"I don' wanna get FAT"

This is sad and horrifying, if it's true.

I don't know how true or widespread it is, but I have noticed in my Youth Group, a number of the girls - and even a few of the boys - refuse to take the dessert, or won't eat chips, or sometimes won't even eat ANY of the dinner on offer. Their explanation being, "I'm on a diet" or "I don't want to get fat."

(Sometimes it's that they've already eaten. And I admit, I gnash my teeth a little over the kids who walk in with Burger King bags and eat their "separate" food "separately" because one of the goals we are currently failing at is to be cohesive as a group, and when kids don't even EAT together...well, that's a problem).

These are not fat kids. These are normal-sized and even skinny kids.

I also remember my youngest cousin going through phases of that - she was in sports and I suspect the pressure came from her coach. When she was 9 and 10, she was so skinny I was afraid to hug her - afraid I'd break one of her bones. She was a naturally slender kid but I'm afraid she was also restricting her eating to stay even slimmer. (Fortunately puberty redistributed things, her parents stressed to her that some flesh is necessary to health, and she looks more within the normal range of variation now, and she eats reasonably).

I'm kind of fat myself, which is why stories like this make me shudder. I've been in that self-hating place for my body looking the way it does. I've done (in the past) things like writing down EVERY food I ate and not "allowing" myself any food another person might not "approve" of on the list. I've gone through my house and thrown out all the cookies, crackers, butter, everything that was high calorie, and tried to live with only skim milk, lowfat cheese, and salad makings in the fridge.

And it's a miserable way to be. It is the worst kind of tyranny to live under, the tyranny of your own mind.

I can still unfortunately slip into the old self-hating patterns if I let myself - if I listen to too many "Fat Peoplez Gonna Die and It's a Good Thing Because Theyz So UGGGGLYYYY" stories on the news. Or if I even read some of the online health forums, where everything gets turned into a "Bash the typical American diet" or "Bash people who are not in the Underweight range of the BMI scale," or "Bash people who don't devote 8 hours a day to exercise and eat nothing but raw foods" topic.

So I worry a little bit that the coming Administration, in a misguided goal of "making everyone healthy" will buy into the idea that extreme slimness = good health, and no other combinations are possible. I hope we don't see more girls (and boys) going into disordered behavior, more people whose bodies just are prone to being larger demonized (and my big fear, being closed out of health-insurance plans), people being taught that food is something to fear and not to enjoy...

I suspect more teen girls have died from complications of anorexia and bulimia than have died from complications of being too fat. (And yes: I understand that eating disorders are a mental disorder, that they are related to OCD, that they can be helped by medications, and so, are not purely the fault of a screwed-up society telling people to be thin at any cost. But I know if I get "triggered" into feeling bad about my body by news stories, could it not affect someone who is more susceptible to that sort of behavior and attitude?)

I had a friend in high school who was bulimic. It was a horrible thing to see, it was horrible to hear her talk about herself that way. She has since recovered, and I'm glad. But I hate to think of other little girls going down that path when their bodies begin to change - when their God-given fertility starts up, along with the attendant deposition of fat - especially in a culture that tells women that their value is largely tied to their being skinny and pretty.

(And bringing God into it again....to tell young women that their "value" is in their outward appearance is, literally, a wicked thing... one thing I try to instill in my youth group kids is that we ALL have value, we are ALL children of God. What we look like, how much money our families have, what we do for a living - it doesn't matter. We are still important and valuable. But it's so hard working against the cultural influences that would deny the inherent value of some individuals).