viz.

(Photo Credit:  Billboard, Georgia  Childrens Health Alliance, via Body Impolitic)

No one could argue that efforts to promote healthy eating and exercise among school children, such as Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign, aren't well-intentioned.  But as Paul Campos argues in this recent Daily Beast article, too often anti-obesity campaigns focused on children stigmatize the very individuals they are supposedly trying to help.  The image above, a billboard produced by the Georgia Childrens Health Alliance, is a case in point.  These scowling children with warning labels slapped across their stomachs seem to have crossed the line from being victims of genetics, environment, lack of opportunities for healthy exertion, and inavailability of affordable healthy meal choices to, I guess, being perpetrators.  Something has clearly gone wrong here.  Seriously, how would you like to be one of the kids in these pictures with your body held up as a symbol of a national crisis?  

Far too often, anti-obesity campaigns in general tend to focus on simply changing bodies rather than changing behaviors, pointing to a simplified understanding of the relationship between body size and health, stigmatizing bodies rather than promoting positive behaviors and improving access to exercise and healthy food.  Though the intended message may be, "We are here to help you be healthier and happier by teaching you how to practice self-care," it comes across as, "seriously, just quit being so fat already." The effect is to encourage unhealthy weight loss strategies and further ostracize fat kids.  As Campos argue

Michelle Obama spoke movingly last week at a press conference about how parents agonize over the pain bullies inflict on children. Maybe she should talk to Casey Heynes about that. Heynes is a 16-year-old Australian fat kid who according to his father has been bullied for years by classmates about his weight. A few days ago, some of them decided to record their latest attack on a camera phone.

The first lady would, no doubt, be horrified by the suggestion that her Let’s Move campaign, which is dedicated to trying to create an America without any fat kids, is itself a particularly invidious form of bullying. But practically speaking, that’s exactly what it is. The campaign is in effect arguing that the way to stop the bullying of fat kids is to get rid of fat kids.

No humane person would argue that the answer to keeping gay and lesbian teens from getting bullied is to get rid of gay and lesbian kids, though I acknowledge that the analogy isn't perfect.  Yet childhood obesity campaigns tend to problematically suggest that in order to address the problem of fat kids being bullied and ostracized, we need to change the fat kids, but somehow we have yet to master a rhetoric that would promote healthy behaviors and tolerance at the same time.