How Do We Get Kids to Stop Fat Shaming?

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Reena Ninan:
Episode 216. How Do We Get Kids to Stop Fat Shaming?
I tell you, I don’t know if I’m in perimenopause or not, but this sort of one time I feel like I’ve just gained 20 pounds. I don’t know what it is. My new thing though, I put in warm water flaxseeds and mix it and drink it.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Do you grind them up? Are they ground up? They have to be ground, otherwise you get none of the benefits. They just go right through your system.

Reena Ninan:
So you know about this?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Oh yeah. I’m a big fan of flaxseeds.

Reena Ninan:
Why would you this?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I use them in my smoothies. I put them in my smoothies.

Reena Ninan:
Your smoothies, okay. Yeah. You are a big smoothie. You do love your smoothies.
But I’m so glad we’re talking about this episode because it’s talking about fat shaming, but sometimes I don’t realize I am talking about my weight and things and I don’t realize maybe that affects my children in how they see it, right? So I want to get to this letter and there’s so much I want to break down to talk to you about.
Hi, Dr. Lisa and Reena. I am the director of counseling at a girl school, working specifically with upper school girls. We’re noticing an increasing trend of fat shaming language, which seems to have become normalized among teens. The “big back” trend on TikTok is huge. We also hear about girls openly calling each other “fatty” or “pig”, et cetera, when around food. This is highly concerning and I’ve had multiple girls come into my office to share how painful it is for them even when they speak up to tell the offending speakers this, they’re not taken seriously because this trend has become so widespread. I would love to hear you address this topic, parents, schools, and also kids need some guidance on how to grow through this trend. Thank you.
Okay. I had no idea. Tell me about this trend. What is it? Who’s doing it?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, I will say I’ve been sort of kind of aware of it. I have not heard it described in such a pointed way as this letter brings across. Okay, so here’s what I know, Reena, and knowing we were going to dive into this, I sort of asked around and asked the teenagers that I go to for what is happening here. So it’s interesting because the letter writer talks about norms, trends, and that hints at social media. And I think actually social media is a major, major player here.
And what I am hearing from teenagers, especially girls though this is not just a girl phenomenon, is that commentary on one’s body in social media environments is a very, very common thing. And it takes on this layered and kind of complex and dynamic kind of unfolding. But the kinds of examples I got were things of a girl taking a video of herself eating a really low calorie lunch and “here’s my low calorie lunch and catch me this summer with no coverup on.” And then kids making videos responding to that video like a girl who’s eating ice cream sundae. Here’s my lunch, catch me this summer in my coverup. So it’s not always on the nose, straight up fat shaming, but there’s just a huge amount of content about this is my body and I’m going to own it even though you were all criticizing it or this is my body and I’m modifying it and then you’re all going to be jealous. I mean there’s, just take those two little examples I gave you and imagine 40 versions of this times a thousand. And then it gets to what this letter writer’s talking about and what we talk about is norms, norms, norms, norms. When teenagers are exposed to gobs of something, it shifts what they think is acceptable.
And so if you really want to know what I think is going on, even though I am not fast to blame social media for stuff, I do think what is going on is all of this content on social media has normalized shaming oneself and it also sounds like shaming others.

Reena Ninan:
Why do you think kids are doing this?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah, it’s one thing to see it online and it’s one thing to even be like, oh, people do this, people do this and it’s normed. But to turn around and actually enact it at school and in front of others, I mean, this is clearly happening and I pulled some of the research on weight-based victimization. This happens in public spaces. This is not something that’s usually done to the side. I mean, neither is good, but it’s like kids are feeling like they’re free to do this. I can’t really know. But I think at bottom there’s this issue of all this insecurity, this heavy focus on bodies makes kids insecure. And I think when teenagers get insecure and when anybody gets insecure, sometimes they handle it by being hard on others or claiming like, oh, I know I am. Fill in the blank of some perceived shortcoming as a way to ward off being, having other people call it on you before you call it on yourself. I think that’s some of what’s at work, but it’s not good. It’s not good.

