Medium Raw

“Ewwww!!!” says my daughter.

We sit in silence as she considers this, then she asks, “Is it true that if you eat a hamburger at McDonald’s it can make you a ree-tard?”

I laugh wholeheartedly at this one and give her a hug. I kiss her on the forehead reassuringly. “Ha. Ha. Ha. I don’t know where you get these ideas!”

I may or may not have planted that little nugget a few weeks ago, allowing her little friend Tiffany at ballet class to “overhear” it as I pretended to talk on my cell phone. I’ve been tracking this bit of misinformation like a barium meal as it worked its way through the kiddie underground—waiting, waiting for it to come out the other side—and it’s finally popping up now. Bingo.

The CIA calls this kind of thing “Black Propaganda,” and it’s a sensible, cost-effective countermeasure, I believe, to the overwhelming superiority of the forces aligned against us.

I vividly recall a rumor about rat hairs in Chunky candies when I was a kid. It swept across schoolyards nationwide—this in pre-Internet days—and had, as I remember it, a terrible effect on the company’s sales. I don’t know where the rumor started. And it was proven to be untrue.

I’m not suggesting anybody do anything so morally wrong and unquestionably illegal.

I’m just sayin’.

Posting calorie information is, according to a recent New York Times article, not working. America’s thighs get ever wider. Type-2 diabetes is becoming alarmingly common among children.

It is repugnant, in principle, to me—the suggestion that we legislate against fast food. We will surely have crossed some kind of terrible line if we, as a nation, are infantilized to the extent that the government has to step in and take the Whoppers right out of our hands. It is dismaying—and probably inevitable. When we reach the point that we are unable to raise a military force of physically fit specimens—or public safety becomes an issue after some lurid example of large person blocking a fire exit—they surely shall.

A “fat tax” is probably on the horizon as well—an idea that worked with cigarettes.

First they taxed cigarettes to the point of cruelty. Then they pushed smokers out of their work spaces, restaurants, bars—even, in some cases, their homes. After being penalized, demonized, marginalized, herded like animals into the cold, many—like me—finally quit.

I don’t want my daughter treated like that.

I say, why wait?

I don’t think it’s right or appropriate that we raise little girls in a world where freakishly tiny, anorexic actresses and bizarrely lanky, unhealthily thin models are presented as ideals of feminine beauty. No one should ever feel pressured to conform to that image.

But neither do I think it’s “okay” to be unhealthily overweight. It is not an “alternative lifestyle choice” or “choice of body image” if you need help to get out of your car.

I think constantly about ways to “help” my daughter in her food choices—without bringing the usual pressures to bear. “Look how nice and thin that Miley Cyrus is” are not words that shall leave my lips, as such notions might drive a young girl to bulimia, bad boyfriends, and, eventually, crystal meth.

So, when I read of a recent study that found that children are significantly more inclined to eat “difficult” foods like liver, spinach, broccoli—and other such hard-to-sell “but-it’s-good-for-you” classics—when they are wrapped in comfortingly bright packages from McDonald’s, I was at first appalled, and then…inspired.

Rather than trying to co-opt Ronald’s all-too-effective credibility among children to short-term positive ends, like getting my daughter to eat the occasional serving of spinach, I could reverse-engineer this! Use the strange and terrible powers of the Golden Arches for good—not evil!

I plan to dip something decidedly unpleasant in an enticing chocolate coating and then wrap it carefully in McDonald’s wrapping paper. Nothing dangerous, mind you, but something that a two-and-a-half-year-old will find “yucky!”—even upsetting—in the extreme. Maybe a sponge soaked with vinegar. A tuft of hair. A Barbie head. I will then place it inside the familiar cardboard box and leave it—as if forgotten—somewhere for my daughter to find. I might even warn her, “If you see any of that nasty McDonald’s…make sure you don’t eat it!” I’ll say, before leaving her to it. “Daddy was stupid and got some chocolate…and now he’s lost it…” I might mutter audibly to myself before taking a long stroll to the laundry room.

An early, traumatic, Ronald-related experience can only be good for her.

11 I’m Dancing