YOU SUCK!!!!

Jell-O. And they’re little Temptations pudding advertising. See, the idea is that it’s not like their other desserts (somehow). I mean, it probably still contains the exact same ingredients. But somehow this one isn’t for kids. They’re not only saying so. They’re forbidding kids from getting free samples of it through fancy machines!

The current offer is for Temptations by Jell-O, the brand’s first product designed specifically for adults. The machine is equipped with technology to determine the age of the person requesting a sample. If the machine senses a child, a panel lights up with the words, “Sorry, kid. You’re too young to experience indulgence like this. Please step away so the adults can get their free treat.”

You’re too young to experience indulgence like this? Even if I weren’t outraged on youth rights grounds, I’d want to smack the person who came up with this. Are they actually implying eating this particular pudding constitutes sex?

We’ve been discussing this a bit on the NYRA board e-mail list, and Eric Goldstein suggested the restriction could be for liability purposes. And he’s probably right. Except if that were all it is, you’d think they could at least try to be respectful about it. Having a machine say the equivalent of “ha ha, you can’t have this!” pretty much shows there’s more to it than that.

Unless it’s 50% vodka, there’s nothing “adult” about Temptations, no matter how much Kraft tries to implicitly sexualize it. No, they are very obviously taking the alcohol and cigarette tactic of using age restrictions to boost youth desire for the product. To make them want to be “adult”. As well as making adults want to use the product because it’s not for kids, so they can quench their adult insecurity by indulging in what might be usually pegged a kids’ dessert but not feel young doing it because kids can’t have it.

We see this with so many products, that kids can’t have or can’t have fully usually under the guise of safety. But that’s an excuse. I’ll bet more adults support the drinking age not so much becase of desire to keep youth healthy, but because they see youth as “other”, as inferior, and that they have some right to be superior to them and to have things those inferior others can’t have. And this makes them feel good and triumphant, that they’ve won over those evil youth, who’ve committed the horrible sin of existing when they haven’t existed long enough. Hell, I’ve seen ads for parental controls on things that promote it not to keep kids safe but to be able to block them and say/think “haha, you’re blocked, you stupid kid!” It’s a dangerous combination to set something where one group can feel super privileged and superior over the other, all with the excuse of “safety”. Safety, my ass!

And youth aren’t the only ones victim to this method, though they fall victim to it perhaps most severely. Dr Pepper Ten ads are promoting themselves explicitly that “It’s Not For Women!” Why? Because the idea is men don’t want to drink Diet Dr Pepper because “oh noes, diet soda is for women!” So they have this product that’s pretty much identical, just with added sweetener and caffeine, that’s not only marketed to men but supposedly only men. Because nothing kills manliness like using the same product women use. Men can’t be women!

And so we have Temptations, despite containing nothing uniquely harmful to youth (any more than any other sweet dessert anyway), promoting itself as “just for adults” so adults don’t have to feel degraded by eating the same product kids eat. Men don’t want to be women. Adults don’t want to be children. That’s the idea that is being promoted here to sell products.

Maybe we all need to get over our insecurities, and loudly, and make clear this kind of advertising doesn’t appeal to us. Because you don’t need to tell me a product will make me feel more adult. I don’t need something to do that for me, and I’m not stupid enough to think your product will do that.

Awww, isn’t that cute? You hear that sugar is evil and want to keep kids away from it. You’ll go to any ridiculous lengths to keep them from buying it themselves!

What’s this? You soooo badly don’t want students drinking anything other than water ever that you’ll bully stores into not selling anything to them? Stores that, I might add, have no connection to your school whatsoever? Oh, well, isn’t that just lovely. I mean, that’s totally justified seeing as the students aren’t people or anything and as their principal, I believe they are officially your own property! Goodness, why stop at dictating food and drink choices? But I digress.

