A Day in the Life

A Day in the Life
Girl Gets a Painful Glimpse of Life as an Overweight Teen
ABCNEWS.com

Oct. 27— Ali Schmidt, an outgoing, attractive 15-year-old from the Bronx,
N.Y., usually looks forward to going to school. But when she showed up at
Connecticut's Stratford High School for two days in September, it was a
different story.

"Basically, walking down the halls was like walking into hell. I felt pain
that was excruciating," she said after the miserable day.
Schmidt found herself the object of ridicule: some kids laughed at her
behind her back, others made mean comments.

The reason? She was fat. At least she looked fat. In fact, she was
participating in an experiment for ABCNEWS designed to capture a glimpse of
the emotional and psychological impact obesity has on adolescents.

Schmidt is a slim, 5-foot-7-inch athletic girl. But for the ABCNEWS special
Fat Like Me, airing tonight at 8 p.m. ET, she agreed to wear a "fat suit"
that would make her look obese.

Using the same makeup and special effects that were used to make Gwyneth
Paltrow look obese in the film Shallow Hal, Ali was packed with padding and
layered with latex, so that she looked as though she weighed close to 200
pounds.

She found that kids she normally might expect to be friends with ridiculed
her after one glance. "They're just complete jerks to you. … I wanted them
to realize that I wasn't actually who I appeared to be," she said.

A single day of life as an obese teen was enough for Ali to develop a new
sensitivity to the plight of her overweight peers. "Fatness," she said, "is
just something that's made fun of. … People don't go, 'Ha ha, you're
white,' or 'Ha ha you're black,' but they see a fat person and they think
that they have the right to laugh at them."


Nearly 10 Million Obese Kids

Sadly, Ali's daylong experiment is an everyday reality for the nearly 10
million American kids who are obese. "I'm like the prey: people come after
me because I'm fat," said 14-year-old Jon Marks, describing his experience
at school. Third-grade student, Erik Destito, said, "Kids call me fatboy,
fatso."

In the past 20 years, the percentage of overweight children in America has
doubled. Among teens it has tripled. If childhood obesity goes unaddressed,
overweight kids will likely be plagued with a host of weight-related
illnesses into adulthood, including diabetes and heart disease.

Health experts say we are in the midst of a dual epidemic they're calling
diabesity. Over the past decade, childhood cases of Type II diabetes have
increased tenfold because of rising rates of obesity. Today's teenagers may
be the the first generation of Americans whose life expectancy is shorter
than that of their parents.

Perhaps as damaging as the physical ailments are the psychological and
emotional scars obese kids often carry with them. Fat Like Me host Meredith
Vieira found Ali's experience particularly moving because Vieira herself
was an overweight child. "I was 11 years old and almost 30 pounds
overweight," Vieira said, "Kids called me chubby, chunky, porker, fatso.
But what hurt the most was the constant ribbing of an adult family friend
saying — 'I wonder when you're going to lose that baby fat.'"

Rodale Press, publisher of Prevention and Men's Health magazines, teamed up
with ABCNEWS to look at the lives of America's overweight kids and provide
advice to families grappling with the issue.


Teasing at School — and at Home

In her daylong experiment, Ali spoke of how painful it was to be teased by
other kids. Surprisingly, overweight children often face ridicule at home
as well as school.

"It's one thing when children are teasing you on the playground. It's a
little easier to walk away …" says Beth Braun, Psychological Director of
Kidshape, a California-based weight management program for children and
their families. "But it is so much more painful when it comes from your
mother or your father or your sister or your brother," she says.

Chrystal Jonson, a 10-year-old girl from Los Angeles, is overweight and was
struggling to deal with teasing at home as well as school. The oldest of
seven children, Chrystal was the only overweight child in her family, and
she felt particularly isolated.

Her parents, Christina and Larry Jonson, realized they were contributing to
Chrystal's problem. "She got stares. I made jokes," Larry Jonson admits,
adding, "I'm her father and I was wrong."

Christina Jonson says she sat her husband down and told him: "This is not
her fault. This is our fault. And we … owe it to her to get it right."

The Jonsons sought a solution at Kidshape, which offers programs for
families of overweight children as young as three. Braun and other staff
members work with parents to teach them how to tackle the problem as a
family, and not isolate the overweight child.

Christina Jonson was keenly aware her reactions to Chrystal's weight made
the problem worse. "It's hard to say as a mom, but you pull back because
you don't want to have to say, 'My child is overweight and they have a
problem.' And so you don't hug as much as you used to, and you don't kiss
and hold hands as much."

Braun says this is a common reaction, and kids feel the rejection from
their parents. When parents make insensitive comments about their child's
weight, Braun says, "Their body image changes. They start to see themselves
as fat. It is the most lonely, terrible, sad feeling." Braun cited reports
in which obese children have been shown to exhibit a sadness that rivals
that of teen cancer patients.

One strategy Braun advises families to follow is to decide to get healthy
together. "It's deciding that you don't want to be like this anymore. That
you don't want your child to be in pain, that you don't want to be in
pain."

Schools on the Front Line

Schools are on the front line of the childhood obesity epidemic: feeding
children, involving them in athletics, and teaching them about health.
Increasingly, they are taking matters into their own hands with new
weaponry in the war on weight.

