Yes, I can admit it. Until a few months ago, I watched... Days of Our Lives. I can feel you all judging me. A little back story:
My mother used to watch Days of Our Lives with her mother and then she started watching it with me when I was a kid. Not the best family legacy ever, but I felt there was a sense of tradition. I never knew my maternal grandmother, so I felt it connected me to the women of my family. I've watched it on and off since I was a kid.
Days of Our Lives used to have a few fat characters. One of them was the always-scheming Sami Brady, played by Alison Sweeney. That name might sound familiar to you as the host of Biggest Loser. Once upon a time, Alison Sweeney was a fat teenager. And then she wasn't. Now she's dedicated to "helping" people become like her. I used to love Sami, because she had been fat. She was fat and on TV. If she could do it, I could too. My mom used to use her as an example. "She used to be chubby, you could be like her."
When she started doing Biggest Loser, I just ignored it. She also briefly did Fear Factor, if memory serves, and I paid that little mind as well, I wrote them both off as part of the reality craze. However, during Days of Our Lives, a show filled with thin people to begin with (The only fat woman character currently on is a black nurse who is desexualized and portrayed as a buttinsky, mothering kind of character. Offensive on so many levels.) they started showing more and more ads for Biggest Loser. And I kept getting more and more fed up.
The last straw, however, came not from a Biggest Loser ad, but from a PSA by, you guessed it, Alison Sweeney. In it she reads parodies Little Miss Muffet:
"What if Little Miss Muffet had been sitting on her tuffet eating fried foods?! Then she would have been too unhealthy to run away from that spider"
I am not making this up. Oh no! Not fried foods! THE DEVIL INCARNATE! Guess what Ms. Sweeney? Fried foods, are still--gasp-- foods. Fried chicken still has protein and carbs and vitamins and all kinds of good things. Mozzarella sticks, a personal favorite of mine still have calcium. Oh and by the way, one meal of fried foods does not an unhealty person make. The PSA is a "The More You Know" and it goes on to tell parents that they can teach their kids to eat healthy and be active. Sure, villifying food, that's a great way to start.
I'm reminded of an article that bounced around the Fat-o-Sphere recently about how children as young as ten are vomiting to lose weight. . The article presents the horrifying facts and then suggests the answers include making sure your kids get enough sleep and don't let them eat fried foods. Nowhere does it suggest loving your child, telling them that they are beautiful no matter what or encouraging them to eat a variety of foods intuitively. I mean unless they are just worried that fried foods are harder to throw up, since they seem to be encouraging this behavior, not trying to stop it.
Food is not the enemy here. The diet industry is the enemy, the advertising industry is the enemy, Alison Sweeney is the enemy. It took me a long time to realize it, but she had a choice, she could have chosen not to diet and been a role model for fat girls like me everywhere. Hell, she could even have still dieted and been a role model to fat kids everywhere. Instead, she chose to help add to the disordered eating and bullying of fat people everywhere. The saddest part is, she didn't need to become famous on the backs of fat people, she was talented enough to do it on her own. I wish someone would have told her.
No comments:
Post a Comment