My younger brother would have been bashed by the "fat child" brigade these days. He's stockily built, all our family are. He has slight growth issues from the fact he's got a 5 foot 1/2 inch tall mother, a short-arse father and slightly stunted growth from medical issues as a kid. He also spent a lot of his childhood having intermittent bouts of steroid medication for health issues - leading to him ballooning out. My mum took shit from medical professionals, from random busybodies in the street - from everyone about this "OMG IT'S A FAT CHILD QUIT FEEDING HIM MARS BARS."
Said child grew into an adult who lives at the gym, hasn't got a picking of fat on him, and yes, he's still a short-arse (I escaped that because my dad's tall) and he's still stockily built - but he's not overweight.
In contrast I was the skinnier child, had that extra few inches of height to carry more weight anyway... and who grew up to be the adult with a weight issue?!
What I really really fucking object to is the attitude that fatty bashing is socially acceptable and "for their own good" these days. It's making life WORSE for the overweight - the abuse people hurl in the street is getting worse, kids thinking it's perfectly acceptable to have a pop at people because of their size (I'm not massive btw - I'm between a 20/22 - currently living in size 24 trousers I've taken in because I'm a cheap arse and won't buy new ones yet... been as large as a 26) - it's got ridiculous. All that does is to isolate people who ARE larger even more, meaning they don't go out, their self-esteem plummets even more - comfort eating and lack of activity become more of an issue and the weight continues to rise even more.
Every one of these massively obese people who are housebound had a day where they finally stopped going outside and I'd bet quite often it was because of the comments of others. An example of this - I was at uni, and I would walk/cycle to lectures up a mahooosive hill... I wasn't that large then (I was a size 18 - I remember because I'd just bought a gorgeous raspberry coloured jumper from M+S), until the day some idiots decided to yell abuse out of a car window at me on the way home one evening. I started driving to lectures to avoid that - meant of course my weight went up and the problem became worse.
To lose weight you have to sort out self-esteem and confidence - and that's something the medical profession are fucking shit at comprehending. I've had a GP yell at me in his surgery for my weight... I'd only gone in for a smear test. It meant I stopped accessing the doctors - took me a year after I moved house to register with a new one after that experience. The new guy (although shit with mental illness and a lying bastard) has a slightly more productive approach to things - result... the one who DIDN'T yell and shout got me 3 stones lighter. Still, walking through the doors of the local leisure centre was terrifying - and when you have to do that, to have a bunch of feral little chav brats (sorry but with the way they were behaving - that's an accurate description) pointing and laughing... not many people with rock-bottom self-confidence are going to be able to do that.
I'm frigging sick of the anti-fatty hysteria. I'm never going to be a size 10 - I'm not built that way - I've got broad shoulders, broad hips, a wide frame... yet even if I made it to a size 14 (which would be thin for me... my mother hit a size 10 when she was ill and not eating and looked skeletal) - people would still probably think it was ok to yell at me in the street for being fat, the medical bods would still bash me for my BMI etc etc. It's making matters worse - the idiots who bollocked my brother for his weight ended up producing a kid at the age of about 8 who felt he had to go for long walks "to get thin" - despite his medical issues being the reason behind his size. All it's going to do is lead to more people avoiding the medical profession, avoiding doctors and avoiding going out of the house.