One of our baby girls is fat, in the 99th percentile for her age. She is super cute and sweet. Lately, she has been sick with various breathing issues, so she has been reluctant to take her bottles. Normally, she’ll take 4 ounces of formula at lunch and 8 ounces in the afternoon. Today, I was lucky to get to her take 5 all day.
There was a substitute covering a lunch break in my classroom today. We emphasized to her that we need to keep trying to get the baby to drink her bottle until she finished it. She said, “Why are you guys so worried about taking her bottle?”
My coworker replied, “That’s where all her nutrients are. She needs the nutrients and the water.”
To which the substitute replied, “But she’s so fat. She doesn’t need it.”
Thin privilege is a small, pretty baby getting better childcare because the caretaker doesn’t think she’s too fat to be allowed to eat.
This reminds me of a cousin of mine who ended up with her kids being taken away from her by social services for a number of reasons but mostly for nearly killing her baby daughter. How?
By starving her. She insisted that her baby was ‘too fat’ and had an aim to remove any and all ‘chubbyness’ so her baby would be thin. She’d already been warned by her doctor about the baby not getting enough food, but insisted she knew best.
After several months of this her baby passed out cold one day and was rushed into hospital where the doctors found her to have severe malnutrition, a low body temperature and low pulse rate. They asked my cousin what she’d been feeding her daughter and she said “one bottle of skimmed milk a day. I don’t want her growing up fat.”
Even after nearly killing her daughter my cousin maintained her view that fat = bad and ended up with all her kids taken from her because she was starving them and neglecting them.
When your fatphobia leads you to starving your own children then you’ve got serious problems.
(Note. She still, to this day, maintains the view that she was right and the doctors were wrong. “They just want fat kids so they can keep employed treating them for all those diseases that being fat causes.” = her actual words.)
My mom had me dieting with her when I was eleven. She had me eating less than 600 calories a day because she was worried I was going to “get huge.” She even grounded me once because she found out my friends were bringing me lunches! I ended up passing out, going to the ER, and getting two IVs at once BC I was so goddamn dehydrated. Soooooo surprised they didn’t call child services… And looking back, this was the root of my anorexia. I’m nearly 22 and still fighting it. Please don’t starve your fucking children.
For fucks sake babies are SUPPOSED to be fat, what is wrong with people? It’s just stored energy, and growing children need stored energy – an 11 year old is just about to hit some major growing years. Damn.
Fatphobia
Is
Real
and it kills
This is no joke. people will literally starve their own babies cause they don’t want them getting fat. A parent brought in their six month old baby who was having breathing issues and kept getting sick. the parent was asked if the baby was eating regularly and the parent straight up told the doctor that they only feed the baby once a day. ONCE A DAY. A FUCKING BABY. they even had the nerve to say because they didn’t want the baby to get fat. people like this are real. they would rather have a dead baby than a fat one.
My youngest son is a very big boy and has been since he was born. When he was 10 months old I took him for his well-baby check and vaccinations. The nurse noted his weight and said, quite casually, “He is in the 99th percentile for weight so he is at risk for obesity. You may want to keep an eye on that.” I said, “He is exclusively breastfed. He refuses to eat any solids yet.” What did she expect me to do? What would it mean to “keep an eye on” an exclusively breastfed baby’s weight?
She backed off saying, ‘Well he looks fine!” – proving once again that weight bias is not truly about health – But I know many other parents who are not as informed as I am about weight science and size diversity would react to this interaction by policing their child’s food intake, if not as an infant, then when he was an older child. This is exactly the type of seemingly-inconsequential interaction that starts the ball rolling on a lifetime of dieting, disordered eating, negative body image, and weight-based abuse for too many fat people.
Years later when he was five, another doctor measured his weight and height and commented that he is off the charts on both, but “at least he is in proportion.” And if he was not “in proportion,” I am sure I would have been advised once again to “watch his weight.”
I no longer allow healthcare providers to weight my children unless it is absolutely medically necessary. They are unable to control their weight talk, which is a known harm for children.
We need to completely eliminate weight talk from medicine, especially when it comes to children. Even the smallest exposure can have terrible consequences.