Or, wait a minute. That’s not right. I’d say that students are PEOPLE. And as real individual people, they belong only to themselves. You aren’t even their parent. All you do is act as administrator of the place they’re forced to spend several hours of their day whether they like it or not. Does that make them constitute your property? And doesn’t the idea I even have to ask that question raise concerns over whether you should be teaching or even being near any children ever?

So sugar is just sooooo bad for children that it’s abuse if an adult were to allow a grain of it to touch the child’s lips. Is that what you believe? No, moron, I’ll tell you what’s abuse. The abuse here is dictating the living shit out of every little thing a child does, denying her the choice of what food and drink she consumes, and preventing her from exercising even the tiniest bit of economic autonomy just to buy a goddamn bottle of juice if she wants it!

In short, go die in a fire. Or at least stay away from kids. You’re a thousand times worse for them than sugar ever could be.

Wishing You Great Pain,

Katrina

Every now and then I hear about some mall or museum or whatever that kicked out a mother for feeding her baby in public. Even if that doesn’t happen, there are still other people who flip their lid over it for some reason. “Oh, noes, that horrible woman is exposing her breast and a baby is sucking on it!”

Hey, idiots. What the fuck do you think breasts are FOR? They aren’t sexual organs, outside of exhibiting some sensitivity and reactions to arousal. But then again, so does most of the body. To your stupid self, the mother is exposing a shameful sexual part, but to the baby, she’s allowing him/her access to FOOD. How would you like it if people got pissed at you for eating in public? And, hell, some people’s eating habits are way more gross than breastfeeding could possibly be (not that breastfeeding is disgusting at all, mind you). But you’re not anywhere near as likely to be asked to leave for chewing with your mouth open as a new mother is for nursing her baby. Hell, if you’re eating some nachos near me, I’ll be gagging on the smell of the cheese. That I would find disgusting. Much rather a breastfeeding mom were near me than you. But in that case, I would simply get up and move away to where I can no longer smell the cheese. Like you should do if you’re so bothered by how a little baby is eating.

Then you get the ones who are worried about their children seeing a woman breastfeeding her baby…

Seriously?

Weren’t those children breastfed themselves? I should hope so, since mother’s milk is not only free but way better for the baby than formula, though there are of course cases where the biological mother is either not present, whether because of death or adoption or whatever, or she simply is unable to produce milk, which happens. Most of us were. I mean, yeah, it’s creepy to think about it when we’re much older, to look at our mothers and think “wow, I sucked on her nipples for sustenance for the first several months of my life”. But that’s what those nipples are for. That’s what’s natural. So are you really going to tell those children they shouldn’t see a baby being fed because the way they were fed at the beginning of their lives was wrong? Or, if they were denied it, and probably because of some qualm about it in this case rather than simply being unable to get it, you’re telling them the natural way babies are fed and what they were denied is evil somehow. A mindset that is infinitely more disgusting than a woman feeding her baby from her own body could ever be. Though, again, not that the latter is all that disgusting at all.

And, hell, that kid already spent most of a year sitting inside you, having gotten in there because you had… sex… and after that was born out of your… vagina… but I guess the baby feeding from your nipples, oh well, that’s just crossing the line!

But, nah, seriously, if you personally do not want to breastfeed your kid, that is of course your choice. I’m not one of these types who thinks you’re evil if your 4-year-old is weaned already*, or that those who can’t produce must make themselves do it anyway or get someone else’s breast milk. That’s a bit extreme. I’m also not interested in acting like breastfeeding is “OMG it’s the most beautiful thing in the world!” Not really. It’s pretty normal and mundane, really. No, if you’d rather do the formula and bottle thing, fine. Your choice. But if someone else is making the choice that breast is best, and even does so in public, STFU and look away if it bothers you so much. Remove yourself from the situation entirely because your own mind is the only place where what’s going on here is perverse. Then everybody’s happy.

* = seriously, though, don’t breastfeed a 4-year-old.

Wow, my ass sure does hurt. From all the humongous gold bricks I shat.

