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

[sgamadison.livejournal.com]

I saw this, and my first reaction was how horrible to humiliate small children on what is supposed to be a fun holiday. It will serve no purpose but to scar some kid for life. I also strongly suspect her home will be in for some of the worst 'tricks' this year.

If she wanted to be so sanctimonious about it--don't celebrate Halloween at ALL. Many people don't for a variety of reasons.

Oh, and I have a fat shaming mother. Three out of four of her children have serious eating disorders.

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, those fat-shaming parents. Nothing like your mother literally saying, 'for shame!' when you get a slice of cake, or your dad patting your stomach and asking you if you really need to eat something...

::sigh:: You have my sympathy, my friend. Even if you're (hopefully) not one of the children with an eating disorder, it still sucks.

I really do wonder what the hell this woman thinks gave her the right to comment on the appearance of someone else's children? I'm curious as to whether she actually did it in the end, after all the mostly negative publicity.