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Afternoon, #kidlit fans! @gourenina here to talk to you about fat representation in children's books, how pervasive fatphobia is even now, and asking for your recommendations as I'm trying to pull together a fat episode.
[CN for the whole thread: fatphobia, diet culture]
[CN for the whole thread: fatphobia, diet culture]
Let's start with Mr Greedy, OG Mister Man. There are things to like about this book! It's funny. The pictures are good. BUT the culmination of the story is Mr Greedy being shamed and punished for eating, and then becoming thin as a result of abstinence.
The morality here at least is very transparent. Fatness is a result of greed, which is a moral flaw, and can and should be corrected by controlling one's base desires.
Fatness as signifier of greediness, laziness and stupidity is all over children's literature. It is often also associated with wealth, which is an odd one, considering that (at least nowadays) fatness is far more often correlated with poverty.
Think Dudley in the series that shall not be named, or Raymond Trottle in Eva Ibbotson's The Secret of Platform 13.
And I love that book! It's very magical and fun. But the goodness and worthiness of the protagonist Ben is constantly offset by description of his agemate Raymond Trottle, who is described as fat pretty much every time he's mentioned, as well as flat footed and knock-kneed...
Raymond, the bad boy, is shown going for physiotherapy, while Ben, the rightful prince makes the football team at school. Which is a good place to point out the intersection between fatphobia and ableism, which is also a big problem in #kidlit.
In Roald Dahl's Matilda, Miss Honey's thinness is constantly underlined as part of her femininity and virtue, and contrasted against Miss Trunchbull's heft, and Mrs Wormwood's fat. Roald Dahl's pretty bad at this in general, I'm sad to say. It's even worse in The Twits.
(we discussed this in episode 8) https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/eventhetrunchbull/episodes/2020-07-09T01_00_00-07_00
My point is, it's all over the place, it's in our own favourites (Starlight Barking too! Poor Roly Poly is the only fat dog, the only one who's referred to as stupid, and one of the only pups from the original litter who hasn't married).
So, we're gonna do a Fat Episode. I hope. If we can find enough books with good fat rep. And, pals, it's really hard. Let me show you what I've found so far.
So there's lots of stories about fat animals, like Hilda Must Be Dancing. The story is that Hilda is so big that her dancing is always causing too much noise and ruckus, and everyone wants her to stop dancing. In the end she dances in the water so as not to make the earth shake.
And they're FINE. At least the solution isn't to make the hippo diet. There are lots of books like this.
For fans of the Large Family (Five Minutes Peace, anyone?) There's this, which is... Interesting. I'm not sure how I feel about it.
Mrs Large decides that she's too fat and goes on a diet. She puts the whole family on a diet. They're forced to overexercise and eat hardly anything. After a week they're miserable. Everyone separately sneaks downstairs to sneak a piece of cake.
They decide to ditch the diet and that maybe elephants are supposed to be fat. I like that. I like that it shows that diets are miserable and doomed to failure. But... I'm really not sure about introducing the idea of dieting and intentional weight loss at all to a young child.
Also, saying that elephants are supposed to be fat isn't the same as saying that it's okay for humans to he fat. I'm specifically looking for books with fat human characters in them.
I found this French picture book which really tries. I was quite impressed with it, especially coming from the most fatphobic country I've ever lived in. I think it has good intentions.
The pictures are lovely. Some moments are really strong, like when the little boy notices people staring and pointing at his fat mum. But it's another book about a sad diet. AND the little boy protests her dieting by restricting his own eating. BAD IDEA BAD IDEA.
Also, the boy's obsession with his mum's fat is kind of weird. He has fantasies about her eating him. So, good effort, but no thank you.
I had high hopes for this one, it's pretty good up to a point, and then...
The adult characters pressure our fat ballerina Merry to lose weight or she won't fit her tutu (just make a bigger tutu for goodness' sake) and Merry gets so depressed that she stops eating. She loses weight and is praised by everyone, and fits in her tutu in time for the show.
The depression and loss of appetite is praised by the adults in the book, and by the narrator. It made me very angry. Don't even want to donate this to the charity shop tbh. It actively encourages disordered eating.
I read lots of those middle grade weight loss journey chapter books myself as a kid. Ostensibly they're about learning to accept yourself, but they're really textbooks on how to have an eating disorder.
I've seen Abigail the Whale praised a lot as a book about fat acceptance.
Honestly though friends, it's bad. I can see that it means well, but:
1) it's not a good story. I don't like the writing
2) Abigail, a fat child, is encouraged to overcome the bullying she experiences at the pool with positive thinking
1) it's not a good story. I don't like the writing
2) Abigail, a fat child, is encouraged to overcome the bullying she experiences at the pool with positive thinking
And I think that's why it's being praised so much, because Abigail succeeds in thinking positive rather than losing weight. But encouraging a child to overcome bullying by just thinking nice thoughts? It doesn't work (I say this as a former child who was bullied for being fat)
And it locates the problem within Abigail - it's on HER to adjust her attitude, and not on the bullies to change their behaviour. It has a gross moment of her success being illustrated by getting a smile from a boy too. Cos that's what fat girls really want! Male attention! Ugh
So yeah, I'm having a hard time finding books for the fat episode. The book we're covering next week has some good fat rep! And we'll discuss it when we get to it, but it's a side character.
(our @MattMiller2805 will reveal what book that is on Monday)
So I'm throwing it open to you now! Do you know any picture books or chapter books featuring fat human characters in ways that aren't gross and shaming? Perhaps even positive representations? With no mention for dieting? Please send them our way!
Damn, I've forgotten to do image descriptions. Sorry. Will add them now.
