Modern parenting is preoccupied by the idea of perfection, and that includes weight. Virginia Sole-Smith, author of a brave and radical new book, talks to Rebecca Seal about why our worth shouldn’t be measured by size
After reading the last page of Fat Talk: Coming of Age in Diet Culture, I cried. Virginia Sole-Smith’s book made me radically question my own beliefs about fatness, health and diet. If you have a child, were a child or know a child, and think even a little bit about what our culture tells us about “good” or “bad” bodies, then this book will turn everything you thought you knew about how to raise a “healthy” child upside down.
We are so convinced that it’s awful to be fat, and especially to be a fat child, that we don’t interrogate what that anti-fatness does to kids, large or small, nor whether we are correct in our convictions. As Sole-Smith writes: “It’s not their bodies causing these kids to have higher rates of anxiety, depression and disordered eating behaviours. The real danger to a child in a larger body is how we treat them for having that body.”
