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Mum shares while her six year old was watching an Arthur episode she heard something that really caught her off-guard.

Ashley Austrew is the senior editor of CafeMom, she recently shared a piece on how “Fat-Shaming Is the Norm in Our Kids’ Favorite Shows & It’s Making Them Hate Their Bodies”.

While her six year old was watching an Arthur episode she heard something that really caught her off-guard…

“Do I look husky to you guys?” Arthur asked his friends. They asked him what that means. “It means I’m fat,” he said. “I had to get new pants yesterday.”

Arthur’s friend replied, “I know what you need to do. You just need to go on a diet!”

That’s when I told my daughter it was time to turn off the tablet and help set the table, shared Ashley.

“In addition to negative fat and diet talk, the episode features a fantasy sequence in which a circus performer invites people to “step right up” and gaze at various horrors. One of them is Arthur — or as he’s identified in this clip, the “Leaden Lump of Elwood City” — and the performer isn’t shy about describing him as a freak of nature. “Large, lardy, a lifeless layabout lump of lumpiness,” the man hollers, pointing to a gelatinous blob wearing Arthur’s signature yellow sweater.

Another example Ashley shares is  Dreamworks’ Trolls.

Ashley wrote, “I love the movie, and so do my kids. But I cringe when one of the main characters, King Gristle Jr., asks a girl out and then immediately goes home and hops on a treadmill because he’s nervous about their date and wants to “lose 30 pounds in the next eight hours.”

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Even Peppa Pig, a cartoon aimed at preschoolers, the running joke is that Daddy Pig is fat.

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“Zootopia, a movie that emphasizes the problems with stereotyping and prejudice, features a fat cheetah police officer whose big moment of comedic glory is not realizing he has a donut lodged under his double chin. He’s also shown eating in almost every scene he’s in, because apparently the defining quality of a fat character in a kids’ show is that he or she consumes food nonstop.

Ashley concludes, “I shouldn’t have to worry that by watching  a G-rated movie, my kids are learning damaging lessons about fat bodies and which types of bodies are worthy of love and respect. A main goal of kids’ media has always been teaching children lessons about kindness, thoughtfulness, and tolerance. It’s time for the creators of these shows and movies to stop giving kindness a size limit.”

Read her full story here on Cafemom.

She makes a good point. Why do we need to continuously shove these storylines into children faces?

Share your comments below.

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  • I really don’t think there is anything wrong with linking laziness to unhealthiness. As long as they aren’t showing someone being bullied just because they are a bit bigger than others.

    Reply

  • We don’t need to shove it in their faces but we shouldn’t shy away from it either.

    Reply

  • Can’t win these days can we? We are all for fighting childhood obesity, yet we can’t say that someone is obese when they are. How are kids spose to know how to avoid it?!

    Reply

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