Monthly Archives: March 2012

Shame: It’s What’s for Dinner in Georgia

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Obesity sucks. Especially when it involves our kids. It’s not healthy, it’s not pretty, and unfortunately it’s an epidemic everywhere, especially in Georgia where 40% of kids are obese. Yes, 40 percent; almost half. Not just overweight, but grossly overweight; obese.

To combat the problem, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta has concepted a new marketing campaign called Strong4Life. It shows a very real side to obesity. These are not chubby kids working out with new fitness instructor mentors, these are sad, obese children with hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, and severe self-confidence and social issues. Here are some examples of different media being used to get word out about the obesity problem in Georgia:

First up, a billboard.

Strong4Life says: It's hard to be a little girl if you're not.Next, a video.

And one more:

I’m missing the point because I don’t understand the target or the message. Are we targeting kids? Or should we be targeting the parents who control the food, and who should be controlling the kids?

There exists a movement in response to this campaign which is promoted via social media using #ashamed. It’s lead by moms and interested people who feel like these ads are shaming kids. I have to say that I agree with them.

A brilliant blogger named Jessica Gottlieb has weighed in (no pun intended) and she says: The women behind the #ashamed movement have it wrong. I don’t believe for a single solitary second that an ad campaign will make these children feel ashamed for being overweight. I believe with all my heart that the fat that’s covering these children’s bodies might make them ashamed. It should be noted that the fat covering their bodies also makes them ill and it’s much easier to die of diabetes or heart disease than of shame. Further, these ads are empowering. In the state of Georgia 40% of the children are overweight. Georgia is at the heart of the obesity epidemic and it’s imperative that they become forerunners in the fight against obesity (italics for emphasis, mine).

Yeesh. I’m pretty sure that these kids will feel shame, and guilt!, once their classmates start seeing these billboards and videos and joke them about their weight even more. Can you imagine being an obese child and already the target of ridicule by your peers, only to become a poster child for the Strong4Life campaign? Since when do we use children for bait?

Obesity is an eating disorder, just like anorexia or bulimia. Would we applaud a highway billboard of a child wasting away and call it empowering? How about a teen forcing him/herself to vomit in the school bathroom while classmates stand on the other side of the door whispering about her? It is not empowering to shame people into anything and that includes health.

I can only question the “creative” mind at Strong4Life (especially because their website has a friendly tone and showcases positive motivation) who decided children should be used as a shock tactic to point out where adults are failing. And that’s at the heart of this: these kids have been let down by their parents and by every grownup who hasn’t stepped in to help. The fault lies in several places including promoting a culture of food consumption by the likes of Paula Dean (Georgia’s reigning butter-loving, fat laden recipe-selling, Diabetes-having queen), a disparity too far to climb between poverty and middle class that makes good food choices nearly impossible, and a lack of simple fucking education about nutrition to name a few. Ultimately a lot of people are at fault here, but it’s not the kids who are acting as mirrors and products of the environment in which they find themselves.

Obesity sucks. It impacts everyone. We’re a culture that’s growing to epic proportions and something needs to be done about it. However we motivate a state, and a country no less, to get healthier can be done without shaming the victims.

Seriously, Virginia. Enough is Enough

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In response to regulation proposed requiring women to have an ultrasound before selecting to obtain an abortion, women’s rights protestors organized peacefully outside the State Capital building Saturday, March 3rd. How did the Commonwealth respond? By sending local Richmond and State Police in full on riot gear.

31 peaceful protestors were arrested because it was deemed that they were assembling unlawfully. I guess they were making someone uncomfortable? Looking at you McDonnell, Marshall, and Cuccinelli. The protestors, there with Speak Loudly with Silence, had a permit for the protest extending to the Bell Tower, but not the Capitol building steps. Although many of the protestors left after being asked (more than 850 are reported to have showed up), those who didn’t were charged with trespassing or unlawful assembly.

Somehow I think there were actual crimes happening in the city that required police attention…

Still, laws are laws and permits are permits. I get it that they should have left when asked – but…riot gear? Really right now?

Seriously, Virginia. Enough is enough.

Thanks to the Richmond Times-Dispatch for the video and for covering this disgusting display of power outside the State Capitol building yesterday, and for the Washington Post for also giving this story national coverage.

On Women’s History Month in 2012

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Happy National Women’s History Month, dolls!

There has been much happening in the way of women’s rights and women’s issues in RVA and nationally. I feel like we’re galvanized daily by someone trying to take away – or regulate until it’s impossible – our basic rights and freedoms while putting their fingers, nose, or ultrasound wand in our business. Politicians and political figures who wish they were influential enough to matter (looking at you Rush Limbaugh) dedicate their day’s energy to attempting to affix labels to women making decisions about their own bodies. It’s gross.

I’m not sure why, in 2012, and in the face of a nation struggling to overcome a crippling recession, much more powerful world issues (Syria, anyone??), and I don’t know – hunger, poverty, disease, etc, the people who lead the Commonwealth and the country are this consumed with the re-hashing of birth control and abortion regulations. It’s embarrassing – and perverted – that so many politicians and their lackeys are fixated on women’s vaginas.

This month as women all over this great nation celebrate the strides we have made we’ll also need to stand strong against the people who would threaten our very liberties and freedoms. If it feels contradictory to, at once, revel in women’s history while mulling over the contraceptive rights/abortion dichotomy because men in political power continue to be threatened by women’s rights – it’s not. This is a wake up call to women everywhere who became complacent: feminism is necessary.

The other weekend I attended a birthday party when a girl, about 5 or 6 years old, came up to me with two library books about Helen Keller she checked out from her school’s library. I grew up loving the biographies and stories about Helen Keller; she was one of my first female role models. I admired her tenacity, her spirit, her never-ending thirst for knowledge, and her absolute fearlessness. I listened as this young lady told me things she learned about Helen Keller, and as we talked about her life together I realized that this was    the new age of feminism.

I don’t believe, with the issues happening today, anybody can say that feminism is dead or women’s movements are a thing of the past. I don’t know that they ever will be. During National Women’s History Month, let’s honor our foremothers by keeping their legacies alive. Let’s celebrate the women who are carrying the torches today. And let us all be a role model to the young women looking up to us, because we’re the ones setting the tone. We’re the ones they’ll remember who taught them about the incredible courage, bravery, and dedication women displayed in the face of adversity, and we’re the ones who will be sharing the amazing feats these women overcame – for us and for them. It’s important because it won’t be long before these young women are the ones who will be carrying the torch of women’s rights.

Let’s make sure they’re ready.