Back when we were kids, the "fat kid" was the exception. And unless the "fat kid" was also the "smart kid" or the "funny kid", he was also the kid with no friends. Which is a lot of peer pressure on any kid. And likely it either made those fat kids slim down eventually or go into therapy (or both). Was that a better system, in the end, than the acceptance and political-correctness we have now? In other words, did teasing create healthier kids?
Today, there is safety in numbers. Increasingly sedentary, kids today are fatter than in previous decades, and they have plenty of supersized adult role models to look to. Fatness, despite our constant cultural striving for thinness, has become far closer to the norm than ever. "It’s interesting ... that whereas being
overweight was once socially risky, now it’s more or less just one of
the norms of student life."
Not that I'm necessarily suggesting that we encourage our kids to get all Lord of the Flies and reduce their fatter members to puddles of blubbering blubber, but what about it, really? If kids (and parents) knew there was a steeper social price to pay for scarfing down a steady diet of Doritos and Twinkies, would they start to think more carefully about lifestyle choices? Could a whole social revolution begin right in the classroom, when just-teased kids go home and demand a change?
Or would that just set kids up for a lifetime of perceived failure and ridicule?