Five Alive?! In my United States?!

What are they saying? “YOU RULE”. Yes, yes, I know. “HELLO”. Well, hello yourself, little candy heart! “MY CUTIE”. Why, thank you! “SEE YA”. Bye! “GET REAL”. Well, fine, be that way!

Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, the sixth installment of Mmmm, Candy Hearts, the Sure, Why Not? Valentine’s Day tradition! Where I, the celibate observer, remark about how people who are in relationships or are dying to be in relationships just utterly fail hard. My relationship history may be almost non-existent, so I don’t claim to be an expert, not that anyone can really make that claim, but sometimes watching the way people handle this hot potato known as love is just intriguing.

One thing I’ve learned about love though is that you cannot force it. It will run its course on its own. There’s lots of stories of unrequited love, all with the basic depressing rule that, well, you cannot force someone to love you. Sometimes people will tell you otherwise. Lord knows everyone has their little advice for winning someone’s heart. Like there’s some grand gesture to make your love object go from “eww, go away” to “OMG, let’s get married!” Uhh, no. You can’t flip a switch to make someone love you. True, there are ways to reduce turn-offs to maybe make it easier for said person to love you, but that would only better allow it to happen; it won’t make it happen. And your love object can’t make it happen either. Love is involuntary. We can’t help it. So often we might meet someone who might seem the perfect match in every way, but there for whatever reason just isn’t any love there. And it sucks. And there isn’t anything you can really do about it. Maybe give it some time to see if it ends up developing, and it sometimes does, but if it’s not there, it’s not there, and does no one any good pretending otherwise.

All that said, though, the opposite is also true. You can’t make someone love you. You also can’t make someone not love you. There’s that awkwardness when someone for whom you simply have no love seems to really love you! What do you do? Does this knowledge bother you? Think this person is insane now? Goodness, this person shouldn’t love you when it’s not mutual! You must do something about it! So you perhaps start avoiding this person. Being intentionally cold. Talking more than usual about a past, present, or prospective significant other. Because if this person realizes what an ass you are, maybe they’ll stop loving you and go elsewhere. Maybe you’ll constantly try to hook that person up with others. Whatever it takes to turn that love for you off!

Except absolutely none of that will work, and being nasty to that person is not only such an obvious ploy to turn them away but it just hurts them. Because they still love you and there’s nothing you can do to change that, yet now all that’s different is knowing they are hopelessly in love with a jerk. Who is such a jerk that they’d rather hurt someone who loves them than just deal with the awkwardness a little longer. And, of course, the one who loves you can’t just turn it off like a light switch, no matter how much they may wish they could. Love comes and goes as it pleases. You’ll try to control it, whether your own or someone else’s, and it’ll just tell you to fuck off.

So what do you do? Nothing! Just stay the course as you were before this came up. Outside of making feelings or lack thereof clear, absolutely no action is required. Don’t lead on. Don’t be intentionally standoffish. Just pretend it did not happen. Yeah, things might be awkward, even if the subject is never brought up again, but just deal with it. Of course, this is assuming that the loving one is in fact dropping the subject and isn’t being harassing. That, of course, is where further action could be warranted. And certainly the non-loving one might end up construing everything the loving one does or says to have to do with it. Which is fucking stupid. Unless you have any real reason to believe that person is dangerous, you don’t have a thing to worry about. Don’t be an ass.

*munches more candy hearts*

And I think they’re quite tasty.

…

Why, yes, I do also like candy corn. Why do you ask?

*eats more candy hearts*

“GOT LOVE?” Well, I suppose it’s still less disgusting than milk. “FIRST KISS”. *smooch* “MAD 4 U”. See, candy hearts always love you!

“NO WAY!” Okay, maybe not.

