Childhood obesity

New York "socialite" Dara-Lynn Weiss has taken a beating lately because she published an article in Vogue about putting her 7-year old daughter on a diet.

The main thrust of the criticisms that have been leveled at Dara-Lynn are, in summary, something like this:

(1) Children should be left to enjoy a happy childhood and not forced to become self-conscious about food at such a young age - teenage and adulthood will already bring enough psychological food-related problems to American women. Dara-Lynn's attitude is likely to produce an eating disorder in an innocent, happy child.

(2) In spite of the doctor's recommendation and Dara-Lynn's own remarks, her true reason for putting her child on a diet was not health-based, but appearance based: what she really wanted was for the little girl to to look and feel pretty. So really she was pandering to one of our shallower tendencies, namely to overrate the importance of looks and also the importance of what other people think of us.


(3) Dara-Lynn's methods, which contained many elements that may have been humiliating for the child, such as scolding her in front of others and publishing an article on her weight problems in a fashion magazine, may have created present and future psychological problems for the child concerning all kinds of aspects, such as her self-consciousness about her weight, her looks, her mother's love for her, or her relationship with her friends.

Reading over the dozens, even hundreds of angry comments reacting to her Vogue article, I want to break a lance in defence of Dara-Lynn.

To start with - and this is the easiest and simplest objection - those who say that children should be left free to enjoy their childhood and not be put on diets are in straightforward contradiction with every piece of medical information coming our way.

From Wikipedia (and Dara-Lynn quotes this in her article): "There are plenty of statistics available that prove child obesity in America is at epidemic levels. In the last 30 years the number of children who are overweight has tripled to 15%....The mixture of fast food diets along with sedentary lifestyles is creating a generation of children who are facing very adult health issues like high cholesterol, diabetes and heart disease." (If this blog entry is on the Maths on Trial blog at all, it's because this is STATISTICAL evidence that the problem faced by Dara-Lynn is a real and prevalent one!)

Is there really anyone out there who says that Dara-Lynn should have left her daughter to run straight into the jungle of health problems described here, when in fact, mother and daughter working together could actually do something about it? I don't know, but the "leave that poor child alone" attitude is really not convincing.Secondly, there's the psychological aspect directly concerning food. Many commentators say that Dara-Lynn's behavior, especially in the kind of social circles - Greenwich village intelligentsia - where she and her daughter live and move, are probably going to produce eating disorders in the child, and that in fact, these disorders are just as dangerous and actually more likely than the cholesterol and other problems cited above.

But, these comments ignore the fact that an obese child already has an eating disorder! In fact, I really don't believe that there is any difference between children who become fat because they are constantly hungry and have grown over the years to develop habits of eating very large portions and a large amount of carbohydrates, and grownups who behave the same way. Chronic overeating and the inability to recognize the signals of fullnes do form an eating disorder, whatever the age. Many adults fight with this disorder more or less all the time, and dream of some sadly non-existent simple and healthy form of appetite control to replace the missing awareness. Addiction to food, especially addiction to carbohydrates, exists. Everyone knows that little kids can suffer from this kind of eating disorder just as much as anyone else; most everyone probably even knows a kid who does. So a parent of a child with this problem is really caught between one eating disorder that already exists, and another one that may be more dangerous for the health, but on the other hand may not ever occur. Indeed, although some overweight people may go overboard in dieting and eventually become anorexic, the large majority will just manage to control their eating desires enough to reach a healthy weight, and then yo-yo up and down over the months and years as addiction battles with will-power. Yes, this is an eating disorder too, but it is less dangerous than obesity, not more, and it has its satisfactions, too, both when good things get eaten and when the diets reach their goal.

And this leads into the third reason for which I think that many of Dara-Lynn's critics are missing the beat: it is absurdly and even horridly wrong to pretend to believe or imagine that in a Western country at least, an obese child lives a happy, tranquil, psychologically undisturbed life until their parents cruelly interfere. If you don't believe me, have a look at the interview videos of Britain's new tenor star, Jonathan Antoine. He describes the suffering of growing up obese, and doesn't leave the slightest doubt that it is no enviable condition.

Wikipedia's page on obese children says it all: "Children who are obese also must confront the many psychological issues that being overweight creates. Overweight children often have low self-esteem, which is made worse when they are unable to participate in normal activities such as sports or on the playground... Obese children are teased, bullied and made to feel inferior on a number of levels."

So, maybe Dara-Lynn was not the one creating a worrying, humiliating psychological environment in the mind of her happy little girl. Maybe what she was actually trying to do was PROTECT the child from one. Yes, she started the diet, not just because the doctor said to, but because the little girl cried when a boy in school called her fat. But why is that a bad thing? All she was doing was waking up to the suffering her daughter was going to endure and was already starting to endure: exactly that psychological suffering from teasing and bullying expressed in the Wikipedia passage above.

How can a parent in Dara-Lynn's situation protect her little girl?

Should she just tell her that she has to live with it, ignore it, rise above it, and not listen to what other people say?

Should she teach her that being overweight is just part of "the way she is", and should be respected like any other physical or character trait?

What about teaching the girl that she can DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT? And helping her do it, and prove to herself that SHE CAN DO IT, that she can OVERCOME HER PROBLEMS?!

I have no connections to publishing in glossy magazines, but minus that aspect, if I were in Dara-Lynn's shoes, I think I would try to do the same thing that she did. I'd do it with love but also with strictness and a clear goal in mind. My own personal quirks, foibles and problems would play a role, as they do in all of my interactions with other people, all the time. I wouldn't be any more capable than she was to predict the long-term outcome. But I'd still do it. Good for her.