Are kids to fat? Is anorexia a major problem? All this and comes up when Reddit talks about Barbie. (np.reddit.com)
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34 ups - 0 downs = 34 votes
85 comments submitted at 18:16:28 on Nov 6, 2014 by kclaser1
Are kids to fat? Is anorexia a major problem? All this and comes up when Reddit talks about Barbie. (np.reddit.com)
SubredditDrama
34 ups - 0 downs = 34 votes
85 comments submitted at 18:16:28 on Nov 6, 2014 by kclaser1
To fat, or not to fat.
To fat!
Raises glass
Raises glass of fat
Drink the fat!
Dat fat was ass.
Shit that would have been a good title.
I think he's jokingly pointing out it should have been too fat rather than "to fat."
Well i fucked up
sigh
>overweight, middle-aged men aren't the target demographic for the barbie franchise tho. by age 10, 80% of girls will be afraid of being fat. and please don't tell me that that's a good thing.
And everyone proceeds to talk about how it's a good thing.
Ya i don't get how people turned this in to a fat acceptance thing. Its not at all about that its about not making girls feel like they need to be some fucking supermodels. Id be fine with barbie the organic chef.
I work with kids. And yes, they do freak out about being fat. It's really sad. They weren't even actually fat in any way either.
but sir let me tell you about how my penis feels and about how the waist size of women I'm never going to meet makes my penis feel
This is really creepy in the context of discussing the insecurities of 10 year old girls.
It's really creepy that 20-40 year old men on reddit are discussing how young girls having eating disorders is a good thing
It's like farmer's talking with all the compassion about the future of immature livestock.
Is it creepy that we, too, are discussing it here? Maybe I should ask HogtownHoedown's penis
I work with kids too and some of them really do have issue with body image.
I hate too see it when kids are bullied or insecure about their weight. They just feel bad about themselves, it doesn't encourage them to be healthy at all.
How is that bad? Being fat is unhealthy.
Being overweight is unhealthy. Having a complex over your perfectly normal weight because you're terrified of not fitting in is not healthy in any way. Kids are impressionable. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't spent much time around them
Yeah, everything "good" can lead to bad stuff, when done to much. On a scale from "fat is bad" to "lets glorify honey-boo-boo", I'd say the first one is healthier, though.
Yes, but since obesity is so widespread the notion of what is a healthy bodyweight is grossly overestimated. Normal weight is now considered too skinny.
> Normal weight is now considered too skinny
By whom?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18751350
"Only 22.2% of obese women and 6.7% of obese men correctly identified themselves as obese"
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/07/23/334091461/many-kids-who-are-obese-and-overweight-dont-know-it
76% of kids who were overweight thought their weight was "about right". Among kids who were obese 42% thought their weight was fine and while 57% thought they were in the overweight category.
Going the other way, People who were a normal weight were more likely to think they were underweight than to think they were too fat. 9% thought they were too thin and 4% thought they were overweight.
Gotta finish reading your article.
>About 49 percent of underweight kids thought they were about right
And my guess is a higher percentage of girls think that than boys.
So 51% of thin people know they're too thin compared to just 24% of overweight people knowing they're too heavy. Pretty reasonable to conclude that people generally have an inflated sense of what a normal size is.
Overweight and obese are typically different categories. Most obese people probably identified as overweight.
Also lol @ using a sample of just fat people as a representative of what the general population thinks about weight.
Did you read what I posted? Specifically the second article. 42% of Obese people thought they were in the normal category. 57% said they were overweight and only 11% accurately assessed themselves as obese.
And per that same article people in the normal weight category were twice as likely to think they were underweight as they were to think they weighed too much.
Ah, so you've hit on a big point when it comes to body image--self-appraisal vs. appraisal of others. People often evaluate themselves differently from how they evaluate others in terms of body shape and size. This can manifest as underweight people evaluating themselves as average (or even over) weight or overweight people evaluating themselves as average weight. This is not always an indication of a perceptual distortion, mind you--the task of rating one's body creates a certain degree of stress which can influence the participant's answers. However, ratings of others' bodies tends to be quite different from self-ratings. And clinical standards have remained fairly constant. So you can understand why I might be confused to read "Normal weight is now considered too skinny."
