As a mother of a 7 yr old daughter I find this article completely repulsive. While I in no way claim to be a perfect parent, I lose my temper, get distracted and mess up in more ways than I know. But to shame your child into losing weight and then write an article about it? Vogue I am so not impressed, don’t we already give girls enough body issues now mothers should be making them self conscious as well?
Why is the focus on a number on the scale? If the focus was on whole natural foods and fruit and veggies, mixed with healthy outdoor physical activity wouldn’t our children be learning a healthy lifestyle and not self loathing?
What do you think?
Vogue’s Dara-Lynn Weiss and her daughter Bea went to the doctor, who then told her mother that the young girl was overweight. For her age and height, Bea was in the 99th percentile of BMI and could be at risk for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes.
A great segway to talk to your child about a healthy lifestyle and habits? How about a guilt-filled, traumatic diet, public shaming in front of family and friends , and then an article about it for Vogue! Dara-Lynn’s piece titled “Weight Watcher” was featured in the April, 2012 issue of Vogue (with Jennifer Lopez on the cover).
Here are a few of her must share moments as a mother:
I once reproachfully deprived Bea of her dinner after learning that her observation of French Heritage Day at school involved nearly 800 calories of Brie, filet mignon, baguette, and chocolate. I stopped letting her enjoy Pizza Fridays when she admitted to adding a corn salad as a side dish one week. I dressed down a Starbucks barista when he professed ignorance of the nutrition content of the kids’ hot chocolate whose calories are listed as “120-210″ on the menu board: Well, which is it? When he couldn’t provide an answer, I dramatically grabbed the drink out of my daughter’s hands, poured it into the garbage, and stormed out.
I cringe when I recall the many times I had it out with Bea over a snack given to her by a friend’s parent or caregiver … rather than direct my irritation at the grown-up, I often derided Bea for not refusing the inappropriate snack. And there have been many awkward moments at parties, when Bea has wanted to eat, say, both cookies and cake, and I’ve engaged in a heated public discussion about why she can’t.
What’s worse is that Dara-Lynn freely admits to her own dysfunction when it comes to body weight and self-image. She’s spent the “past three decades” obsessed with her body, and trying to achieve some distorted version of perfection and self-worth. She’d beg “doctor friends” for appetite supressants and took laxatives as a teenager. She says in Vogue:
I have not ingested any food, looked at a restaurant menu, or been sick to the point of vomiting without silently launching a complicated mental algorithm about how it will affect my weight.
And yet, while she admits she had no right to be counseling her daughter Bea on such matters, Dara-Lynn did it anyway.
But Dara-Lynn still wants us to feel sorry for HER, not Bea.
It is grating to have someone constantly complain of being hungry, or refuse to eat what she’s supposed to, month after month. [It's also] exhausting managing someone’s diet, especially when her brother has completely different nutritional needs…no one likes to see a child or her mother humiliated over something as trivial as a few dozen calories.
For Bea, the achievement is bittersweet. When I ask her if she likes how she looks now, if she’s proud of what she’s accomplished, she says yes…Even so, the person she used to be still weighs on her. Tears of pain fill her eyes as she reflects on her yearlong journey. “That’s still me,” she says of her former self. “I’m not a different person just because I lost sixteen pounds.” I protest that, indeed, she is different. At this moment, that fat girl is a thing of the past. A tear rolls down her beautiful cheek, past the glued-in feather. “Just because it’s in the past,” she says, “doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
The “person” she used to be weighs on her? The poor girl had a few extra pounds on her frame while some steps to get healthier were needed why is a 7yr old feel shame about her weight. It makes me sad that in writing this and reflecting Dara-Lynn doesn’t seem to take any accountability for the shame she has given her daughter to carry.
Posted by:
Erin
Friday, March 23rd, 2012 at 12:12pm
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