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“When we teach our children that their bodies need to be small to be good, we are also teaching them that their bodies need to be controlled. They learn that left to their own devices; bodies are untrustworthy, unpredictable, and dangerous.” (Fat Talk, Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture, Sole-Smith, 2023)

Mental health is mental wealth. Recognizing May as Mental Health Awareness Month, I examine the connection between bullying and obesity.

An Italian study published online in November 2015 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4659571/) suggests that “severely obese children and adolescents suffered not only from verbal victimization but also physical victimization and exclusion from group activities.” It further found that weight categories were unrelated, and males were likelier to be both victims and bullies. It defined bullying as intentional abuse against peers aimed at causing harm.

It is now 2023, and instead of addressing the connection between bullying and obesity, we have, as a culture, intentionally or not, taken up the role of bully. Not only in classrooms and on playgrounds but even in the White House when Former First Lady Hillary Clinton joined with Surgeon General C. Evert Koop for the “Shape up America” campaign as a “war against obesity,” serving up the message that “diet and inactivity patterns” cause obesity-related deaths and disease.

When Michelle Obama took on this same “war” with her “Let’s Get Moving” program, influenced by prepresidential days when her husband commented in a Parents Magazine interview that “Malia was getting chubby.”

The First Lady repeatedly said it was every parent’s responsibility to address obesity and blamed parents by saying children with an obese parent are likely to be obese. She caused parents to feel shamed and failures, particularly mothers if their child was fat. Calling out the nation’s parents this way was tantamount to bullying because it was a focused, aggressive message.

Kids listen to adult messaging and make their interpretations, making it easy to understand why they believe being fat is something to be ridiculed and justifies bullying.

When we are shamed in any manner, our minds absorb this message as a danger signal and interpret it as something that needs to be fixed and transformed. If we can’t do that, it wears on us mentally until it may lead to suicide ideation, punishing ourselves by causing physical harm to our bodies or becoming both the bully and the victim.

Messaging persists that “fatness” is because we aren’t active, eat too much, or are fat because we want to be (said in judgment). Anyone who has struggled with their weight, and the ideal weight is an individualized target, will tell you there is no easy solution.

Weight can be related to many causes, whether we need better eating habits, emotional issues need healing, or mental or physical issues need addressing. The bottom line is that it’s no one’s business but the person seeking a remedy. Indeed, we need better messaging that our appearance does not make us better or lesser. We are who we are, and all humans are equal.