Reader Iris let me know about this little piece of total crap on the internet. Max and Katy are two young kids with 3.82 million followers. They (and/or their parents?) decided to use this platform to fat-shame and food-shame their father. I’m not linking to the video but here’s the plot:
Dad is eating chocolate. Kids walk in and are absolutely stricken. They yell at their dad and take his chocolate away. He gets more chocolate that he has hidden away. They show up stricken again and yell that they are telling him one more time “not to eat sweets, eat something healthy.” They forcibly take his chocolate as he struggles to keep it. They go outside, throw the chocolate directly into the garbage bin and yell “it’s unhealthy.” The dad gets some candy that he had hidden. Kids show up, you gueesed it, stricken.
The child’s eye go wide with horror and he says “oh my god” then they pan to the dad who has stuffed his clothes and put on a mask to look fat. Max “Look how fat you got!” Katy “What should we do?” Max “Eat healthy because of this weight!” Kathy (holds a mirror to his face” “Look, do you even recognize yourself?” Dad: Looks horried, then fake cries. Close up shot of dad’s fake fat belly. They decide that “sport will help you” and push the clothing-stuffed fake fat dad to a big trampoline. He gets stuck trying to get in through the protective netting. He gets tired right away so the kids push him to an elliptical machine then a treadmill (another close up shot of his fake fat stomach) He does one more exercise and now he is magically thin.
He looks overjoyed and exclaims “Oh I lost weight!” and both kids cheer. The kids put him to bed and then check the house for his sweets. They find them hidden everywhere (including popcorn,) act disgusted everytime, and throw them out yelling “liquidate!” They throw it all in the trash and exclaim “Done! From now only healthy food!”
The video has over 76,000 views.
So. Many. Problems.
First of all, this video should be called “Max and Katy learn fatphobia and develop disordered eating.” We know that this kind of moralistic thinking about food sets kids up for all kinds of issues. Modeling moralizing food (and hiding “bad” food) is just asking for food issues.
Their other videos seem to be more innocuous (if completely unnecessarily gendered) which makes this more upsetting – kids playing with toys, kids learning to wash their hands, kids food policing adults and and engaging in weight stigma.
There is a crap ton of food in this video, and all of it appears to have been thrown in the garbage by the children. Why are we teaching kids to waste food?
Also, what will kids with fat parents take from this – they it’s their job to police their parent’s food? That their parents eat too many sweets (a complete stereotype – everyone knows thing people who eat a ton of sweets and don’t get fat, there are also fat people who don’t eat sweets. More importantly – nobody’s food is anybody else’s business unless we ask them to make it our business.) That having a fat parent is bad and something to be ashamed of? Fuck that.
We need to teach our kids not to shame, stigmatize, stereotype or bully people, not teach them how to do it.
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I was cringing when I was reading this. I am fat and I eat chocolate because I have a spinal nerve injury which causes extreme pain. My pain management consultant me to each a small piece of decent chocolate, with at ears 70% cocoa content with every single does of the pain killers. The one I choose in Green and Black 85% cocoa content, and I have 3 tiny squares with each dose. However I now buy them online because I was so angry with all the fat shamers and fat-phobics commenting on my basket when I went and got my 15 bars for each month.
“They forcibly take his chocolate as he struggles to keep it.”
“They decide that ‘sport will help you’ and push the clothing-stuffed fake fat dad to a big trampoline. He gets stuck trying to get in through the protective netting.”
Seriously, do fatphobes really not get that grabbing a person unprovoked and trying to wrestle them into compliance *is assault,* even if the person in question is fat and holding something they consider “junk food,” or are they just too entitled to care? Because this particular fatphobic fantasy- the one of physically putting your hands on a fat person to rob them of anything you think they ‘don’t deserve’ or push them into an activity they don’t want to participate in or carry them somewhere they do not wish to go over their visible displays of pain, fear, and distress- is as omnipresent as it is sadistic. That someone felt comfortable making a “funny” video of *children* engaging in this behavior shows how socially acceptable fat hate still is.
And don’t even get me started on that “hidden junk food stash” stereotype that’s all over the place in fatphobes’ fevered imaginations but much rarer anywhere else. Not only does your average fat person not actually do that (just like we don’t actually eat babies or order everything on the menu “with a diet coke”), when someone, fat or thin, IS doing that, it’s called “food hoarding” and it’s a symptom of a potentially serious eating disorder that requires professional help, not fumbling, “well-meaning” friends and relatives trying to tough-love and brute-force it out of them.