Making it Cutesy to be Fat at a Young Age

Girls Plus section at JC Penney

Let me say this up front:  I don’t drop all the blame in the fat little kids laps.  Ultimately, I fault the parents.  When the kids are still at an age where they can’t get around on their own, don’t have money to buy fast food or crap at grocery/convenience stores, and rely on their parents to set examples and rules, it’s a failure of the parents.  Of course, the government wants to get into all other aspects of our lives, so I’m really not sure why they turn a blind eye to the amount of negligence it takes to allow young children to become fat.

Laying into parents and government isn’t where I was going when I started this post, though.  Today I was at JC Penney with my wife looking for clothes for our daughters.  We browsed their section, then noticed another section of kids clothes across the walkway.  We headed over and noticed that, at first glance, the sizes were the same as those we were just browsing.  Then I noticed the signs, like those in the photo posted above, for the Girls Plus section.  Really?  Not only is it ridiculous that they need an entire section of the kids department for plus sizes for kids, but I find it down right offensive that they are trying to make it “cute” to be fat.  I get the plus size sections for adults.  There are a LOT of folks who’ve decided they’d rather feed their faces and do no exercise than make healthy choices.  Kids, on the other hand, should not be encouraged to live that way.

It’s a front page story when a 2-year old weighs 80 pounds and looks like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, but when they are fat at 6, 8, or 10 years old, nobody seems to have a problem with it.  Well, someone does… ME!  It’s a sad state of affairs in this country when we are allowing our children, in growing percentages, to become fat earlier and earlier.  I don’t think I really need to go into where it leads, right?  All it takes is a quick Google or Bing search to find a number of links to reports and studies on childhood obesity.  Bottom line:  it isn’t good.

I know I said earlier that I hadn’t intended bashing parents and government to be the main point of this, but it’s difficult not to go that way.  Kids are kids.  They are going to do what is fun and/or makes them feel good unless acted upon by external forces… parents, teachers, and advertisers.  We, as a society, should tell the stores that we aren’t happy with them trying to make it “cutesy” to be fat as a kid, but there’s little chance of that.  We don’t have the collective balls to do more than pay kids lip service about their weight and how bad it is; why in the world would I expect anyone to think it’s wrong of the stores to make money off of them.