Dude what world do you live in? Is it populated entirely by Jewish grandmothers?
To me what they're saying is an actual fear of being fat could possibly lead to some kinda eating disorder which certainly is unhealthy. Of course being fat is not healthy either, but we don't need to be encouraging people to just be "not fat," people need to encouraged to live a more healthy lifestyle which, if someone does, will also cause weight loss in a healthy way.
Right, rather than teaching fear of fat, we should be teaching love of healthy foods and physical activities. A habitual lifestyle will beat a forced one every time.
I had an eating disorder when I was 8-12. That shit is not okay, I should not have been so worried about being "fat" that I would spit up my food, hide it, throw it away as sneakily as possible...and no one was trying to feed me fatty, horrible food--we don't eat red meat or poultry in my family.
Yeah I know "fat people are bad people" is one of reddit's favorite circle-jerks, and yes being too fat is unhealthy, but it's also not the end-all-be-all marker of a person's health. Little kids shouldn't have those ~~kids~~ kinds of body self-image issues, to the point they won't fucking eat their food. No one should.
My fiancé had an eating disorder when he was younger- he has always been short and stocky, and it really bothered him (still does) that his body doesn't look like the ones we see on tv or in the movies or whatever. Never mind that he's built like a tank and has pecs bros would cry over, and I think he's the sexiest thing ever. I probably would have developed one myself, but I'm extremely hypoglycemic and every time I tried to go without food I got sick. Body image is terrifyingly fragile and things that may not bother one person are devastating to another.
Fat is an arbitrary label that is often aimed at people who are not unhealthy, which can in fact make them unhealthy.
Don't know why you were downvoted. Being fat is the one vice we can see upon first meeting a person, unless we first meet someone abusing alcohol or smoking. Should we encourage people to GET fat? No. Should we encourage them to STAY fat? No. Should we tell them that it's their choice and acknowledge that they can be perfectly happy AND fat? Yes.
That's not exactly what I meant, but I do agree wholeheartedly. My comment was about people who call anyone with a tummy roll or thick thighs fat, even if they are within the healthy weight range. This is especially common for young girls to hear, but it's also becoming more common for boys as well. It's fucked up.
If you can, check out the 3rd instalment of a documentary series by the artist Grayson Perry called "Who Are You?" on 4OD If you are in the UK. In it he explores the concept of identity and a part of the 3rd instalment focuses on fatness and a group of big women who regularly meet at a support group. Their insight is really quite touching and I'm thin as a rake. I can relate to them even though I'm on the opposite end of the weight spectrum. It's a really good series.
>But again, anorexia is a mental illness. Barbie doesn't cause mental illnesses anymore than the Rolling Stones cause Parkinson's.
This guy really doesn't understand how mental illness works, does he? Does he think like, what, it's just something that happens randomly based on no outside factors?
Also, sure, obesity kills more people than anorexia. But obesity definitely doesn't kill more teenagers than anorexia. Like, I'm 18 and overweight. If I don't fix that, it'll probably kill me in a few decades. And someone very close to me is 15 and anorexic. If he doesn't fix that, it'll kill him in a few months. Big fucking difference.
Just because obesity kills slowly doesn't mean it doesn't kill-- we also discourage teens from smoking, although god knows that won't bite them in the ass until much, much later.
Anorexia is incredibly dangerous and can kill very quickly, no denying that. But compared with obesity, it's incredibly rare; and compared with obesity, it probably does have more to do with brain chemistry than external factors. Everyone is exposed to roughly the same media but only a very, very small percentage develop eating disorders-- the cause/effect relationship is not cut and dry.
No denying that outside factors are involved. But Barbie doesn't cause anorexia any more than the existence of cheeseburgers causes obesity. There are many more factors at play.
>Physical health and physical beauty live on the same street
And Barbie's Malibu dream house is not on that street.
>About 1% of the population suffers from anorexia nervosa at some point in their lives. Currently, well over half of Americans are overweight.
