Why Katie Hopkin’s recent comments has made ‘my teeth itch and my nipples twizzle’.
I’ve always respected Katie Hopkins and her right to say and do what she pleases. She’s built a career on being a bitch. Congratulations to her. However, just as she has the right to say and do what she pleases, I have a right to protect my children from the effects of her stupid, damaging, hurtful and irresponsible comments.
She has let fly in her column for Now! magazine and on her video blog, laying into the parents of fat kids and blaming them for their children’s weight. She says the kids need to be sent to specialist sports schools and forced to lose the weight.
Then she went on to use some offensive stereotypes to try and strengthen her point.
The most upsetting thing of all is a fat child. Watching fat parents drop their fat kids off at school in their cars makes me so angry my teeth itch and my nipples twizzle. The fat kids go through the school gates and there’s the fat mum in the car, who doesn’t bother to get out, still wearing her pyjamas…and that really does my head in.
She believes that fat-shaming the children and their parents into losing weight is the way forward.
There’s loads of fat kids and we don’t say anything because that would be fat-shaming, or bullying…well, I disagree completely. In England, we’re far too soft on it and we seem to think it’s okay that people are pureeing KFC to spoon-feed to their babies. I feel really sorry for those children. Their parents were just there watching them eat. I just want to go and ask them to stop. I couldn’t do that to my children. I could never feed my children to death.
Katie Hopkins, you have no idea what you are talking about and this mother of a fat child wants to tell you a thing or two.
Yes, there are children who are overweight due to their parents' unhealthy habits. Yes, these families need to change their behaviour for the sake of their children's health. But it is NEVER okay to shame someone over their weight for any reason.
The problem is that now that Hopkins has been fat, she feels as though she is an authority on it. Hopkins deliberately gained and lost 19 kilos for a documentary, to prove her point that obesity is due to laziness and losing weight is easy.
What I want to say to her is that weight gain - the kind that isn't gained for publicity reasons - is complicated. It is about the weight and it's not about the weight. Anyone who has been overweight in their lives will completely understand this statement.
The reasons behind family obesity and the startling number of children who are overweight and obese are more complicated than we realise and sometimes it's something kids will naturally grow out of as they get older. We used to call much of it 'puppy fat' and I saw it with my stepsons and my nephew who both gained weight in adolescence and then dropped it all as they got older.
