With American children and their goddamn obesity epidemic, it's only reasonable to assume that sooner or later the traditional TV-repellent overweight tykes would start appearing on your favorite shows. Weeds has Cylia's daughter Isabella, the chunky wise beyond her years proto-lesbian. Arrested Development had the curvy Maebe played by Alia Shawkat, who was on the receiving end of Michael Cera's unrequited lust. Nothing wrong with normal-sized children on TV, in fact this is a good trend! But what about when TV characters start treating overweight children without kid gloves, much the way the fat kids are treated in school?

On this season of Desperate Housewives, Gabrielle's daughter is constantly berated for being overweight, and now some viewers are fearing for the self-esteem of the actress playing little Juanita Solice.

"(the spokespeople) assured us that producers have been taking precautions from the get-go. For instance, they made a conscious effort to hire an older actress to play the part. Madison is seven, playing a four-year-old.
Also, Madison is never present during scenes featuring the adult characters talking about her weight."

That is entirely off the mark. Seven years old is still a child, and at that age you're old enough to realize that you're being made fun of. But what's the solution, only hire skinny child actors and put them in fat suits, like Ryan Reynolds in Just Friends? Let's see how fast child advocacy groups and other associations would begin to gripe about how no overweight actresses get roles in Hollywood.

Do kids know what they are getting into at that age, by exposing themselves to on-air criticism about their bodies? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps the answer is to create more positive body-image dialogue in the shows, but that wouldn't necessarily be true to life either.

Tricky dilemma, but critics whining about the poor plight of these actors who are actually managing to get work will just force producers to cut these characters from the scripts all-together to appease the ratings gods. And then, what? Back to Monica in the fat suit and every family on television having anorexically-small children.