This whole attitude that we somehow have to choose between anorexia nervosa and obesity as a zero-sum game is ludicrous. Using dolls to shame children isn't going to magically solve the obesity crisis.
Also shame is not effective in helping stop obesity. It has two outcomes
1.) the person feels like shit and eat more
2.) The person goes the complete other way and gets a eating disorder.
I think that's the fundamental source of a lot of the fat-related drama we see on Reddit. There's the "shame works!" camp and the "shame doesn't work!" camp. There's plenty of research to support that shaming does not work and can in fact make things much worse, but the "shame works!" people never budge on the issue. "It worked for me, I used to be fat, and now I'm not! If I hadn't been bullied/called names/shamed I'd still be a lardass!" Blah blah blah.
Reddit is a perfect example of how well shame works. Western society is pretty diligent about shaming blatant racists and sexists, and there are hardly any to be found on reddit.
Well there used to be a lot, but since SRS came along and started shaming them they've completely disappeared, especially from the defaults like /r/videos.
I can believe that 1% of the population suffers from an eating disorder of some kind at some point in their lives, but that seems like an awfully significant number of anorexics considering how strict the criteria are and how lethal it so frequently is.
Estimates are typically expressed in ranges because underreporting, faulty sampling, lack of access to diagnostic/treatment care all affect the numbers.
The following estimates are for women only and they are pre DSM5:
Bulimia 1%-4.2% Anorexia .5%-3.7% BED 2%-5%
About 10-15% of ED individuals are men. With the new DSM 5, the criteria for anorexia are more inclusive (in terms of amenorrhea and the "refusal to eat" terminology, but not in terms of BMI or course) and so are the criteria for bulimia (once a week instead of twice a week minimum) so the estimates for both are going to rise in the next few years. Disordered eating is more common than you might think.
Are any of those numbers accounting for the NOS versions of the various eating disorders or no? I had read that ED-NOS was prevalent up to about the [5%] (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22407912) mark in populations studied in a [couple] (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eat.20358/pdf) of contexts, but I am startled to see estimates of nearly 4% of women sampled being formally anorexic. Do you mind passing the source of that along to me? I'd like to read it.
No, these numbers are outside the diagnosis of NOS, and that's part of why NOS was removed--it became a catch-all for people who did not meet full criteria for either anorexia or bulimia (and people would often vacillate between diagnoses, which made it more complicated). This made research on ED NOS almost impossible, because it was a very heterogeneous group, which also meant that designing treatment protocols was that much more difficult.
That particular range for AN comes from NIH (.5%) and NIMH (3.7%). Again, I'm not somehow declaring that it is one particular number, I was pointing out that there is a wide range of estimates (estimates vary based on survey methods and sample selection). I predict that we will see an increase in the percentage for both anorexia and bulimia due to diagnostic criteria changes. The reason I mention the range is that sampling is particularly difficult when it comes to eating disorders. There is a historical gap, for instance, in research on eating disordered men, and research on non-White women with disordered eating (due to the perception that it is a "rich white woman's problem"). If samples are drawn from treatment settings, that's representative of those who were able to afford treatment. I hope you see where I'm going with this. So I provide the range because I've seen numbers in multiple studies that fall along that continuum, and quite frankly I think there is a lot to be desired in how ED research is approached. It is, after all, a relatively new area of research. The first clinical case of bulimia wasn't even published until the late 70s, and research on anorexia in the 70s was considered to be quite novel. We have a way to go, IMO.
>110 lbs is not unhealthy or unrealistic for a healthy woman
Well, maybe if she's 5' even ...
Yeah, at 5'9" that'd put my BMI at a 16.2, which is far below the 18.5 "underweight" range. But all women are the same height I guess. And BMI is just an imperfect figure used to measure populations! (I know that, don't worry, but it's used as a trump card so often by people on both sides that it overestimates the number of outliers out there)
Isn't Barbie supposed to be pretty damn tall?
Edit: I looked it up, if she was a real person she'd be 5' 9", 110 lbs at that height seems really skinny...
I can't speak for everyone else, but I'm 5'9" and the lowest my weight has ever gotten is 125, and people constantly expressed concern for me. I really didn't realize that I was falling into anorexia at the time, but I was definitely forcing myself to lose weight, and I had no plans to stop.
