Hot Potato Mom Exploits Child in Vogue Magazine and We Pay
by Samantha Ettus
Starving a 7-year-old is child abuse even when it’s cloaked in the beautiful pages of Vogue.
While Mad Men’s 1960s misogyny had center stage this week, Vogue Magazine found a way to steal it. The fashion bible came out yesterday with a first person account by Dara-Lynn Weiss, a troubled mother who drove her 7-year-old daughter towards a 16 pound weight loss, sometimes depriving her of dinner when she had “too big” a lunch and starving her on and off for a year. And while readers and media were gaping in horror, she was running around town securing a publishing deal, so now she has an even bigger audience to preach to with her misdirected war against fat. I picture her leapfrogging from a soulless fashion editor to a soulless book editor. Apparently they are easy to find.
As a mom I am saddened and as a Random House author, I am appalled. (Weiss landed a book deal with the same publishing house that published my books.) But who is to blame? Is it Anna Wintour and her total disregard for her editorial responsibility to publish accurate information? Is it Random House for the same sin? Is it Michelle Obama’s war on obesity more on Forbes…