Too fat?
My son tells me he is Scooby Doo’s number one fan. He loves the cartoon and watches the reruns all the time. He and his younger sister play lots of Scooby make-believe games, he was Scooby Doo for Halloween and my daughter was Daphne, and they only wanted Santa to bring Scooby related items at Christmas. You get the picture.
Last night, my son was thrilled to discover that a new Scooby series, “Scooby Doo Mystery Inc.” from the Cartoon Network, was premiering on television. Wikipedia says the two key differences between this series and the others is that first, it is written like a serial, so the mystery threads through the whole series and second, “that Daphne and Velma attempt to make romantic sparks with Fred and Shaggy, respectively.” Oh well, I suppose the gang of meddling teens couldn’t stay “just friends” forever. And like my five year old daughter does now, I once had a crush on Fred Jones. So I get it.
But there is another key difference between this series and the others that really makes me crazy – the gang got a makeover. Fred looks like he’s on steroids, Velma got breast implants and Daphne lost about twenty pounds. As the mother of a young girl, I am overwhelmed by how hard it is to manage the messages the media sends about body size and image. Girls are bombarded from such a young age with pictures of starving, over-glammed celebrities and spokespeople. When even cartoon characters originating from 1969, are dieting down from size six to size zero, how am I supposed to teach my daughter that thin isn’t everything and that starving is sick? Just when I though I’d found a halfway decent set of cartoon characters for my kids to watch*, Daphne had to go and start purging.
I am writing to the Cartoon Network to express my displeasure. Will you join me? The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that between five and ten million girls and women have eating disorders. Perhaps the Cartoon Network will get Daphne some help. You can contact them here.
* I couldn’t tolerate Fred Flintstone or George Jetson and had to kick those chauvinist pigs out of my living room. And I have never been able to my children explain why female superheroes wear bras and skintight bodysuits to save the planet.
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i am 14 and i LOVE scooby-doo! that was my favorite show to watch when i was a kid and him and thelma were my favorite characters! i absolutely HATE that they changed the old scooby-doo and their theme song and put the new shows and cartoons they have now, not just the scopoby-doo ones either. i hate the makeover the put on the characters of scooby doo for the new scooby-doo series because it makes the characters look unreal and unhealthy! what are we teaching our kids t9o be like when they grow up? i mean do you want to destroy america and the world more with sexuality and kussing and killings and damage? we have more rapes and killings and suicides then ever before and don’t you think that has something to do with what they watched and listened to when they were kids? yeah it does so i vote to change the new scooby-doo back to the old scooby-doo and change the corrupted cartoons into ones with love and kindness and laughter…we don’t need to show our kids that the world is bad and dangerous in cartoons for heavens sake!
Christina, Thanks for writing. It is frustrating. I haven’t been able to find any images online yet to show you the makeovers. I wish I could. Daphne’s waist is ridiculously small. Too often, the media goes unchecked while they shrink the stars. It’s unnecessary and unhealthy.
This is so incredibly frustrating! So Velma needs breast implants because she is the “smart girl with glasses” ? Daphne needs to be even skinnier? I really think it is awful the message that this is sending to kids who watch these shows. Especially the young ones because they see these characters as role models. Growing up in the 1990′s I saw an influx of shows that made me want to diet or made me feel inadequate. I am glad that I grew into a woman who loves herself, but I wish I had not gone through any of that at all. Thanks for posting this
Now that would make my day.
And if you generate enough buzz and get the show removed, will the producers say, “And we would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling moms?”