It takes a village to witch-hunt a child.

[taste_is_sweet]

Tell me, my dear ones, what would you do if, on Halloween, your child came home with this note in her treat bag?

All that yummy fat shaming!

Oh yes, that is real. It's also everywhere on the internet, though to check its legitimcacy I found it here at USA Today and here at Global News in Canada.

The woman, who probably regrets sending the letter to her local radio station, apparently sees it as her duty to solve the problem of childhood obesity by refusing to give the lil' chunky monkeys candy one night a year. Not only that, but by informing the obviously ignorant parents that their child is too fat to deserve candy. On Halloween.

You can probably tell what I think about this, but the first thing I thought when I saw this wasn't 'that's mean', but 'that's stupid'. How can this woman purport to know which child is 'moderately obese'? And what, exactly, is her criteria? Unlike adults, determining the BMI range for children is far more complicated. Worse, it's not even terribly accurate. If you can't tell if a child is at a healthy weight by measuring, how can you tell just by looking? And who or what gave her the right anyway?

I'm not sure how she thinks this is going to help. First of all, it's pretty damn likely that the parents already know. Second, telling a kid that they're too fat for candy isn't motivating, it's humiliating. And--which I'm sure comes as a big surprise to absolutely no one--fat shaming doesn't work. And it certainly won't work if some person the child likely doesn't even know shoves a note into their treat bag.

As other people said in comments on the sites carrying this story: if you don't want to contribute to childhood obesity, then don't give candy. Give stickers, or raisins, or pencils. Or turn off the porch light and don't give anything at all.

Personally, I'd much rather be known as the stingy neighbor who's never home on Halloween than the bitch who humiliated someone else's child. Though she might end up known as the house everybody toiletpapers or eggs. After all, it takes a village to do some serious pranking.

Comments

[brumeier.livejournal.com]

I hate, hate, hate people who think they are so much better and wiser than everyone else. Does she actually think a child would be grateful to receive that note in their bag. "Wow, I never really thought about it before, but she's right. I'm going to eat a salad right now." Yeah. No.

There are a myriad of reasons for children to be overweight that have nothing to do with overeating. I wouldn't even begin to judge someone based on weight for just that reason. ::shakes head::

There's always someone out there ready to ruin a kid's holiday. That's why we go trick-or-treating as a group - no-one who sees my big, scary hubby is going to pull something like that. LOL! And even the church people give a treat along with their little pamphlets!

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

It must be cool to have a scary husband having your back like that. :) I'm just glad that I can't imagine anyone in my sub-division behaving that way.

And yeah, that's another good point--how dare she assume that she knows the exact reason for the kid not being svelte? A lot of kids get wide before they have growth spurts, just as one example.

Crazy, mean woman.