Her size in unfortunately unproportioned
These people think women in porn / television / movies / super models = the average woman.
That's also why you see the whole "women get a free ride" mentality. When they think of an average woman, they picture a supermodel, and when they think of the way an average woman is treated, they picture men bowing down before her in awe.
I think that applies to a lot of redditors understanding of sex, anatomy, and women....
I was 110 lbs (5'6") when I was admitted to the hospital for treatment. for anorexia.
Everyone knows that any girl of 90lbs is considered morbidly obese.
People not understanding that target weights vary based on a number of personal variables.
My brother's wife is 4'11" and weighs about 85lbs. My brother is 6'4" and 220lbs. I am greatly amused by this for some reason.
Get them to post a couple picture to /r/short. Do it. It'll be awesome. Trust me.
Even better, have it be her posting talking about being not taken seriously because she's short. The bomb that goes off whenever a short girl who likes taller men (heaven forbid someone much taller than her) talks about not being treated fairly is so delicious. The picture could just be a little sidenote at the bottom with something like "Here's a picture for reference" to make it even less obvious of a bait.
I like the way you think :)
I'd do it myself, but I don't she'd take kindly to that. I like my balls where they are, thank you.
Trying to take photos where the size difference is large is always interesting
I see petty fights being things in high places and always booking economy class plane tickets, I am amused.
I'm 5'5" and a little less than 110 and I just barely fall in the normal range.
I'm not particularly super healthy either as I have less muscle and strength than most other women my age.
110 isn't clinically underweight, but it's not the ideal for most people either.
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People like to freak out about Barbie because she's thin, but I think people forget a few choice things:
1) Barbie does have some really kooky proportions, but she at least partially looks that way so that even very young children can put clothes on her with ease. All those alterna-dolls, with more reasonable human proportions, are either much bigger (like an American Girl doll, they're more than double Barbie's height) or made of soft materials other than plastic (Groovy Girls, if those are still a thing.) Other plastic dolls-- Bratz, Monster High, whatever?-- they're all as thin, or nearly as thin, because they're the same height and made of hard plastic. It's not a conspiracy to ruin body image; it's a play feature.
2) Barbie was the first mass-market doll little (American) girls could play with that [wasn't a baby!] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbie#History) There's a reason she's done every job known to mankind-- she's supposed to be representative of everything an adult woman can be, which includes [a UN ambassor for peace, a paratrooper, a firefighter, a computer engineer...] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbie's_careers) She's supposed to be an idealized, fantasy reflection of all the things women can do. And yes, she's plastic and beautiful, because literally I challenge you to encourage a child to play with an ugly doll.
3) Barbie seems to unfairly bear the brunt of criticism about children and body image; at worst, the dolls are a minor symptom of a broader culture. Why is a skinny doll somehow something we all need to panic about but the fact that G-rated movies have so few female speaking roles a "needless feminist drama?" It doesn't make sense to me.
Given that she's supposed to be a reflection of women... Honestly, in 1963 it really wasn't inappropriate or controversial to say "hey, you know what, a lot of ladies go on diets, and little girls are going to make-believe what their mothers do, so let's go with that." Mattel wouldn't have made this doll if the zeitgeist of the time wasn't conducive to making money... That's how they've made such a successful product, by understanding their audience and their customer.
The diet Barbie doll wasn't released last year, it was released more than half a century ago, when social attitudes were different. Somehow I suspect that posting a picture of, I don't know, a [Gollywog] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golliwog) would produce a lot of conversations about "how different perceptions used to be," not a shitstorm in the present tense.
A different company also attempted to make correctly proportioned barbies that were "happy to be me" or some brand like that.
They completely flopped. Mom's would buy them but kids wouldn't play with them, so mom's returned then and the product flopped.
Honestly, I don't blame them-- Barbies don't represent the average, they represent the exceptional. Kids know that the average woman isn't the president, owns seven horses, is also an astronaut, and has immaculate hair... But why not encourage them to play in broad strokes and infinite ambition?
