"WARNING: It's hard to be a little girl if you're not," reads the caption beneath a picture of a chubby, young girl in one of a series of anti-obesity advertisements by the Strong4Life campaign and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.
According to the ABC News report, Georgia placed 2nd worst childhood obesity rates in the U.S. where almost 40 percent of all children are overweight or obese. The even sadder part is that most of the parents there don't even realize their children are overweight or that childhood obesity is a 'problem.' Such stats prompted advertisers to take a tough love approach to educating parents, similar to that of anti-smoking campaigns.
In both print ads and TV commercials, actual overweight Georgian children are depicted with very blunt taglines: "Being fat takes the fun out of being a kid" and "My fat may be funny to you, but it’s killing me."
An approach that is getting mixed reviews. Although Linda Matzigkeit, a senior vice president at Children's Healthcare, defends the need for an "arresting, abrupt campaign," many feel parents and health experts question its effectiveness.
"Blaming the victim rarely helps," says Dr. Miriam Labbok, director for the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "These children know they are fat and that they are ostracized already."
As childhood obesity prevention researcher Marsha Davis put it: "We need to fight obesity, not obese people."
Judge for yourself. Is the campaign hateful or helpful?
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