Fat jokes are not funny
When we make and laugh at jokes about weight, our children are listening
Montreal — The children are listening. They hear our every word and they are more attuned to our tone than anyone else on Earth.
No matter how careful we are to tell them they’re exactly as they should be, they hear us bemoaning the fit of our favourite pair of jeans. They’re reading over our shoulders when we laugh-cry over the 100th “Quarantine 15” fat joke to come across our social media feed. Except it isn’t funny. Weight jokes are never funny, and especially not now, when the children are listening.
Children of all ages, genders and sizes are exposed to a manufactured vision of sleek legs and toned bellies at the same time their own bodies are changing rapidly. Teenagers getting more screen time than usual are especially likely to come across pandemic fat-busting diets, dangerous “detoxes” to achieve the perfect summer body and memes that show Barbie next to her round quarantine cousin, Carbie. They appear to validate the myth that fat is funny. It’s the low-hanging fruit of the comedy world.
Yet a Statistics Canada report in 2017 noted “the most recent estimates indicate that a third of children are overweight or obese. Potential causes include genetics, family demographics, child and parent behaviour and the larger economic and social environment in which children live.” And let’s not forget that weight loss and gain can be symptoms of mental health issues as well as side-effects of various medical conditions and prescription drugs.
We use jokes as a coping mechanism when we feel things are outside our control, but we owe it to our children and ourselves to be kind.
In a column in Self, the anonymous Your Fat Friend writes: “Remember that when you joke about becoming unthinkably, impossibly fat, when you process that fear publicly, there is always someone listening who is fatter than you. There is always someone who is living in the body that you describe as a nightmare as a matter of course.”
We can make subtle changes to our vocabulary that ensure body positivity. Instead of bemoaning how the diet has gone off the rails again, we can talk about making our bodies stronger and use food as something joyful we share — vegetables and all. We can be wary of expressing guilt when we reach for a bag of chips and avoid using treats as a reward or bribe. We can talk about how exercise can be a good way to combat stress.
We can stop using “fat” as a curse word and discuss the function of fat in a working body.
When our kids express dissatisfaction with their shape, we can avoid a knee-jerk “you’re perfect the way you are,” because if it’s perfection we’re aiming for, we’re going to be disappointed.
Many resources are geared toward people who identify as girls, but it’s important to remember that body-image issues are universal.