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Home » How to lose weight quickly » Fat is the new ugly on the playground

Kids are becoming increasingly concerned with weight at a younger age.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Editor's note: This is the third part of a six-week Friday series on the perceptions of beauty. Last week we looked at the counter campaigns against society's beauty ideal. Next week we take a look at men who are struggling with body issues.

(CNN) -- Marah Rhoades remembers when her daughter, Emilia Cooper, started to worry about weight. She was 5.

That's when boys at her Brooklyn school started calling her fat. Emilia, now 9, has always been taller and more broadly built than most of the other kids in her class, and she quickly learned her body type made her a target for teasing.

"At that point she became very aware of weight," says Rhoades. "She started coming home and telling her 3-year-old brother, 'If you eat that you're going to get fat.'"

"We all exercise a lot, and it's definitely just her body type," says Rhoades. "We started having a dialogue about it, but it's hard for her to understand that there are different bodies."

Fat is the new ugly on the school playground. Children as young as 3 worry about being fat. Four- and 5-year-olds know "skinny" is good and "fat" is bad. Children in elementary school are calling each other fat as a put-down.

As our country becomes more obsessed with increasingly skinny ideals of beauty at the same time that we're getting more obese, "Fat hatred has become so pervasive that it is part of the fabric of our language and interactions," says Dr. Robyn Silverman, author of "Good Girls Don't Get Fat: How Weight Obsession is Messing Up Our Girls and How We Can Help Them Thrive Despite It." "Fat and thin are no longer simply assessments of size or weight, but rather of character. So you can imagine why adoption of these attitudes, diet talk and disordered behavior is happening earlier as well."

Worrying about weight starts early

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Fat is the new ugly on the playground

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