Reena Ninan:
I know you’re so good about walking that line with social media. You are not somebody who’s like technology has to be removed. You get it. But how much of this is social media and how much of this is us not having a conversation, not addressing parenting? Where do you draw the lines on this?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Right. This is the other thing because it’s not like fat shaming began 10 years ago. This was in many ways part of life in schools. I mean probably for a long, long time it’s been true. Certainly I remember people talking freely about other people’s weight, being jerks about it. Here’s my recollection, let’s see if it matches yours. I think that then we got smarter about this or more decent about this. I don’t remember the term fat shaming even being a term when I was growing up and now we have a name for it, which is also a way of saying don’t, this is wrong. So this is to say social media didn’t start fat shaming, but I think what we see a lot of the times is that it can become an accelerant for something that’s not good.

Reena Ninan:
That is a great, great thing to point out. What are the conversations we should be having at home about this? Right? Sometimes I didn’t even know about this trend. Now my children are not allowed to really be on social media, so I don’t know what they’re seeing. It just makes me realize, again, we did that great episode on the Netflix series “Adolescence” where it kind of worried, you and I talked about this, I’m just worried about what I don’t know they’re seeing and consuming online. So where do we even begin to have the conversation about weight, not just for girls, for boys and for girls.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
For boys or girls.
And I’ll tell you when in the data I pulled, it’s basically even in terms of kids who are doing fat shaming and kids who are on the receiving end of fat shaming.

Reena Ninan:
For boys and girls?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. Across genders. No differences. So this is not isolated to a single gender in terms of how this unfolds.
You want to start the conversation. You want to find out where your kids are at with this, if they’re hearing this, if it’s going on. When we got this letter, I asked my eighth grader, I was like, are you hearing any of this? And she said, yeah, the boys do it.

Reena Ninan:
Really?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And she was indicating that they do it among themselves.

Reena Ninan:
In what way? How does that go down?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s funny. I didn’t ask her. I didn’t ask her, but that was her immediate response and it was almost like she was saying, my circle of girls are so enlightened we don’t do that thing, but the boys are still doing it. Right?

Reena Ninan:
Wow.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Who knows. That’s my end of one eighth grader in Ohio. I don’t really know. But that’s one way to start the conversation. Are you hearing about this? Then of course we know my other favorite way to start the conversation, which we hear from so many listeners that they do, is go ahead and just put this episode on and listen to it with your kid. I mean, that can be a way to get the conversation on the table or say, so I was listening to Lisa and Reena and the topic today was fat shaming and I had no idea what was going on to this effect. What do you know? So there’s ways to find out where your kid is with this, and I think that that’s a great place to start.

Reena Ninan:
Just asking.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Whatcha hearing? What are you seeing? What do you know?

Reena Ninan:
I want to go back to boys for a second. Do they experience it in the same way that girls do?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
My hunch is that for boys, it falls in that really, really hard to police universe of just joking. Girls do this too. And I also suspect that may be at work, even in this girl’s school that they’re like, oh, we’re just kidding. We’re just playing around, which is its own very hard thing to manage. But boys and we did a wonderful episode around trash talking among boys. There is a lot of giving each other a hard time. Or as someone who grew up in Colorado in the seventies, eighties, giving someone the business. Did you guys use that term?

Reena Ninan:
Yeah. That was a big term. Of course.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Sometimes these are regional. We had words.

Reena Ninan:
No, it was big in Florida too.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So if you’ve given someone the business that is again, normalized among boys, often very painful for them. So my hunch is girls may do it in some ways taking a page out of boys’ books. I mean, not that anybody, this is terrible for everybody. I don’t want to say they’re doing it better or worse or whatever to bring this under the “Dude. Just kidding.” And the thing about the just joking thing that’s so crummy is if there’s a reaction, which of course one would expect a reaction, then that gets diminished. Like, oh, I was just kidding. You’re overreacting. You’re being a baby. And that can happen across all kids.

