We’ve written before on the blog lamenting the lack of heads on fat people photos. See Why the “headless fatty” photo has got to go (and other headless images, too) and No more headless fatties, why not use images of active fat people complete with heads instead?
Now Queer Femme Mamma brings headless babies to our attention in her post about lunchbox politics which is mostly about lunch policing and the fat shaming of kids, with a healthy side dish of class analysis. (Love the point about juice boxes. They’re cheap. They last. You can store them and use them for a long time.)
She writes, “This shit has got to stop. If schools want to encourage healthy eating, they can start a breakfast program or offer baskets of fruit and vegetables for kids who need them (our school does this). Encouraging physical activity and teaching about nutrition can be done without shaming parents and kids. So much of this is pure classicism.”
But back to the headless fat baby.
Here they are!
Here’s the link to the article on childhood obesity in Canada. It talks about obese three and month olds.
My only experience here is as a parent and I was told not to worry about the weight of my babies–at that age they were just getting breast milk–and if anything, I was nervous about them gaining enough weight. Largely though it felt out of my control. Of the three kids they were very different sizes and weights at 3 months with nothing different on the menu.
Lots of friends chimed in and said the headless baby looked their now average sized kids as infants. I was kind of reassured by the chubbier of my kids. I felt like I didn’t have to worry if they were sick for a few weeks.
Anyway, as noted this is way outside my area of academic expertise. For a discussion of healthy baby weights, go read all the books. But, I do think it wouldn’t hurt to give the kid a head. I doubt babies in diapers are embarrassed by their size quite yet. Give them a few years. Sigh.