Wtf…
A friend from college had been going to the doctor because she was having trouble breathing. She was told to lose weight.
Over the course of several years, she went back to the doctors time and time again, telling them that she’d been sticking to the diet but because of her breathing problems she had been unable to even walk for more than 20 minutes at a time.
The doctor got her into an exercise programme and told her that she just needed to really try to lose weight because that was clearly the reason for her breathing problems.
By the time they found the tumour on her lungs, it was inoperable. She only lived three months after diagnosis. She was 25.
She’d had the tumour for over five years.
The doctor was so focused on the fact that my friend was “fat”, that they refused to look for any underlying cause.
They killed her.
Weight-first treatment KILLS. Fatphobia KILLS.
I have 2 scary stories to share about fatphobic doctors & parents harming their childs/patients’ health:
1. The 4 years old daughter of a friend of mine came to our house to spend the weekend. She gave me a letter from her mom that said that the child was in a glutenfree diet because she was getting ‘awfully fat’ when eating cookies or bread (my celiac ass; who gets dhiarrea and loses a scary amount of weight whenever I eat something with gluten was like ’???’).
You can bet that I went to the supermarket with the kid and told her ‘go & take whatever you feel like eating’ and the poor child came back smiling with her arms full of biscuits and cupcakes.
She didn’t got sick (as a celiac would get) and told me later that she hated the diet her mother made her follow; because her cousins didn’t had to pass through that.
And what’s the scariest thing about this story? Her mother was a NURSE. A fucking nurse who didn’t have a clue of the harm that she was doing to her daughter’s body!
2. My little sister started to feel fatigued and dizzy at 9 years old. She felt nauseated at the sight of food and had abdominal pain that increased with physical activity.
Mom got her to the ER and the doctor dismissed it saying: ‘she’s fat and probably is feeling ill after eating too much burgers, get her to make some exercise and she will be better in no time’.My mom didn’t felt ok with the diagnosis and took my sister with a second doctor who also told her that ‘the child was just fat’.
My sister’s skin was starting to get yellow as the days passed and the abdominal pain was getting awful so my mom (heaven bless her!) got her to the ER for the third time:
SHE HAD STAGE 4 HEPATITIS AND WAS ABOUT TO DIE.
She survived after a long and painful recovery who involved being in bed for a whole year (remember that we’re speaking of a 9 years old child). Luckily they saved her liver and she didn’t went through a transplant… but let this sink:
If it weren’t for my mother, fatphobia would have killed her. Fatphobia kills kids and teenagers, fatphobia kills inocent people everyday. It treats human beings as lesser than others and hurts them in their most vulnerable times.
It’s a real shame that we all have so much stories to share about this issue. A REAL SHAME.
Future doctors, interns, and residents following me:
FUCKING TAKE NOTE OF THIS!
Don’t let bias against your fat patients kill them!
i’d really like my thin followers to reblog this if you can. fat people are already here for each other, we need you guys to help us out too. this is something i never see anyone actually talking about in-depth, and it’s disappointing. be there for your fat siblings, too.
I know I’m That Guy™ , but it is possible to advocate for social reform without sweeping under the rug the very real tragedies and human rights violations that have existed under communist regimes
I get that this doesn’t fit your edgelord communist aesthetic but it costs $0 to reblog this and let your followers know you aren’t advocating to repeat the mistakes of the past
Very tired of our lives being seen as not worth living.
[Image Description: A two-part illustration in monochrome dark blue. The illustration features five disabled people: A cane user, a manual wheelchair user, a person with an invisible disability, a person with a prosthetic leg, and a power chair user. The first illustration focuses on their feet, captioned “We are NOT disposable.” The second illustration features their smiling faces, captioned “We are not a fate worse than death.”]
Even when pharmacists do let people access contraception, whether emergency contraception or condoms or prescription birth control pills, the process isn’t always free of judgment. In a series of recent online discussions, people across the country have begun to share stories of the stigma they’ve experienced. As many have pointed out, this can be especially damaging to teens.
DO YOU SEE THIS? PHARMACY EMPLOYEES IN THE U.S. ARE NOT LEGALLY ALLOWED TO DO THIS. THAT GOES FOR THE PEOPLE AT THE FRONT AS WELL AS PEOPLE IN WHITE COATS BEHIND THE CAGE.
