Do We Owe Our Children Fitness?

Plus white supremacy in home renovations, chatbots for weight loss, and possibly the perfect ice cream bowls.

Many, many, many of you have sent me this Instagram reel, which had a moment last week. It rotates clips of a very thin momfluencer (wait, are you a momfluencer if you mostly use your platform to sell essential oils? Oilfluencer?) working out in a variety of ways, mostly with her children in tow. The caption emphasizes that she never pressures or asks her kids to run with her, they all just love it! But the voiceover (I guess read by her husband, but it also sounds like male Siri?) goes like this:

A mother’s fitness level has a direct relationship to the health of her children. According to the American Journal of Pediatrics, the less active a mother is, the less active her children are. Especially when they are very young.

What does that mean for dads? Well, do you want healthy kids?

Well then, make time in your schedule where you’re on kid duty, for your wife to workout. Don’t let her try to squeeze it in where she can.

That doesn’t mean that this is permission to shame her or force her into anything she doesn’t want to do. But make it a priority to support her in her fitness goals.

Because the kids are watching her. And the science shows the impact.

Okay. I know. This is a rich, rich text.

A few of my questions include: Why do we never consider how a father’s relationship with exercise impacts his children? (One reason is that we assume it’s unequivocally good for dads to exercise a lot, another is we don’t expect fathers to put in equal parenting time.) Why must all of a mother’s leisure activities continue to be in service of her children? If the study showed that moms who exercise raise compulsive liars, would we still let moms have gym memberships?

And most of all: If this dude has time to narrate this video telling dads to give their partners time to workout, why is so much of the video footage of the mother exercising with her children?

That’s before we get into the inherent ableism of it all, of course. I thought about writing a think piece on this. But just like I did not want to write about Gywneth, I don’t want to give this an undue amount of oxygen. (It already has over 67,000 likes. The essential oils are selling fine.) I would love, however, to dissect this reel, and all the larger questions it raises, with all of you!

So, Friday Thread: What’s your take on the reel? What’s your take on her (his?) argument that moms have to exercise so our kids will exercise? What else do we need to unpack here? I’m making popcorn…go!

PS. Please be kind and remember my comment section ground rules. And you do have to be a paid subscriber to join the discussion, so here’s how.

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Friday Links & Recs

We’re recording your June Indulgence Gospel ep on Monday! Drop any and all questions for

Corinne Fay

and me right here.

Absolute must read on what prison does to your body image by

Brittany Peterson

and

Jonathan Rodriguez

.

Our belief that homes should be effortlessly clean and pretty is rooted in white supremacy. (Major oh fuck from me watching this.)

@danitaplattWe don’t learn by having experiences. We learn by reflecting on our experiences. This is an invitation to reflect on attitudes, the desire to be seen as “good” or even to be designated as “better” than someone else. The itch to organize ourselves into heiarcies is powerful and we can only address the systems that encourage this by first recognizing how those systems traffic in our beliefs, disavowing them and intentiinally and continually putting distance between ourselves and those systems. Simply put, we cannot address something we refuse to see. #gentlecare #caretasks #systems

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Very much related:

Anne Helen Petersen

on the optimization sinkhole. (I am quite sure we once owned that same terrible coffee maker.)

Also related:

Laura Fenton

on why gut kitchen renovations are out.

So grateful

Ragen Chastain

got into the whole mess that is NEDA’s chatbot, which recently replaced their human-staffed helpline for people struggling with eating disorders:

[Activist Sharon] Maxwell asked about eating the right foods to lose weight. This was a clear test for the bot. This question is a red flag under any guise, but when it is being asked by someone seeking support around eating disorders, it is a gigantic red flag, atop a tall pole, set ablaze and waving in a strong wind.

The chatbot failed the test, offering up a heaping helping of diet culture including recommending (to someone seeking help from the National Eating Disorders Association) tracking calories and making sure to eat less calories than you burn.

Still thinking about this piece by

Sara Petersen

on the truth about publishing a book.

Did I decide this morning that we need these ice cream bowls in our life, why yes I did. (In my defense, I hadn’t read the optimization essay yet.)

I have never been much for seed starting but the amount I spend on plants this time of year always makes me wish I were. Taking notes on this whole winter sowing concept, which sounds like a much lower lift than wrestling with grow lights.

My weekend reading because

Jo Piazza

is coming on the podcast soon to talk about food in women’s fiction!

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Book Update

What thin parents of fat kids need to understand.

Loved this interview with Christine Yu for Outside Magazine (and am so excited to read her new book!)

When

Roxane Gay

name checks you in Work Friend and makes your week.

Hello book club people! Don’t forget to enter our sweepstakes for a chance to win FIVE copies of the book plus one me Zooming into your discussion. You have until June 13. Oh and don’t forget to also download the Book Club Reading Guide!