On the flip side of the vintage coin, ‘Cruel Kindness’ from 1967 features a sneering, classist doctor telling working class people that they are ignorant about food and if they just follow doctor’s orders and cease ‘over feeding’, their children will magically no longer be fat.
Oh, and it’s all the mother’s fault.
I think my favorite bit is where she says it’s far too late for eleven-year-old Valerie to be saved, but there’s plenty of time to help ten-and-a-half-year-old Jimmy! I wonder whether that has more to do with the six months difference in their ages or their differing genetalia.
Also, three weeks from puffing couch potato to winning school races? You’ve got to be kidding me.
Watching this is like fat hate bingo in motion.
Don’t you find it interesting that both boys were introduced as “fat” while playing an active game of football. That’s hardly puffing couch potato material.
And I hadn’t noticed that it was too later for Valerie but not for Jimmy – but poor old Valerie blythely condemned by the doctor to a life of misery, regardless of what Valerie things. And if she’s happy at her weight? Well then she’s just a Mrs Brown in training. Tsk. Tsk.
I did notice that about how the boys were introduced.
I wonder if they felt that it was ‘too late’ for little Valerie because she was self-medicating with chocolate, as opposed to being stuffed like a prize goose by a misguided mother. Then again, her family had recently broken up, her mother was clearly (and wickedly!) going off to work to support herself and her child rather than staying home and watching every bite her daughter took like a hawk, and both of Valerie’s parents are presented as thin.
I think the lesson here is that the boys were forced into fatness by their mothers, while Valerie has brought her evil weight on herself through being a child of divorce. If you want to stay socially acceptable, don’t allow your parents to divorce, little girls!