When did we start becoming so nosey about how other people raise their kids?
Posted by clubwah on July 17, 2008
A story on the front page of the Herald Sun today shows a 10-year-old girl in a body-building competition who looks fit and normal for her age, but with her muscles tense to show off the results of her exercising
Despite the fact that the girl loves what she is doing and is doing it for fun, is keeping fit and is doing no harm to her body the Herald Sun has sought to ridicule her and demonise her parents with the line that she is somehow being exploited and damaged.
The paper wheeled out the usual suspects to subtly condemn the mother, including media-slut child psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg, who says this was sending the wrong message to image-conscious kids.
“What they should be saying to kids is they should be more valued more for what they do than how they look,” said the the rent-a-quote kiddy shrink.
Carr-Gregg, as usual, is full of shit. A sport like body building is a lot about doing. The girl is doing it to look good to judges, not to look better than her peers. It’s not like 10 year olds are being lines up compared on their looks against their will.
I would have thought this teaches children about self respect, nutrition and how to be active - does Carr-Gregg want her to be part of the mythical childhood obesity epidemic instead.
This is no different to junior dance competitions, which my daughters often take part in, where children are judged on technique and appearance. As for the physical demands of body-building on a child, check out the physical demands on kids who give dance and a real shot. According to her mother the girl does not use weights, just exercises, which are probably no more strenuous to the stretch classes that dancers endure.
It’s so unfair for the parents of this girl to be accused of somehow doing the wrong thing by her. This is a normal family who does not deserve to be on the front page of a newspaper and put at risk of public condemnation, by fucktards who follow this kind of bullshit like sheep.
Why can’t the self-rightious lot at the Herald Sun and Dr Carr-Gregg, concentrate on the 100 kids who needs emergency accommodation in Melbourne every night, or those children that are being found dead through neglect in their own homes on a far too regular basis.
And as readers it’s about fucking time we stopped passing judgement on people who are doing no wrong by their kids.
Posted in Community, Media, Parenting | Tagged: Parenting, children, bodybuilding, maughan wellham, michael carr-gregg, beat up | 25 Comments »

