Mother tells all in Vogue article: Claims she's preventing her daughter, 7, from developing eating disorders. Some say forcing her kid to diet is guaranteeing one.
Mommy-bashing is not a sport I like to engage in but New York socialite Dara-Lynn Weiss completely deserves the intergalactic whooping she's getting after telling Vogue magazine's readers - boasting really - how she forced Bea, her 7-year-old daughter, to lose weight, monitored her every mouthful and humiliated her with friends and in public to keep her from eating.
Baby Fat?
Weiss, who herself says she struggled with her own weight, says the last straw was when her daughter came home from school in tears after a boy called her fat.
She said her pediatrician diagnosed her daughter as clinically obese (she is 4 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 93 pounds). And 7. Did I mention she's 7?
And the kid was hungry all the time! Never got full. (Like she was trying to fill a void inside, maybe? Like she wasn't getting the emotional comfort a kid needs, maybe? Just wondering...)
Weight Watchers-like Diet for Kids?
Having a hungry kid is so annoying, her mom says: "It is grating to have someone constantly complain of being hungry, or refuse to eat what she's supposed to, month after month," Weiss writes in the April issue of Vogue. And "exhausting."
So, she put her daughter on a strict, Weight Watchers-like diet for kids. She chronicles her Tiger Mom approach to every single calorie her kid took in. No infraction too small, she humiliated young Bea at every opportunity - the more public the better. She railed at other moms who fed her kid at playdates. She tore into a Starbucks Barista about, well here, read it for yourself:
"I once reproachfully deprived Bea of her dinner after learning that her observation of French Heritage Day at school involved nearly 800 calories of Brie, filet mignon, baguette, and chocolate. I stopped letting her enjoy Pizza Fridays when she admitted to adding a corn salad as a side dish one week. I dressed down a Starbucks barista when he professed ignorance of the nutrition content of the kids' hot chocolate whose calories are listed as "120-210" on the menu board: Well, which is it? When he couldn't provide an answer, I dramatically grabbed the drink out of my daughter's hands, poured it into the garbage, and stormed out....
And there have been many awkward moments at parties, when Bea has wanted to eat, say, both cookies and cake, and I've engaged in a heated public discussion about why she can't."
Mom Gets Book Deal
With all that humiliation and intense maternal scrutiny and judgment, Bea lost 16 pounds.
Now Weiss has a book deal. I think I read somewhere its working title is: "Heavy." Weiss is being called a lot of things today in the viral, media sensation that has erupted after her Vogue article.
She admits Bea is "traumatized." But her proud mother, it seems, is thrilled. She says she's taught her daughter a valuable, lifelong lesson.
I'll say she has.