Reena Ninan:
Again, we’re talking about this subject, but it still irks me. I don’t know why this has been a trigger point if you’ve been listening to podcasts for the past month. For me, I’m just more aware of what I do not know that is going, and this has been going on for generations. Every generation deals with stuff at school, whatever. But I’m just so much more aware that there’s so much I don’t know about their online consumption that I think I’ve been able to control and create an environment, but also at school. Is this something that you feel you’re seeing a lot at schools? How does this manifest? Can you give us a sense of what you know?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Actually I can, and in terms of the universe of things I love. Okay. I love my family. I love my friends. I love teenagers. I love psychologists, especially the researchers because

Reena Ninan:
Yeah, you do.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
They go ask these questions and get answers to things that then suddenly you need the answer and they’ve done the work. So there was this really terrific study that surveyed kids who had gone to weight loss camps. So that’s how they found their sample of kids who had, and BMI is a complex thing, but comparatively high BMIs. And when they surveyed these kids, one of the questions they asked is where does this go down? How often are you subjected to weight-based victimization? And the answer was extremely. I mean the numbers were majority of kids had experienced it and more than anything, it goes down at school. That is the number one place where it happens.

Reena Ninan:
It’s interesting. More than online.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
More than online.

Reena Ninan:
I was worried about online. But you’re saying this is at schools?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s at schools and what’s likely, and we see this in terms of in real life experiences versus online experiences, you know kids in real life experiences tend to mirror what’s happening online and the other way around. So kids who are getting weight-based victimization at school are also getting it online. Kids who have great relationships with their friends and are having fun with them are also doing that online. Kids who have social troubles also have those online. But yes, I was also surprised to see that finding that this is most likely to happen at school, most likely to happen in cafeteria, hallways, locker rooms. That’s where we see it. It’s not just a digital experience.

Reena Ninan:
So when you’re talking about this happening in schools, can you get a sense of is this targeted enemies? Is it targeted friends? How does this manifest?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay, this is super fascinating and this is what makes me think though, just joking as a major player here, overwhelmingly it’s classmates who do this.
But like 70% of the kids said that this had been done by their friends.

Reena Ninan:
Why are your friends fat shaming you?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
That’s a really good question.
Kids are some, they’re teenagers. They’re so insecure sometimes. Here’s something that I’ve long watched them do that I think is related and that we can learn from. Do you remember? I also remember we did this when I was a teenager. A kid would come out of a class and this kid is a superstar academically and they’re like, oh man, I got a 98 on that test. And they are saying this in front of kids who they know would give their left arm for a 98 on that test. You know what I’m talking about here?

Reena Ninan:
A hundred percent? Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. I think if we could figure out why kids do that, you’d have a better sense why kids do this, right? Because it’s like, why would you do this?
Okay, so why do kids do stuff like this mean frankly, often it’s just insecurities, right? It’s wanting to establish one’s pole position. And I’ve asked kids, why do you do this? And they’re like, well, you want to just make sure everybody’s in the spots where you think they’re going to be. We have a sense of who should be getting what scores you’re checking to make sure that’s still true. They’re anxious and they don’t always handle themselves well. And it can come out in ways that are really, really hurtful. I almost never criticize teenagers, but the one thing I will say is we do know that they can be pretty egocentric. They can do and say things like, oh my God, I look so bad in this skirt and this might be a kid who is real thin. And that landing on a kid who has anxieties about their body and whose body may be not real thin. You could just see how the sort of insecure moment of the kid who’s complaining about how her body looks could land in such a painful way on the kids around her.

Reena Ninan:
How do I know if my child may be more likely to be on the receiving end of something like this?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s a good question. So here’s what we see in the data, and this is actually pretty fascinating. One thing that I wasn’t that surprised by is bigger kids get more fat shaming. They saw this correlation when kids were heavier, they were more likely to be on the receiving end. And there was also some data showing if the kid’s parents were heavy. So we’re sort of taking a cold heart analytic look at something that you just like this is miserable stuff and not good stuff. The thing I was a bit surprised by is also kids whose grades are low are more likely to get weight-based victimization. I was glad they asked the question, but I don’t entirely know what to make of it.

