“You don’t want to be the fattest girl at fat camp this summer. Do you?”
That’s just one of the barbs flung by the sharp-tongued character Celia Hodes at her tween daughter in the dark television comedy Weeds. Hodes regularly commented with neurotic glee on her 11-year-old daughter Isabelle’s body and weight, calling her “Isa-belly.”
The mom from hell that everyone loves to hate: The ongoing bit drew plenty of snickers, but in real life, the long-term impact of weight labeling is nothing to laugh about.
Girls who are told they’re “too fat” by both family and non–family members are more likely to become obese years later, according to a new University of California, Los Angeles, study published as a research letter this week in JAMA Pediatrics, a journal of the American Medical Association.
The article was originally published on www.takepart.com on May 1, 2014. Read the complete article here.
*Image of “bullying” via Shutterstock