Mother Sues McDonald’s for ‘Interfering’ With Kids

Happy Meals just got a little more expensive for McDonald’s: the fast food chain has been sued by California mother Monet Parham for using toys to make her two young daughters want nutritionally unsound Happy Meals…

Parham, mother of a six-year-old and two-year-old, said in a CSPI press release that: “I object to the fact that McDonald’s is getting into my kids’ heads without my permission and actually changing what my kids want to eat… what kids see as a fun toy, I now realize is a sophisticated, high-tech marketing scheme that’s destined to put McDonald’s between me and my daughters… I want McDonald’s to stop interfering with my family.”

Owwwww! My head hurts! Soooo much concentrated stupid!

*clutches head*

*takes ibuprofen*

Sigh. Okay, feel a little better now.

Are you fucking kidding me?! This Parham woman actually sat down, thought anywhere in this her complaint made any real legal sense, and went through the process of filing the lawsuit? I mean, I guess she’s got CSPI behind her, and they’re pretty nutty themselves, but shit, still!

She’s just another parent who finds it easier to file a goddamn lawsuit and go on some spurious health campaign when she’d accomplish a lot more and save a lot of energy by merely saying to her kids “no, I’m not going to buy that for you right now”. That far, this seems pretty run-of-the-mill.

But then she out and says the real issue here, and you see McDonalds is merely the scapegoat rather than any real cause: “I object to the fact that McDonald’s is getting into my kids’ heads without my permission and actually changing what my kids want to eat.”

That’s right. Her major complaint is that some entity other than herself is communicating with her children. Only SHE may indoctrinate them, of course! What next, if she’s super Christian, would she sue a Jewish person for telling her kids about Chanukah or mitzvahs? God forbid her children have tastes other than what specific ones she decides they may have. If someone provides her children with any contrary ideas or temptations, OMG they’re interfering with her authority as a parent!

I mean, most when seeing this would want to defend McDonalds, but I’m not interested in that. McDonalds can take it. What worries me is this idea that a parent has some inherent right to be the sole provider and dictator of any and all information and tastes the children may have. That this control is so sacred that it’s a lawsuit worthy offense should it be breached. It is an egregious lack of recognition that these children are SEPARATE PEOPLE, so much that she is filing a lawsuit, with the CSPI’s support, for anyone daring to send a message to children as if they’re anything other than the bubble-wrapped property of adults.

It’s not uncommon for parents expect their children to think and act like themselves, often that being the very reason they had children to begin with, expecting to train them up in a certain philosophy or to a certain end. Trouble is, many seem to think that to do so, they must be the only ones who influence their kids at all. While parents are by far the biggest influence on kids, they are also no where near the only influence. That is just a fact of life. There are other people in their lives, or at least there should be if you expect to have kids who are even remotely socially healthy.

And that’s what is happening here, taken to a frightening extreme. Parham believes anyone other than herself having any influence on her children at all is a crime worth making others pay for. Rather than, you know, teaching her children to make their own healthy decisions. Then again, making personal healthy decisions is something humans do, humans being something Parham must certainly think her children are not.

There are many hotels out there that will not let you check in if you are under 21. Hell, Holiday Inn Express’s website will even tell you point blank on their hotels’ pages the minimum check-in age. What’s often the little excuse for having this ridiculous rule? “Oh, we don’t want there to be underage drinking parties!”

Well, the logic there crumbles easily. Most parties with alcohol have at least a few people 21 or older around, mostly since they’re the ones who supply the alcohol to begin with. And if they have the 21+ people for that, chances are those people would be the ones checking in. As long as you allow anyone under 21 to stay at your hotel at all, even families, you run the risk of having underage drinking on your premises. Please. These rules don’t attack underage drinking. They attack youth independence.

There’s also the Muvico segregation issue, where they wanted to have one screen in their theaters be 21+ only. Their reason for this being – surprise! – they wanted to serve alcohol and it’s apparently less a pain in the ass to just card everyone who tries to enter than just those who actually drink the alcohol. Yeah, carding everyone rather than a few is somehow less a pain in the ass. Or, no, we know their real reason, and in fact had stated it themselves unashamedly… that adult patrons are annoyed by the presence of teens so this way they don’t have to be near those awful young people. Ewww!

