I was somehow both too much and too little.
And at the center of it all were bodies like mine: the bodies of fat kids.
I was a sixth grader, bare in a spotlight, defined by her insufficiency.
Getty / curtoicurto
So I was sent to Weight Watchers.
I learned to blame my body for every failure.
I learned to chastise myself like they did.
I learned to fear food, over time, coming to resent needing to eat at all.
All of that stands in such stark contrast to my life in adulthood.
Ive come a long way from the child that spent so many weeknights in Weight Watchers meetings.
WWthen known as Weight Watcherswas not my first diet, nor would it be my last.
Their words became the scripts of self loathing I would faithfully recite for years to come.
My future and my fortune, I learned, would forever be determined by my size.
In time, that shame lived within me, long after I stopped attending meetings.
As a child in a room full of adults, these werent just individual stories.
They were object lessons, frightening foreshadowing of my future life if I stayed fat.
Social failures, too, would be understood as a direct result of the size of my body.
In adulthood, its easy to forget the rigor of childhood.
As children, they are already detectives of social interactions: where do they fit in this world?
What matters about who they are?
Who has power, and how can they claim some influence of their own?
Of course, Kurbo isnt the issue here.
It is a symptom, but far from the whole disease.
We have known for decades that most weight loss dietsultimately fail.
And programs like Kurbo teach kids to restrict their eating through labeling some foods red light and yellow light.
No wonder the NEDA published astatementrecently airing their concerns about the app.
Last year, upon the news of Weight Watchers rebrand to WW,I wasnt angry with the company.
And 2018 shares reportedlysurged 490 percentover the previous year.
Suddenly, a company whosemembership and earningswerepreviously on the declinelooked like a promising investment.
I dont begrudge them that.
But the impacts of these companies dont begin and end at their corporate bottom line.
The diet industry preys on insecurities to lock customers into a model that comes with no guarantees.
I wasnt angry last year.
Our children deserve better than shame.
They deserve better than tactics we know only cause harm.
And they deserve better than the hurt so many of us have already shouldered.
Our children deserve better than the shame the diet industry offers them.
Your Fat Friendwrites anonymously about the social realities of life as a very fat person.
Her work has been translated into 19 languages and covered around the world.
Most recently, Your Fat Friend was a contributor to Roxane Gay’s Unruly Bodies compilation.
