One teen advocacy group has a new plan for protecting children from the perils of body shaming: fatten up our beloved cartoon characters, from Robin to Gohan, to make them look more like their chunky viewers.
“In many ways, teenage cartoon characters are stuck in the past,” Project Know explains. “Their body shapes have drifted further away from an image that most people can relate to: They idealize a body type that’s increasingly unattainable for many.”
It may have never occurred to them that cartoon’s bodies are unattainable because they are based on whatever proportions the animator felt like drawing. Arnold’s football head is unattainable, but you don’t see me complaining.
Project Know starts with Robin. A character that literally spends his nights running across roof tops, fighting bad guys and training with Batman in the Bat Cave. So how dare he shame us with his slim physique!
“As they approach the teen years, youth are already expressing body insecurities: 18.5 percent of 11- and 12-year-old boys felt dissatisfied with their body,” Project Know said. “For these kids, an ultra-lightweight cartoon character like Robin may be a demoralizing role model.”
So Project Know gave him some extra pounds. But how is his grappling hook supposed to pull that huge gut off the ground? Will he even fit in the Batman’s sidecar?
Then we have Alex from Totally Spies! She is an international super spy with a high stress, physically active occupation. But Project Know thinks she should better reflect the current generation of iPad-obsessed couch potatoes. Her next mission will have to be cancelled as she can’t fit into the ventilation system leading to the enemy compound.
This next one really pisses me off. The sheer amount of time I spent on the couch watching Dragon Ball Z actually turned me into a hefty kid. 
Gohan, featured in this picture, is one of the most powerful fighters in the universe. He literally spent years in a hyperbolic time chamber that slowed down time so that he could do nothing but work out in order to defeat Cell and save the Earth. Now they take away all his muscles and say that’s better somehow!
“Teens are unlikely to see their physique being reflected in his defined chest and arms that ripple with muscles,” Project Know astutely observed.
I didn’t watch TV as a kid to see more tubby little kids like myself waddle around reaffirming that it’s okay I just polished off a family size box of Cheez-Its watching television. I watched it because I wanted to see ridiculously jacked super saiyans kick alien ass.
What happened to cartoons being aspirational? Does everything nowadays have to sink to the level of reality? Maybe instead of fattening up cartoons we should be teaching real children how to slim down.
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