If an employee in a pharmacy makes a snide comment – Front store workers, pharmacists, or Pharmacy Techs give you shit? Gently (Or not so gently) remind them that the waiver they signed upon being hired legally binds them from commenting on your purchase, as it is a violation of privacy laws. Doing so is grounds for INSTANT termination and hefty fines.
Pharmacy workers (white coats) are legally obligated to ASK if you need an explanation of how medication works and any side effects, any medication conflicts etc. If you decline, THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED AT ALL TO MAKE SNIDE REMARKS OR FARTHER COMMENT ON YOUR PURCHASE. FRONT STORE EMPLOYEES CAN NOT AT ALL COMMENT IN ANY WAY, IN ANY STORE WITH A PHARMACY IN IT.
Know your rights. If this shit happens? Call them the fuck out and ask to speak to a manager. Get worked up. Cause a scene. Threaten a Lawsuit. If you see this happening to someone else, and they seem to be struggling, speak up for them.
As a Pharmacy worker, you bet your ass I’ll protect you and your privacy. IT’S MY JOB.
REBLOG THIS
I DONT CARE WHAT YOUR BLOG IS
THIS IS SOMETHING EVERYONE SHOULD SEE
Hi, yes, as someone who has a pharmacist for a brother I can confirm that they are not allowed to comment on what people are taking for medication or asking for in any capacity.
WHAT THEY SHOULD DO IS ASK IF YOU’RE ON OTHER MEDICATIONS SO THEY CAN MAKE SURE NOTHING WILL MESS WITH THE FUCKING EFFECTIVENESS OF SAID PILL.
You may have heard about the efforts in Europe to reform copyright law. The debate has been ongoing in the European Parliament for months. If approved next week, these new regulations would require us to automatically filter and block content that you upload without meaningful consideration of your right to free expression.
We respect the copyrights and trademarks of others, and we take all reports seriously to ensure that your creative expression is protected. We make this clear in our Community Guidelines. There’s already a legal framework that works and is fair: Todaywe take down posts and media that contain allegedly infringing content when we receive a valid DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown request. We also provide clear-cut ways for people to fight back if they believe their removed content was not a true violation. These instances are monitored and reported and live in our biannual transparency report.
The suggestion to use automated filters for issues of copyright is short-sighted at best and harmful at worst. Automated filters are unable to determine whether a use should be considered “fair use” under the law and are unable to determine whether a use is authorized by a license agreement. They are unable to distinguish legitimate parody, satire, or even your own personal pictures that could be matched with similar photographs that have been protected by someone else. We don’t believe that technology should replace human judgment.
Tumblr is and always has been a place for creative expression, and these new regulations would only make it harder for you to express yourself with the freedom and clarity you do so now.
If you access Tumblr from Europe and want to act, you can find more information on saveyourinternet.eu.
Please reblog this as much as you reblogged the posts about Net Neutrality.
If Article 13 is approved, European People might be basically banned from uploading any fan content.
You won’t get new fanfics from people in Europe.
You won’t get new gifs from people in Europe.
You won’t get new fanart from people in Europe.
Because they’ll be automatically filtered and blocked!
We might leave Tumblr and other fandom pages.
And if we’re getting all our content blocked?
You might lose some of your favourite followers/mutuals.
You might not get to read the rest of that fic you’re dying to read – simply because the writer lives in the wrong country.
So do whatever you can to help us stop this.
Reblog this.
CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES TO TELL THEM YOU DON’T WANT ARTICLE 13 TO BE APPROVED IF YOU’RE EUROPEAN! DO IT VIA THE HOMEPAGE
Dr. Willie Parker, who is trained as a gynecologist and OBGYN, is a hero for the pro-choice movement because he’s honest about the undiscussed aspects of getting (or not getting) an abortion. Watch how he gives a consultation.
That last statement about regret is so important, because so many people don’t understand what it is or what causes it. Anti-choicers exploit this by manipulating pregnant people and creating doubt, which only increases the likelihood of regret, no matter what decision the pregnant person makes. You know what is best for you, even if it takes some time to figure it out.
artherra 