When I was a kid, my aunt who was a dentist bought me a dentist Barbie and my parents who are doctors bought my sister a doctor Barbie. Ideas like "hey little girl, here are some of the roads you can take in your life!" strike me as infinitely more compelling than "here's a slightly fatter doll. She is average looking and her defining trait is not any achievement or career, but rather contentment with herself." Kind of a good message on some level vis-a-vis self esteem but also kind of a low-flying message. Who are you to presume astronaut Barbie isn't happy? She's been to space!!!
Kids know women don't look like Barbies. They see women with their own eyes every day. Positive body image isn't a matter of eliminating caricatures; it's a matter of lots of strong exposure and very serious conversations between parents and children, among a myriad of other factors. Putting all that on the back of a doll is to exempt oneself of responsibility and I hate that.
> I challenge you to encourage a child to play with an ugly doll.
Challenge accepted!
> she's supposed to be representative of everything an adult woman can be
Except there's no physical way a human could ever function with her proportions, so I think it's a false representation.
The thing about obesity is most people still treat it as a personal failing. But if you look at societal trends, it's really not surprising. In general, we're less active and the food we eat is full of empty calories. It's not because of laziness or gluttony, just the normal lifestyle and diet has changed. Adults have more desk jobs and kids stay indoors more often. Food is designed to be fast, cheap, addictive, and not very filling.
Again, these are just general trends. Basically, you used to have to be less active and eat more than the average to get fat, but now you have to be more active and eat less than the average to stay thin. It's not impossible, but now it requires a conscious, intentional effort to stay at what used to be the norm, and it's easier for well-off, educated parents to impart these habits to their kids than lower income families.
Bottom line is that the people who make fun of fat people for not understanding "calories in/calories out" seem to think that the default for that equation is still an equilibrium. Obesity is more a problem with society rather than with individual people, so attacking a fat person for being "part of the problem" doesn't help in the slightest since what they are is a result of the problem, not the cause.
>Actually the average height of an American woman is 5'4 so 110 is not even underweight. It's actually considered ideal weight on the BMI scale.
Does no one understand that BMI is complete bullshit? It's about a useful a measure for healthy weight as idk the Bechdel test is for measuring how sexist a work is. A healthy weight is very very person dependent and pointing to an arbitrary scale is really dumb. BMI is meant for helping with statistics and population sampling.
I don't know about bullshit-- it's one of a couple of tools which can be used in a serious medical context and it's a really easy one to administer.
Yeah, you shouldn't base your entire perspective on it, but saying, "huh, a 5'0" woman is probably underweight at 80lb, probably normal weight at 110lb, and probably overweight at 150lb" doesn't seem ridiculous to me. It's a starting point which is easy to understand. Yeah, after that you can measure waist/hip ratio, take body fat percentages, assess blood sugars and cholesterol and lipids and etc., but as far as a test that anyone can do in an instant, it's not terrible.
Even surgeons use it: after a certain BMI point, operating on obese patients is highly discouraged. Could surgeries still be done? Sure, and they are. But there have to be generalized boundaries under which to work or you're not doing medicine... You're just poking around.
You've hit on a key point--the BMI is ideal for looking at extremes. Of course, everyone is different--weightlifters and other athletes are obviously going to have a thrown off BMI, for example. I think looking at weight history is one of the key things we never seem to talk about. If a person is slightly underweight but has been consistently and does not demonstrate any unhealthy behaviors, that's probably normal for them. Same with being slightly overweight--look at the history, the build, the behaviors, their health measures...some people are just going to be a little under or a little over. It when we get into the extreme territory, IMO, that flags are clearly raised. No one should treat the BMI like a shrine--I've had a few clients get pretty sick trying to work their way under the 18.5 mark as a "status symbol."
So, BMI isn't "bullshit" and weight can vary healthily between builds
BUT: If your BMI is very high you have a statistically higher chance of being fat than you have of being a professional body builder
similarly, if your BMI is very low, you have a statistically higher chance of being underweight than you do of being healthy weight
I don't get why your being downvoted.
Bechdel. Gender Wars. Duh
Also calling a missed meal away from underweight "ideal" is not smart.
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