The idea of “funny fat kids” has not left society as a whole. While it is considered politically incorrect to have real life obese actors portray the roles of funny fat kids, cartoons are still filled with these characters. Yet just as their cousins of yesterday, these little characters do not fare any better today than they did thirty or forty years ago. To add insult to injury, the idea of capitalizing from the concept of funny fat kids can also be found on tasteless t-shirts, video clips that are making the rounds on the Internet, and photo montages that grace emails around the globes.



The sad reality is that there is precious little that makes childhood obesity funny; fat kids are currently estimated to make up about a third of America’s child population and the numbers are not diminishing but instead growing rapidly. While everyone knows that a diet rich in fast food, sugary sodas, and endless bags of chips and cookies are contributing factors, there are also other reasons why children are gaining weight at alarming rates with no end in sight.



Reduced physical activity is one factor that is to blame. With the rapid innovations in the video games sector, it is hard to get children motivated to get off the couch and into the backyard. Add to the this the many children who wait patiently in daycare centers while mom and dad earn a living to put food on the table, and you will have children who are sitting after about six to eight hours of school for another four to five hours doing homework, coloring, and doing other low impact activities while they are waiting to be picked up. Once mom and dad do arrive, it is for the quick drive home, to put dinner on the table, to eat, and to linger in front of the television set before going to bed. Weekends then bring fast food, and occasional activity, if the children are fortunate enough to either have a backyard or live close to a park. Sadly, with the advent of patio homes, the former is hard to come by.



The sad reality of these obese children is the fact that they may not outlive their parents, but that instead their parents will bury these children sometimes late in childhood, and sometimes in the midst of their adulthood. For those children who do survive into later adulthood, there are the scourges of diabetes, cancer, and heart disease – to name just a few of the many maladies that will befall them. Add to this a chronically damaged self image because of their inability to live up to the skinny, airbrushed models of the teen magazines, and it is not surprising that pretty soon these children will be feeding their obesity rather than trying to fight against it. Furthermore, because of the merciless teasing these children receive by peers as well as family members, their negative self image is almost perpetually fed and cultivated, making it soon obvious (to them) that they will not be able to break out of the rut they are in.



As you can easily see, there are no funny fat kids. This image is nothing but a useless stereotype thought up by those who like to cash in on the idea of teasing the overweight child and thus being part of the problem, rather than being part of the solution and helping a child to change her or his eating patterns.