener crusade. I don’t feel guilty for putting sugar in my coffee. I can’t thank you enough for your tolerant opinion of people who want to lose weight, who don’t want to lose weight, who want to gain weight, etc. Your blog is a haven for me when I’m having a bad body-image day.
Also, thanks to you, I stopped comparing my body to everyone else’s. I used to look at fat women and be terrified I would be that fat. Well, then I got pretty fat–a very rapid medicine related gain, and you can imagine what happened next. After poking around the SA blogosphere, I started challenging myself to find one beautiful thing about fat women. Even if it was, “I like her earrings”. Eventually, I started seeing beautiful things about their bodies, too. It became an automatic response to fatness–looking for one beautiful thing. I don’t see anything that upsets me–i don’t associate adiposity with being unattractive anymore. Now, I instinctively look for one beautiful thing about every person I see, fat or thin. I truly have found myself to be accepting of all sizes–I don’t see size anymore, just that one beautiful thing that I find about that particular person.
Now I just need to work on applying this to myself, and I am golden!
But back to this Minchin fellow–I just wanted to let you know how much you have changed my life–what a horrid, horrid song. How dare he verbally abuse children for their size? What about the six year old who hears that? In ten years, will that six year old be bulimic, like I was at 16? How dare he? (by the way that’s a fave phrase of mine now.)
Ragen, I love you and your work!!! NEVER stop being awesome!!!
Amlys,
Thank you so much, your comment made my day! You are amazing for opening your mind and doing so much work to find your path to health. Disassociating adiposity from unattractiveness is a MASSIVE accomplishment, and I love the way that you did it. Tomorrow blog is going to be about this. You’ve completely inspired me today, thanks!!!!
~Ragen
Never heard of him, so fortunately I don’t have to feel disillusioned by another media figure who I liked and enjoyed reading/watching/listening to only to have them turn out to be total fat hating jackasses.
So far, my list of “respected until it turned out they were just hiding their inner jackass” people is up to three – Jamie Oliver, Alton Brown, and Dan Savage.
I guess in the case of the former two, cooking and eating decent tasting healthy meals is something only thin people deserve to do without shame, and in the case of the latter… the only people who deserve for things to get better are cis-gendered white gay males with money. Everyone else can go fly a kite.
Erin, only three? I consider you pretty lucky, then. ;3
What would this dudebro know about polycystic ovaries anyway? Dude can spend a month in my body and not only deal with being fat shamed but also the mood swings, difficult periods and adult acne as well. And my symptoms aren’t even as bad as some people’s.
What happened to walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, hmmm?
He may think this song is meant to be funny, but come on, singing that fat kids should be forced to exercise if they don’t want to and then hit—that is wrong, period. How would he like it if he got punched in the face? Hopefully he will learn his lesson and stop writing this crap.
Adults in recent years have become extremely creepy when it comes to thinking how children’s bodies should be equal to that of “fit” (using the British version for “hot”) grownups and they’ve taken their extreme mindset to include fetuses still in the womb. I think we need to worry more about other issues that are far more important to our youth, such as getting a decent education, instead of waist size. We’ve all said it before: if shaming and abuse actually worked, every fat person on this planet would be a size 2. And since that’s not going to happen, doofuses like Tim Minchin and his ilk need to get over it.
Disgusting. Vile.
Who teases and bullies little kids? Other kids. Dumb, mean, hateful kids at that. Tim appears to be an adult, and adults should know better.
And, getting picked last for the team and being forced to exercise? Happened to me as a teen. Didn’t make me thin. Did lead to a lasting hatred of team sports and shouty aggressive women in tracksuits.
And, oh, God, Alexie…OT perhaps, but you reminded me of this…on people observing how much people eat, and on kids eating ‘too much’…there was a story in our press about how a family went into an ice cream parlor somewhere in the north of England, with a small boy with them, and they bought him six bowls of ice cream, which he ate, and then tried to buy him a seventh. The storekeeper refused, and the kid’s father got aggressive and threatened violence, and eventually the police were called. But here’s the clincher: at one point in the altercation, a friend of the father pointed to the child’s black eye and warned that ‘that’s what happens if he (the father) doesn’t get what he wants’. Out of a slew of ‘OMG, six bowls of ice cream, how disgusting, no wonder kids are fat!’ comments, only a few people picked up on the fact that the kid was being beaten up. Which has to be a way bigger problem than giving him ‘too much’ ice cream. But there you go. Priorities. Sometimes I despair…
Macca’s is short for McDonalds, not cookies.
But yeah, vile and stupid song, Tim. You could have done so much better.
I hate this song, but like others by Tim Minchin. I think what he said on NPR about it is even a little more direct than the other quote, “But if you got cross with me about one of my earlier songs that I did, for example, called “Fat Children,” eventually I went yeah, actually, you guys are right. It’s just bullying.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=138783861
I’m not surprised to learn this is an earlier song. It’s not nearly as lyrically clever as his other work that I know. I’m glad to see that he seems to realize how vile it is.
I’m glad I googled and found this entry. It’s 2015 and this American has only just discovered Minchin (from watching old Buzzcocks). And I was in love with him, watching him on YouTube, then saw the song and lyrics. I couldn’t even bear to watch the video of him singing it. But the lyrics seemed to come from some very different sort of place–from a different mind, even. It’s good to know it’s an old song he doesn’t perform, but I sure wish he recognized that if fat people are sad, then maybe it’s due to songs like this one.
P.S. Love this blog, btw!