In 2001, my sister and I, at the time aged 14 and 18 respectively, were in Las Vegas and needed to break a $100 bill. I forget why. So, since the casino was nearby (the Aladdin, I think) and they certainly have to do that all the time, we just went over there to the cashier and asked if she could break the hundred for us… and we were told she couldn’t because we were underage. So because the drinking age is 21, the Las Vegas gambling age is 21 so their frequent supplication of booze to the gamblers is unimpeded, so if you’re under 21 you can’t even really be in the casino area unless you’re just passing through, so certainly those under 21 are much too immature to… break a goddamn hundred dollar bill.

In some jurisdictions, restaurants that serve alcohol have a sort of curfew, after which no one under 21 may remain in their establishment or they get shut down. Thanks to the 21 drinking age, you can shut down a whole business, put people out of work… because of your mere presence at a certain hour.

If you’re under 21 in any of these scenarios and countless more, everyone around wants you to leave. No, not because they know or care what “damage” alcohol may do to you… because they fucking hate you because of your age and don’t want to be reminded you exist. With the drinking age, many places have to make the choice between serving alcohol or being open to young people. Seeing as most people love alcohol and hate young people, the choice is clear most of the time.

That’s another thing that bothers me about the proposed age restrictions on energy drinks. Or the thing about Starbucks possibly serving alcoholic drinks. If you just add alcohol (or whatever other age restricted product or phenomenon), you can make the young people be legally required to go away, or to at least strongly intimidate them into doing so.

These here and so much more are some real often encountered repercussions of the drinking age… and not a goddamn one of them has a fucking thing to do with drinking!

That’s one infamous thing about me that anyone who knows me even a little bit knows or will find out soon enough. When I first mention it, I get some strange looks and shocked reactions, as if I’d just praised Satan or something. Some wonder if I’m healthy. Some ask if or assume I’m a vegan. A college roommate said “but cheese is a nutrient!” (If that quote hurt your brain a little, that’s nothing. The same girl once told me that I shouldn’t carry such a heavy backpack or I’ll give myself cerebral palsy… yeah.) I’m not really a big fan of dairy products in general. Don’t care for yogurt. Only ever buy milk if it’s to have it with cereal. I like ice cream, of course, but most ice cream has very little milk in it anyway. I was glad to notice on a Cool Whip tub one time that it contains no dairy (or, well, at the time, it does now). I mentioned this to someone and the immediate response was “yeah, I know, that sucks, stick to Redi-Whip instead” or something like that. They just assumed the observation of no dairy was to me a bad thing, but not at all. To be normal, you must want lots and lots of dairy products.

Then I saw yesterday’s Cracked list, 6 Insane Conspiracies Hiding Behind Non-Profit Groups. Go read it. I’ll wait.

See that? Right there in #1. Our society is being intentionally overloaded with cheese.

In 2009, Dairy Management worked with Domino’s Pizza on its now-famous “new menu,” otherwise known as “our pizzas no longer taste so much like ketchup-splattered drywall” campaign. Not surprisingly for a bunch of guys who like dairy farmers, this involved adding a lot of cheese to Domino’s pizzas. Forty percent more cheese. So much cheese, in fact, that you can now go over your recommended daily saturated fat level by eating two slices of some of Domino’s pies.

Ah, thanks for the warning, Cracked. I shall be avoiding the new Domino’s pizza then. I avoid pizzas with too much cheese, of course. Pizza cheese’s only function to me is topping-glue. Over copious amounts of tomato sauce!

It’s the United States Department of Agriculture. Granted, the majority of Dairy Management’s funding now comes from fees imposed on American dairy farmers, but last year the USDA added funding to the tune of $5 million. This is despite the fact that other people in the USDA are also using your tax money to continually promote a diet low in saturated fats.