Reena Ninan:
Is it because they’re struggling in one aspect and people know and they’re using something that maybe they think they’re not struggling with?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And maybe that the kid is vulnerable.

Reena Ninan:
More vulnerable.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
They’re not shooting the lights out academically and there’s a decision made that that kid is somehow an easy target around weight questions. I mean that is like, that’s probably adolescents at their worst, right? Going after a kid who’s vulnerable in multiple ways. Something else, I was also surprised to see if a kid has lost significant weight, they’re still exposed to weight-based victimization.

Reena Ninan:
Which is so painful because if you’ve done the work or you’ve been able to get into shape that people can’t, and especially if you live in a small town or you’ve gone to school with the kids, same group of kids from elementary on, it can be hard to shake that off. And it’s painful as you feel like you might’ve accomplished something, but it’s like the kids.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
You can’t get past it. Yeah, no. So that’s not good. I also think, and we talk about this from time to time, in some communities, a lot of the adults are using ozempic drugs.

Reena Ninan:
That’s right.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And the research I have predates because research takes so long predates how that involves itself. But we’re coming to a place in the culture, and I don’t even know how to begin to unpack this, where I think that there can be more judgment around people who do not fit some ultra thin ultrafit ideal of feeling like, well, you’re making a choice now. That’s a decision you’re making. And Reena, I don’t even know where to start with that.

Reena Ninan:
I know. I know exactly what you mean. So I want to back up for a second, Lisa. If I am a parent and I’m aware of this now that you’ve done this episode, how do I deal with it regardless of whether it’s happening or not? Sometimes I found with kids of this age, they aren’t even aware of the dynamics or what they’re doing.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah, well, so let’s think about it. What if your kid says, yeah, no, I get that. I’m on the receiving end. Okay, so first things first, just empathy, empathy, empathy and also reality check. Just say that is wrong. That is wrong what is happening to you.

Reena Ninan:
Why is that so important to tell them that it’s wrong?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Because I think a lot of times if kids are exposed to this stuff and it feels like everyone’s doing it and it feels like everyone thinks it’s funny or no one’s really reacting, nobody’s making a big deal of it in the moment, I think kids can feel like, is it just me or is this okay? And so I think that right away, just to be clear, that is completely over the line and never should happen. And then I think you get into a conversation about what level of intervention should be considered. I feel this about anything that gets into the bullying neighborhood. I think it’s a good place to start with your kid and what they do and don’t want to have happen, which is not to say the kid gets to dictate exactly what goes down. The parent or caregiver may say, you know what? I got to tell the school. It may get to that. But I also think it’s important to first say, what have you tried? What do you want me to try? Do you want me to say something? What’s going to be effective here at helping you manage this or helping make this stop?

Reena Ninan:
So what if your kid is not the victim? How do you approach the conversation?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Assuming your kid is not the victim and hopefully also not a perpetrator, which I’m not quite sure how you’d ever find that out, but if you did, we can think about what to do. I love the playbook on what you’re supposed to do if you witness bullying. Right? We’ve talked this through. I will, anytime I get a chance to talk it through, I think it is imperative that we say to our kids, if you are standing there, when one kid goes after another kid who is unable to defend themselves or there’s a power imbalance, you cannot do nothing. You have to do one of three things. You either need to tell the kid who doing it to knock it off. You need to reach out to and support the kid who’s on the receiving end. Or you need to get an adult. You don’t have to do all three, you have to do at least one. I think this is a really good time to reboot that guidance actually, that requirement, that requirement.

Reena Ninan:
This is a great, I’ve never had this conversation with my kids before, ever.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s a really good conversation to have.

Reena Ninan:
So the three things are tell them to knock it off in the moment.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Which not a lot of kids are going to do because the thing is very hard. You’re going up against somebody who’s made it clear that they will cross lines. So I don’t expect that to happen very often.

Reena Ninan:
Support the other kid who’s being bullied in whatever quiet way or way you can. And if those two, you can’t do, get an adult and tell an adult.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And you can do more than one, but you have to do at least one. Standing there doing nothing is a non-negotiable. You cannot do that.

