Also, I have a strong suspicion this child was overweight. Binders at 9? "I don't want boobs" might really just mean "I don't want to be fat" and it just got bungled by overexposure to the internet and the naivety of adolescence. Being fat is going to make a kid want to hide their body as much as possible, too.
Additionally, obesity being so commonplace now (especially considering its Texas) might explain why the child can't identify that it's really the extra weight they don't like. Maybe they just don't know what a healthy body looks like, yet have an innate sense that something is wrong.
I don't really think this makes sense with the story. It's possible the girl is overweight, but plenty of normal weight or underweight girls go through early puberty as well and it can cause intense, deep body image issues. The article says the girl started her period when she was nine or ten years old, and usually around that time is when girls start to develop breasts.
For many girls, the beginning of puberty can feel like the absolute end of the world - and in many ways, it is. Girls have less freedoms after puberty starts - they can't run around shirtless anymore, they have to wear uncomfortable and constricting clothing (bras), they have to go through menstruation, etc. Not to mention that early-developing girls get
absolute hell from their male peers, who often start sexually harassing their female classmates around this time (think bra-snapping, sexual jokes, etc. - especially since boys that age, these days, have already been exposed to pornography). Oh, and this is the age at which most women and girls report first experiencing sexual harassment from
adult men, which can include catcalling, stalking, and other horrific things. If you were getting eyes from adult men every day on your way to the schoolbus because you have breasts so they feel like it's okay to stare and catcall you, then you had to go to school and have your classmates snapping your bra painfully and making sexual remarks about you, wouldn't you want to hide your breasts?
The unfortunate fact is that until we change the way our culture treats girls, and I mean
really freaking change it, we're always going to have girls who want to escape their bodies one way or another, to extremely damaging result - whether they're cutting their tits off, starving themselves to death, or overeating until men no longer find them "attractive", or whatever other way. This is a symptom of an ongoing problem.
As for fat girls... let's be real here: We live in a world where girls as young as
six are putting themselves on diets to avoid becoming fat. There is no little fat girl in this country who doesn't know that she's fat and what that means socially. And they all know what non-fat bodies look like - they have televisions in Texas, too. This isn't an issue of a girl who is uncomfortable with being fat and just doesn't know it because she's never seen a skinny person before in her life. This is a symptom of a societal issue with how girls are treated by society, especially by men and boys.