In Oprah’s voice…
If you’re a fatty and you know it, pay me now!
The day it was announced that Oprah had purchased Weight Watchers (or as it’s now known, the ever trendy “WW”) I had a tantrum. She knows it doesn’t work…she knows the diet mentality is more harmful than helpful…she knows because she has been fighting this fight in a very public way since the ’80s – and yet she’s willing to leverage her celebrity against many disorders, telling a story about the freedom that comes with focusing on weight. RUFKM!
Outside solutions are temporary. But her target audience was grown people who are probably better off dreaming of a tasty, albeit low-calorie, date with Oprah than using caffeine-based supplements to fit into the right dress for the right special occasion – so good for them!
But now that she is targeting children…kids – bodies that are not fully developed, whose brains are still knitting together…impressionable, fearful, shamed and desperate. She is cashing in on the exact same fears and insecurities that drove her to nearly starve herself on national TV and drag her weight loss, in suet, behind her in red wagon!
She is working against the most up-to-date science, ignoring the realities of child development and charging their families for the privilege.
Perhaps she remains in denial about her own physical, mental and emotional realities? No matter why, by encouraging children to focus on food as the solution or the problem, she dooms them to a lifetime of doubting themselves because of how they look, what size they wear and how much they weigh – and leaves them with an emotional and mental mess they will get to try to navigate as adults, if they live long enough.
Ms. Winfrey has officially crossed a line in the name of capitalism. Shame. Shame. Shame.