So why the intense government-sponsored focus on cheese, rather than milk or other cow products? Well, over the years Americans have increasingly come to prefer low-fat milk, and dairy farmers have been left with a huge excess of extracted milk fat that they’ve skimmed off it all. We’re talking millions of pounds here. All this fat, and nothing to do with it. So why not make it into cheese, and then spend a lot of money encouraging Americans to eat it?

Yeah, goodness, how dare people try to lower their fat intake? Just pump that crap into them through other, devious ways.

While, true, Cracked is full of shit on occasion and is certainly ableist, very ageist, sexist, and other nasty traits now and then, I was quite glad to see this! Everyone’s all like “oh, Katrina, you’re so weird, you don’t like cheese!” yet I’m not the one falling for government-sponsored “put this milk fat into your body some way or another!” campaigns.

Okay, true, lots of things I do eat are still under the category of some big business and/or the government wanting people to eat it for their own profit beyond that from merely selling the product in general. But the cheese is one I do avoid. Whatever that’s worth.

December 2, 2009: Inaction of Grace
December 2, 2008: Meet the Snipers
December 2, 2007: For Children
December 2, 2006: I Met Chip

What does it mean to be half Arab? Well…

I’m only half Arab. I eat my hummus… with tortilla chips!

I’m only half Arab. I make spinach fatayer… meaning I stuff a spinach filling into Pillsbury biscuits!

I’m only half Arab. I’m willing to martyr myself for what is right… by telling my relatives that my Jewish friends are awesome!

I’m only half Arab. A distant cousin tells me in Arabic that I’m wonderful… and I actually have no idea what she just said but I’m sure she’s pissed at me!

I’m only half Arab. I like to make tabbouleh… except the bulghur wheat is a pain in the ass, so it’s really just chopped tomatoes and cucumbers in a bowl. Close enough!

I’m only half Arab. Sometimes I get “randomly” selected at airport security… and sometimes I don’t!

I’m only half Arab. I’ll take my baklava… alongside a nice piece of pumpkin pie!

I’m only half Arab. I drink coffee from a teeny tiny little cup… while watching the Thanksgiving NFL game!

I’m only half Arab. I go to bed at 2am… which my family tells me is way too early!

I’m only half Arab. I yell everything I say… which makes me the quiet one!

I’m only half Arab. My relatives go on and on about how I need to find a good man and get married… which I just sort of ignore.

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

I’m so fucking sick of hearing about childhood obesity everywhere I look. It’s all “oh noes, kids are fat, kids are unhealthy, aaahhh!”

Alright, some of them might be above a healthy weight. So what do you do about it? Maybe they go play in the park a little longer. Maybe they eat some healthier foods. In any case, maybe the adults so involved with these kids’ lives should give the kids healthier options if they aren’t already. Maybe help them (and set an example by doing it themselves) develop healthier habits in general.

Of course, since when do adults actually take personal responsibility for helping young people do better? In ways other than finger pointing and berating the youth, that is. That’s right, they don’t, so they blame everything else they can. So the blame gets put on what mascots fast food chains are using or even, stupidly enough, whether the cartoons they’re watching depict fat characters! (Not to mention the slimming down of Santas I mentioned a couple years ago.)

Now there are so many ways to go here. One could be, as Matt so awesomely pointed out a couple weeks ago, rapidly diminishing activities available for kids, on top of too short lunch breaks to eat disgusting food, and, as Alex mentioned in the comments there, the cutting back or elimination of recess. So, basically, adults are doing everything they can to keep kids in a lifestyle that makes them unhealthy, and they blame THEM for it!

Or they make this yet another opportunity to attack kids’ choices of entertainment, constantly picking on the characters they like or the video games they play. As if a character having the tiniest bit of potbelly is as bad as the character is smoking. Hey, idiotic adult “logic” says kids will want to smoke if a cartoon is doing it, so it totally means a kid will want to get fat if a cartoon is doing it, right? Because being fat is totally a specific activity as opposed to just how your body looks.