Reena Ninan:
Lisa, I just love that our podcast now are being listened to with parents and their teens. What advice do you have for teens who might find themselves in a situation where they’re experiencing this exact trend on TikTok or on social media or in schools? What do you want them to know?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So let’s think about the social media experience of this because that’s where, even if kids aren’t seeing it at school, I think we can assume a lot of ’em are going to come across content that is in this department.
It’s wrong, it’s wrong to criticize even in a joking manner. Somebody for anything related to size, shape, appearance, skin color, religion, ethnic group, sexual orientation, gender, any identity based or size and shape, appearance based factor that is used as an insult is a wrong thing. That doesn’t fix it, that doesn’t make it go away. It is helpful for kids to hear that because especially if they’re in a digital soup where everybody’s doing it and then they walk into a cafeteria where everybody’s doing it, they will be reassured when we are like, just to be clear, this is totally over the line.

Reena Ninan:
Sometimes kids try to fat shame, but they might do it to somebody who’s noticeably slimmer or even to their sibling who might not have any weight management issues, but it’s just hurled out quickly like it’s not a big deal to use that.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah, no, I mean kids do it and they just, they’re like, I’m upset. I’m looking for a weapon. This word sounds pretty mean.

Reena Ninan:
Yes, exactly.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I’ll just grab it and throw it and see what happens.

Reena Ninan:
Yes.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think that is a really nice moment to be like, alright, you’re out. That’s not okay. You go take 10 minutes, pull yourself together, come back and apologize and figure out how that came out of your mouth. I mean, I think that is a really nice moment to draw a very hard line with kids and also context matters. If we both have two kids, I have seen my kids say something and then like right away be like, uhoh, I shouldn’t have done that. And so if a kid is already aware that they’ve crossed a line, I think you can build on that. You can be like, you and I both know that was completely unacceptable. What are you going to do to make it right?

Reena Ninan:
Really quickly before we go when we’re talking as we’re going through many different changes, you could have just given birth, you could have a stressful job. Our bodies go through different changes and different levels of stress that can lead to weight issues as well. What’s your advice to parents about how they talk about their weight in front of their children?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Don’t.

Reena Ninan:
Ever?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah, we have pretty good research showing that. Really? Yeah. When adults are like, oh, I hate my thighs, I hate my butt. That models for kids an attitude towards one’s body that is less than kind, which is not to say that the fact that we’re not talking about it means that somehow magically, we don’t all have anxieties about our bodies. You cannot be a woman in this culture and be like, yeah, I’ve never thought about it. I feel great all the time. That’s just never on the menu, so to speak. But I think that it’s really ideal if we can talk about our bodies from the standpoint of health and capacity and enjoyment. I love working out. It feels good. I love getting a massage. It feels good. I think we just really want to make it clear that what our bodies are about is about a lot of things and what other people think of the particular shape of one’s thigh is really not it.

Reena Ninan:
So Lisa, what do you have for us for Parenting to Go?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I want to return to something we were thinking about in terms of how do you even get this conversation started and for this topic we’re recommending, ask your kid, are you hearing this? Are you seeing this? What do you know? Do it for everything. Anything that comes on your radar, vaping, gummies, whatever. It is such a good beginning start because it’s gentle and it’s kind and it’s curious and it’s also going to dictate where the conversation goes next, right? Because if you’re like, what do you think about vaping? It’s like, it’s awesome. Right? Okay, now you’re having one conversation.

Reena Ninan:
Made a good point.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So you just can’t go wrong when you’re worried about something, if those are the first opening maneuvers in the conversation you’re hoping to have.

Reena Ninan:
That is terrific advice because so often I think we’re nervous or feel like they haven’t crossed that bridge or they don’t talk about it, and maybe they’ve already crossed that bridge and you don’t realize they have.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Exactly they know lot.

Reena Ninan:
And we hope you join us next week. We are so excited about our guests. We’re going to have the Holderness Family on, and they’re going to talk about their new book on ADHD. They are just so much fun. I’ll see you next week.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I’ll see you next week.