, has published an excellent article on why shaming fat kids for their weight will not make them thin.Read it here.
One warning though: do not read the comments, 99% of which go even further with the shaming and blaming than the vile anti-childhood obesity campaign in Georgia that he is writing about. If you haven't realized it already, all fat people are lazy, gluttonous slobs. Or so the comments tell us.
I just wanted to cry...or perhaps rip their smug throats out.
Read the article. Skip the comments. Do your blood pressure a favour.
Thanks for the link. Despite your warning, I peeked at the comments. Mistake! You are right. Sanity. Sanity.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the BP warning; I took your caution seriously and probably saved my serenity. I would love to see the imaginary research that reveals how a campaign of shame and abusive bullying serves anyone's interest--except to fill the bulging and grossly overweight pockets of the industries (including health "care") that feed off the most vulnerable and stigmatized among us. Our solidarity threatens oppressive forces more than anything else. I believe we need to expand our understanding of the vast, underlying struggle for power without becoming distracted or fixated on individual battles (campaigns). Thus, Campos analogy with ongoing other "campaigns" to "inspire" economic and social improvement by appealing to personal growth initiatives is CRUCIAL to expose the dynamics and rhetoric of domination. But his suggestion (people whose worldviews are threatened will ignore the evidence) is incomplete. They don't "ignore", when threatened, instead they escalate their strategies--trying again and again to predict, manipulate, and control the outcomes they seek. Watch closely and you will observe the predators on the run.
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