Or there’s the thing about wanting to ban Ronald McDonald or stop airing fast food ads early in the day. Because this makes kids want unhealthy food. You know, if the kids are young enough for something like Ronald McDonald to appeal to them, then they’re young enough that they aren’t exactly going out and buying the Happy Meals themselves. Instead, some ADULT is buying it for them. People are worried about advertising these things to kids, but kids aren’t even the ones making the purchase. Take away the ads, and they’ll still wind up with a Happy Meal because their parents got a craving for Big Macs. And McDonalds is sort of everywhere (I can think of at least five within a couple miles of me), so it’s not like kids would be unaware it exists even if the ads went away.

Not to mention that whether the ads or clown are there, that does nothing about the parents that feed fast food to their kids on a daily basis, whether or not they themselves eat it. Why? Because they’re so afraid if they give kids anything else, they won’t eat. Which ends up a self-fulfilling prophecy, because when that’s all the kids are given, it will be all they’ll eat, since anything else would be foreign to them. Part of the stupid fucking myth that burgers, fries, hot dogs, and pizza are all kids will eat, that they’d rather die than eat a vegetable. Which, if I may go on a tangent for a moment, I always found insulting when I was a kid. The TV shows and ads had kid characters who hated or complained about vegetables, usually broccoli or brussels sprouts, as if this was supposed to appeal to me. It didn’t. I’ve always liked vegetables. And I resented these adult-created media aimed at kids always deciding for me that, as a kid, these are the foods I’m supposed to like and not like.

In fact, that’s part of this, too. Many McDonalds ads aimed at kids. Certain cereals aimed at kids. Kids’ menus containing only unhealthy options. Adults have created an unhealthy culinary culture for kids, telling them that, as kids, these are the sort of foods that are for them. I mean, just stroll down the cereal aisle. The less healthy more sugary cereals are the ones advertised for kids, and the healthier, ultra fortified ones are aimed at adults. Local grocery store used to even label the different sections of the aisle “Kids Cereals” and “Adult Cereals”. Which doesn’t make a lick of sense. Until Crispix comes with a free bottle of Jack Daniels and a Hustler, then you can tell me it’s an adult cereal, but lacking that, I think it’s just food. So, basically, in the ever so pointless division of which foods are for adults and which are for kids, it is kids that get left with and encouraged to eat exclusively the ultra sugary high fat crap. And the adults are blaming the fucking kids for it!

I’m not saying any foods need to be hidden or banned. Well beside the point. But when you give someone a powdered donut, and they eat the donut, don’t call them a pig for eating a donut.

And, of course, there’s one more interesting question here. Why this? Why the concern over childhood obesity at all? I mean, for one, adults have waaaay higher obesity rates than kids. And even some of the people of all ages who get called fat or obese really aren’t all that big. Yet why is kids’ body image suddenly everyone’s concern? Well, there’s of course the fact of an ageist society that kids are considered public property. But there are so many other things out there harming kids. Diabetes. Muscular dystrophy. Cancer. Hell, even tooth decay, which would give insecure adults yet another reason to attack kids’ eating habits (their diet consisting entirely of foods those adults gave them, of course). Why obesity? Well, answer is obvious. You can see it. Literally. Obesity means kids’ appearances aren’t what adults think they should be. So, really, while there are still the health concerns, sure, this all still comes down to child objectification. Fat kids aren’t pleasing to the public eye, so they must be ridiculed and shamed, all under the guise of encouraging good health. Yeah, that’s totally how you make people healthy. Not through assistance with creating a healthier lifestyle, or anything that’s actually respectful. Instead, insult the hell out of them and make them hate themselves. And wonder why they develop eating disorders later. I want to punch you assholes in the face so much.

And, honestly, any adult who thinks kids should be eye candy should instead be expecting an invitation from Chris Hansen to have a seat.

This has been Day 29 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 10.