Mary Novaria

As seen in the Huffington Post There's a meme going around, the one with two precious little girls in frilly, white matching outfits. One of them stands on the bathroom scale while the other says, "Try again without the socks."  It's meant to be cute and funny and, on the surface it is. I'm sure I've "liked" it more than once (along with tens of thousands of other women) as friends have posted it on Facebook, maybe even LOL'd or ha ha'd in the comments, because who among us has not commiserated with a girlfriend about our weight? One particular day, though, I got on my own bathroom scale and when the image of those two angelic preschoolers popped into my mind I was angry. Maybe the meme is just as much about friendship as weight, but I couldn't stop thinking about the heavy implications. What is cute or funny about these adorable creatures obsessing about a number on the scale? Feeling even at the tender age of 3 or 4, that they sho...

Ugly. Scary. Emaciated. Just a few of the uncharitable adjectives tossed around via social media since the Biggest Loser finale. I admit, when Rachel Frederickson stepped onto the stage in her shining silver dress, my jaw dropped. “Oh, no,” I said to my husband. “She’s way too thin.” I’d been pulling for Rachel, a former competitive swimmer since she arrived at the Biggest Loser Ranch weighing 260 pounds. One of three finalists, she stepped on the scale and we viewers collectively held our breaths as the scale beeped and flashed various numbers, building suspense before settling on Rachel’s winning weight. At 105 pounds she’d lost nearly 60 percent of her body weight. Credit: Biggest Loser via YouTube The firestorm began. On Twitter and Facebook the insults flew. There was also concern for Rachel’s health and wellbeing, which is appropriate. But vicious speculation (one tweet suggested she’d been on the Hitler diet), name-calling (gross and skeletal) and armchair diagnose...