Quick Saturday roundup

I could have told you this, but science and Carolyn say it better: it's not helpful to hound one's child about weight.

Science:

A parent’s comments on a daughter’s weight can have repercussions for years afterward, contributing to a young woman’s chronic dissatisfaction with her body – even if she is not overweight.

The study’s lead author, Dr. Brian Wansink, a professor and the director of Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab, characterized the parents’ critical comments as having a “scarring influence.”

Carolyn:

No child — no being — deserves such cruelty.

The adult thing for you to do now is to recognize once and for all that your mother is too . . . something — cruel, blind, stunted, angry? — to be trusted with your emotional health and that you have to protect it, nurture it, care for it yourself.

***
I don't want to pile on with regard to a very unhelpful response to the alligator snatching, but I want to make a point I meant to make (and maybe did) when the Harambe incident happened. And I want to make this point outside the context of race and double standards--which I know was the context (together with the issue of 'compassion fatique')--of the original tweet. My point is to be made from the perspective of someone who is constantly complaining about toddlers and their parents--toddler misbehavior, parental entitlement, unwillingness to set limits, indifference to the damage the kids can do. For example, I was at the library last Saturday and there was a kid riding around in a small tricycle. I was very close to telling him and his dad that if he were to roll over my foot, I wouldn't be the only one in tears. So you know where I stand on parents needing to watch their fucking kids.

But neither of these cases--Harambe or the alligator--was an issue of parental negligence. One was an issue of kids will wander off and you can't keep an eye on them ever single second, and the other was an issue of shit happens. Let's not blame the parents for either of these. Let's save parental blame for the parents who, for example, in some way place firearms where their kids can access them. That's parental negligence.

Also, no one is defending the offending tweet--in context or out of context. It was a super shitty thing to say. And the fact that people tweet worst things--death threats, personal attacks, images of gas chambers--isn't really the point for someone whose tweets don't fit in that category (though that point is directed toward the people who called it the worst tweet ever with no sense of perspective, since they don't get the hatred that women, POC, etc. regularly do). The lesson is that Twitter is a public forum and not the best place for stream-of-consciousness, when that stream can go horribly wrong. You can't have it both ways--i.e., Justine Sacco deserves eternal scorn and this woman doesn't--when both have apologized and seen the error of their tweets. Let's all take less pleasure in other people's downfall.