"Mummy, 你很胖"

"Mummy, 我的朋友的 mummy 比较美..."

That was uttered by this primary school boy to his 80kg-heavy mother!!! I am so disturbed.

Was watching this slimming show on channel 8 earlier on. Slimming shows are the fad now. This particular one was sponsored by Jean Yip where they audition heavyweight women, put them through a slimming programme (where you see all the unsightly flab wrapped tightly in plastic before being exposed to some funny lighting), package them in nice dresses and coiffeured hair, and voila, they are a different person altogether. And people like Jean Yip get their due credit.

Seriously, I think these shows are appalling. What kind of message about beauty are they propagating? And today, I had to hear this boy - he looks no older than nine - say that he thinks his mother is fat and that he supports his mother's efforts to slim down on TV because then she can be beautiful. Apparently, his mother says that he doesn't like her to wear sleeveless tops because her arms are too fat. So she actually changes out of these tops into baggy T-shirts for his sake!!! He also feels the layers of fat on her tummy and calls them 三层肉.

HUH? Where did this boy get his idea about beauty from??? You know, I highly suspect that he's learnt all this through the mass media - advertisements, appalling slimming shows, whatever. Because, the mother mentioned that he was watching a slimming show on TV when she asked if he wanted her to take part in such a show.

C'mon, at that age, I don't think I ever associated weight and beauty in such a connotation. Fat was just fat. Ugly was just ugly. It was never fat equals ugly. And I don't think it would even cross my mind to turn fashion critique and tell a plus-sized person that his or her arms were too big to be paraded around.

Oh man...with the proliferation of such blatant fat-equals-ugly messages, how will our young ever grow up with a proper concept of healthy beauty? And here we have Mummy shedding tears because junior now thinks she's soooo beautiful after shedding the kilos...And the comperes call her story very 感人!

Oh please!