“Mama, why am I fat?”

It’s a question I was never asked. But it’s one that could be on the lips of millions of Southern kids who grew up in a society in which obesity is endemic.

When I was a skinny little kid, the older folks in my family often referred to me as “puny,” and implied that I should eat more buttered biscuits and drink more “sweet milk,” which would “make you fat.”

Being fat, in that context, was equated with being healthy. It was the kind of “fat” referred to in the Bible, when God spoke of the time when the Israelites would have entered the “land that floweth with milk and honey,” and would have “eaten and filled themselves, and waxen fat.”

My lack of heft was attributed to the fact that I balked at drinking milk fresh out of the cow and would not eat a biscuit that had been smeared with butter. In fact, I gagged at the taste of sweet milk and butter. It didn’t gain me any sympathy. The old folks acted as if it were my fault, but their ridicule didn’t motivate me to consume stuff that made me want to vomit.

In grade school lunch rooms, the teachers insisted that I drink my milk. Being an obedient child, I would take a swallow and hold my breath until it was down. Then I would quickly follow with a bite of food to mask the taste. To avoid the pressure, I stopped taking advantage of the hot-lunch program and began taking bag lunches consisting mostly of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Skinny as I was in grade school, I don’t think I encountered anything near the ridicule that fell on my overweight schoolmates.

“Fatty, Fatty, two-by-four, can’t get in the schoolhouse door,” went the playground taunt.

I didn't aspire to that kind of fatness. I just wanted to get a little solid meat on my bones.

As I grew to adulthood and expanded my menu (I still don’t drink sweet milk or eat buttered bread, though I love buttermilk), I fleshened out and now weigh around 180 pounds, which is not skinny for a guy who stands 5 feet 8.

There are a lot of fatties walking around the South. As a region, we love food, and particularly the kinds of food that load our bones with fat and our arteries with cholesterol. Mississippi tops the list of states with the highest obesity rates, followed by Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma and South Carolina.

Children’s Health Care of Atlanta has launched an ad campaign to address the problem, and has kicked up a storm of criticism.

The campaign displays pictures of overweight children. In one of them, an obese child is asking his mother, “Mama, why am I fat?”

Critics claim ridicule is not the pathway to inducing children to shed pounds.

Children’s Health Care responds that the situation is bad, and people need to be shocked into changing their ways. When an alcoholic introduces himself at AA meetings, he says, “My name is John Doe, and I’m an alcoholic,” not “I have a drinking problem” or “I abuse alcohol.”

Over the years, we’ve softened the adjective “fat” by substituting the words “obese” and “overweight.” Women have learned to accept “pleasantly plump” as a watered-down compliment. And small children with double chins can be lovingly labeled “chubby.”

There was a time when you could laugh at obesity without being called “cruel” or “insensitive.” Folks of my generation used to chuckle when Arthur Godfrey sang “I don’t want ‘er, you can have ‘er, she’s too fat for me.”Or when Hoagy Carmichael sang, “Ain’t it great to have a gal so big and fat that when you go to hug ‘er you don’t know where you’re at.” I have a feeling those songs, hits in their time, would be banned from the airways today soon after their first broadcast.

Some men made a virtue of heft. During the 1940s, Jack Smart gained a huge radio audience by portraying a hard-boiled detective known as “The Fat Man.” Although his audience couldn’t see him, he lived up to the role with his 270-pound physique.

Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle became one of the highest-paid stars in early movies under the name “Fatty Arbuckle.” You may not have heard of Thomas Wright Waller, but I’ll bet you’ve tapped a toe to Fats Waller’s jazzy piano music. Antoine Dominique Domino Jr. achieved lasting musical fame as Fats Domino.

William Conrad’s bulk didn’t hold him back in portraying the detective Cannon in the 1970s television series, and a hefty Brian Dennehy had a lucrative career as an actor.

But obesity can certainly pose problems in politics. William Howard Taft, whose weight ranged between 300 and 350 pounds, became president in 1909, succeeding the lusty Theodore Roosevelt. He lasted one term, but it was politics, not paunch, that beat him. In 2011, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey passed up the Republican primaries, partly because his weight — said to exceed 285 pounds — made him controversial.

“Fat” isn’t necessarily a pejorative. But when you’re in fourth grade and the other kids use it as a schoolyard taunt, it hurts. And when you’re aiming for the White House and your internal and external aspects are open targets for the opposition, it can also hurt.

Maybe stigmas serve a purpose. They motivate people to do something about whatever is stigmatized. The pain may be balanced by the gain — or, in this case, the loss of weight.

Let's just let the kids know that we love every ounce of them.

Readers may write Gene Owens at 104 Belspring Lane, Anderson SC 29621 or email him at WadesDixieco@AOL.com.