But their efforts haven't always been welcomed by parents. When
Pennsylvania's East Penn School District sent home letters to hundreds of
parents telling their children had a weight problem, it stirred up a storm
of controversy in the small town of Emmaus.

Angry parents said they felt the school was intruding into a private
matter. Krista Destito, whose son Eric, a third-grade student, was one of
the overweight children who received a letter, said, "I was shocked. It
infringes on your motherhood, you know, someone other than you or your
doctor points out that your child is overweight.

Schools routinely screen students for scoliosis, and vision and hearing
problems. Because our culture is so sensitive to weight and body image,
experts say, parents often refuse to admit their child has a problem. "This
is like a social taboo," George Ziolkowski, Director of Pupil Services for
the East Penn School District, said, "You can talk about so many other
things, but you can't talk about an individual's weight where potentially
it could be doing a lot of harm."

Prevention Managing Editor Rosemary Ellis said a survey by her magazine
found that parents were "either not aware of the huge health risks that are
implied with obesity or they're not believing that it really affects their
kids." Often, the parents' reaction is tied to their own weight issues.
"Two-thirds of the parents we surveyed who have obese kids," Ellis said,
"were obese themselves."

In order to help overweight kids make lifestyle changes, their parents may
have to make them themselves, Ellis says.

"If there's a magic cure for childhood obesity, it's parental awareness and
involvement," Ellis said.

---
Jean C
"Whatever size you are, have a wonderful life"
Barbara Bruno, author "Worth your weight"
http://www.uidaho.edu/~bjcraw/

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On 28 Oct 2003 01:31:30 -0000, JeanC did not
write:

A Day in the Life

All your forgeries do is make you look like a bigger idiot than you
are already.

C'mon Dickie Nonads...don't you have anything better to do that to
hide behind a fat woman who happens to be a MARKSMANSHIP EXPERT????


Go make yourself useful and fellate a rifle.

You are a lousy waste of space.


LV

Remove "intel" from address to reply

Lady Veteran
- -----------------------------------
"I rode a tank and held a general's rank
when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank..."
- -Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil
- ------------------------------------------------
Support bacteria - they're the only culture
some people have." -Stephen Wright
- -------------------------------------------
He who thinks by the inch and talks by the
yard deserves to be kicked by the foot.
- Anonymous
- ---------------------------------------------
Ridicule of fat people is never acceptable.
Those who insist on doing this are living
examples of that old Chinese proverb:

Keep mouth closed and be thought a fool:
Open mouth and remove all doubt.

In other words, they are idiots.
- -------------------------------------------------


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This post is a forgery. Note the Comments: header indicating this is
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On 28 Oct 2003 01:31:30 -0000, JeanC did not write:

A Day in the Life
Girl Gets a Painful Glimpse of Life as an Overweight Teen
ABCNEWS.com


NR

"Outside of this group, I don't remember hearing anyone in RL say
that fat people are worthless."
- Jade, admitting the truth
Message-ID:

"Jade, your whole existence is spent trying to find people you can
justify vetting your rage toward thorugh all forms of harassment. Do
you realize that?"
- Sunny, on Jade's life in a nutshell
Message-ID:

"Hey Rauni. How's Vivian? DEAD?"
- Mike Cranston, gloating over the violent death of a woman's daughter
Message-ID:

"What's the difference between that and her taking a crack at my dead
mother?"
- Mike the statutory rapist Cranston, justifying why he's gloating
over the violent death of a woman's daughter,
Message-ID:

"As I said I hope your child is molested."
- pedophile Jim Dutton, advocating child molestation for a black
woman's preteen daughter
Message-ID:

"Does your daughter swallow?"
- pedophile Jim Dutton, making sexual passes at preteen girls
Message-ID:

"NIce try coward. What are you flying your daughter in for one
of those 500 man ****s?"
- pedophile Jim Dutton and his fantasies about preteen girls
Message-ID:

"Liar. You stated I wouldn't have the balls to talk about your
duaghter getting molested to your face. I said I would. Then you
play the victim. Just like chaney. Just like odious. YOu're freaks
with no integrity. I say i would tell your daughter what a sick
depraved pig you are and I'll tell her how you laughed when chaney
talked about her, strange men on the internet and vaseline."
- pedophile Jim Dutton offering to speak of his fantasies about child
molestation to the mother of that child, face to face
Message-ID:

"Another option would be to run. Presumably you can outrun the
wife and kids, and you can replace them."
- How Dan "Sex Bots" Mocsny would deal with a thug threatening his
family,
Message-ID:


==============
Anyone who wishes to ask Mike about his violent threats, his racist
remarks, or his gloats about the violent deaths of young women, can
contact him he

Cranston, Michael James
Address: 6529 21st Ave NW
City, ST Zip: Seattle, WA 98117-5745

Business Phone: (206) 783-2012
E-Mail:
WSBA Attorney Registration Number: 16122
==============


==============
Anyone who wishes to ask Jim Dutton about his child molestation
remarks, can contact him he

Jim Dutton
11S032 West St.
Naperville, IL 60565
==============

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