Eating Myself Alive – The “Fat Princess”

There is a particular brand of humor out there where the comedian routinely makes themselves the brunt of every joke. Many of those jokes tend to be about weight, body image, and in general, self-depreciation. The reason that we can all sit anonymously in the audience and laugh at these “put-downs” is that we can usually be fully confident that the star on the stage likes themselves. They somehow embody an air of, “The joke’s really on you, because I’m awesome.” Or at least, “If you don’t like it, lump it.” We never have to stop when listening to Roseanne Barr or Drew Carey and wonder if all the “fat talk” is hurting their feelings. Somehow we KNOW that they KNOW we love them – every single ounce.

But what happens when we touch upon the average person, one who has not been seasoned by life yet. One who hasn’t had a chance to build the needed armor to love themselves in a world that obviously feels it is just fine to be prejudiced against the fat kid on the playground. Case in point? Fat Princess.

Briefly, Fat Princess is Sony's upcoming video game. It debuted at the recent E3 expo to much clamor and a web of criticism from feminists and non-feminists alike. Basically, the colorful Fat Princess is capture-the-flag with a twist – you thwart her capture from the “bad guy” by locking the once-thin princess in a dungeon and stuffing her full of cake so they literally can’t haul her big butt back to home base.

Fun? Funny? Unlike Drew Carey, the joke is on us. As a society, we decry segregation and prejudice in every way, and then we allow something like Fat Princess to be bought and sold with aplomb. And don’t kid yourself, the princess isn’t 35, she’s a kid. At most, she’s a teen. At a time in their lives when our daughters body’s are changing as fast as their hairstyles and what they need more than anything is reassurance and messages about healthy bodies, we are again allowing society to force feed them yet another message about FAT. And for good measure, this one is all tied up in a story about marriage and relationships.

If she’s fat enough, Fat Princess can remain … what? A virgin? Unclaimed? Unmarried? Ask any professional, and one of the tenets of most eating disorders is hiding from one’s own sexual development. Too fat and you’re safe from sexual overtures, thin enough and you’re so childlike you’re safe as well.

While allowing open dialogues around childhood obesity and healthy approaches to healthy bodies is vital to our recovery as a society, pretending that diminishing our young women is fun and games is beyond absurd.

Do yourself and future generations a big favor. For one week note how you speak about your body in front of your kids – and all the kids in your life. Are the words coming from your mouth self-loving? Or are they self-loathing? Don’t kid yourself; what you say matters. You ARE having an impact, one way or the other. This is not to shame or wrong you. Like all of us, you probably do enough of that without anyone’s help. But it is meant to open your eyes in order to live a new way.

I have no doubt that we, empowered women, are all about creating a legacy of empowered women. Creating an entire generation of self-hating adolescents is both insane and self-destructive. Let’s not feed our girls any more ideas about princesses at all – let’s fill their mouths with powerful, self-loving words about being QUEENS. Queens have power and queens rule their kingdom. Settling for anything less is just a royal flush.

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By, Laura Fenamore, CPCC, Body Image Master Mentor
www.LauraFenamore.com