For Father's Day, Bridget got me a box of chocolate dipped fortune cookies. She and Claire have been dying - DYING I tell you - to have one. Last night Claire asked if she could, to which I replied "of course you can!". After eating the chocolate part, she eagerly pulled out the fortune and started reading it. Her fortune read, in essence, everyone thinks you're cute and outgoing, which is quite true! When I told her that, she looked puzzled. After a short time thinking about it she looked at me and said, "Mortimer (name changed) doesn't think so. He called me fat and stupid".
Now for some background. Mortimer and Claire were in the same kindergarten class. Claire, somehow, became the friend in kindergarten who sticks up for people when they are bullied or picked on. She is friendly to everyone in class, even the "hard" kids that no one else likes or plays with. For me as a dad to hear that made me both upset and sad. After fighting the initial urge to go find Mortimer's dad and beat the crap out of him, I let Claire know that she is neither, and that I love her very much. Now, does this qualify as fat shaming? Maybe. Am I letting this bother me more than Claire is letting it bother her? Probably. But that's OK, because I'm her dad and that's what we dads do, right??
So, here is the meat of this post; if you're a dad reading this, and you have a son, do me a favor...please teach him to respect girls/women early. Don't put it all on the girls to "learn to deal with it". It may be funny to him at the time, but it's something that stays with girls for a long time. I don't need to have a 6 year old first grader with body image and nerd image issues.
That is all.
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