"That childhood obesity could inflict considerable pain of the emotional kind on its sufferers was, in fact, a new belief in the twentieth century. It was sufficiently radical an idea that doctors felt the need to tell patients that the jolly fat child was a figment of popular imagination. "I was an obese child myself, and I know that there is genuine mental suffering in being an obese child," said , a famous diet doctor and newspaper columnist. "The fat child is not a happy child." In 1921, this was revelatory and had big implications for how Americans saw themselves and the issue of obesity in childhood."