(Bolding mine) ITA, Justin, and it is important to remember that you won’t “feel” your arteries hardening, the cells in your Isle of Langerhans giving out (which can lead to diabetes), or any of the other obesity-related diseases developing until it is too late.
And Susan’s comment, too:
WTF? Where the HELL do you get the impression I’m talking about fucking pride?
Do I sound Goddamned proud to know that I’m going to feel as shitty about myself if I’m at 180# with a resting heart rate of 65, and blood pressure running about 115 over 80 (IIRC), as I do now at 350#, with a resting heart rate of 75, and a blood pressure rating of about 125 over 90? Where did I ever sound proud of what I am?
I’m just damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. At least this way, you goddammed gloating twit, I’ll be dead before I go senile.
So fuck you! Don’t pretend you give a flying fuck for me or anything else. Your concerned about what you see, and if it’s ugly, or fat you want it gone and anything that does it is good enough for you. Should I hand you a fucking gun so you can shoot me? Or would a woodchipper be better?
Fat Pride? :mad:
Go rot.
Calm the fuck down.
I didn’t say fat people should die, I’m just sick of the notion that as long as you feel good about yourself, it doesn’t matter what you weigh.
That’s crap and it’s spreading.
I’m a little overweight myself. I don’t look it in my baggy clothes, but I know with my family’s history of heart problems I will have to slim down and eat better very soon. I probably should have started already.
It sucks, but it’s reality. It doesn’t matter how you feel.
You didn’t understand the link. I’ll explain it.
You stated “Seriously, if shame helps people lose weight, there would be no fat people.”
This implies that I’m saying shame is sufficient for loosing weight: If you’re ashamed of being fat, you’ll loose weight. However, that’s not my position. The causes of weight loss are more complex then that. You need both a means of loosing weight (the ability to exercise and eat right) and some kind of motive so that you’ll actually use those means and carry out your weight loss plan. Shame is a motive, and one that I think is a very common reason for people to attempt weight loss. Note that I said “a motive” and not “the motive.” You can certainly have different motivations, and some peoples motivations may not involve shame.
Cause: Consistently eating more calories then you burn.
Cure: Burn more calories then you eat for a while, then consistently eat as many calories as you’ve burned.
However, the cure can be pretty hard, because it involves a lot of self-control, self-denial, and being physically uncomfortable. In order to go through with it, you need something to motivate you through all that unpleasant. Here’s where shame comes in! People don’t like to be ashamed of themselves, and if they can get rid of what they’re ashamed of (like fat), they can stop being ashamed. Thus, shame motivates people to make a positive change in their life and loose weight.
It’s not circular thinking: Society shames you for being fat. You don’t like being ashamed. You can’t change society, but you can eat a healthy diet and excercise, and thus stop feeling ashamed.
If by “shaming children to lose weight” you mean “actively try to instill a sense of shame into fat kids,” no, that’s not what I’m advocating. I’m merely stating that shame is a powerful motivator, and when it motivates people to make a positive change (like losing weight) it can be a good thing. I don’t think there’s a need to actively shame people, though, and even if there was a need I wouldn’t advocate it because it would be cruel to do so.
You quote my statement, and seem to believe I’m happy where I’m at - and then complain about people who argue for fat pride.
My comment had nothing to do with pride, which you still don’t seem to accept, it was all about no matter how I work, my self image is stuck, broken if you will, to point to “fat, useless slug.” That is my complaint - because of how I’ve been programmed, in spite of knowing that when I was at 180, and fighting to keep every pound off, in the best shape of my life, and better shape than 80% of the people I knew in the military, I still knew I was too fat to date, too fat to go out with the guys, too fat to socialize, too fat…
Where the fuck did I mention pride in there? Hell’s bells, where did I say I felt good about myself? I said I feel less miserable. There’s a huge fucking difference between that and pride.
Let me make things perfectly clear— Obese people should lose weight. There is no pride in being sick and overweight and unattractive and laughed at by strangers. Our country is in crisis. Over 65% of Americans are overweight.
Clearly we have a problem and we, as a society, should be looking into the causes and remedies. It should be quite obvious to anyone with half a brain that shaming fat people does not work.
Let me repeat this, maybe bolding it will help those with superior attitudes understand better: Shame is NOT an effective weight loss tool. I do not see why this is so hard to understand. 65% of America will tell you that shame does not work.
Do you want to know what does work? It’s been my experience that those who want to see fat people shamed really don’t, but I’m going to tell you anyway.
Weight Watchers and programs like it work. They teach health eating and encourage exercise. They are supportive of each other and get great and lasting. There is no shaming involved at the meetings.
Bariatric surgery works. It’s faster and I haven’t heard what the yo-yo rate is for it. But you do not get a perscription for a bottle of shame to make it work.
Yet shame is what fat people are supposed to take because it’s supposed to be good for them. This is bullshit. It is not good for them. It’s fucked up shit that fat people have to take. No wonder we’re always so damned defensive.
When Texas politicians start taking the same tests, then I’ll start taking it seriously.
I teach in Texas, by the way. Texas politicians have been riding the teachers into office for decades now…
Keeping in mind that I totally agree with you on this point, how is advising the student and the student’s parents of their BMI going to shame them?
Obviously, if a child is obese, his or her classmates already know. However, what if the child is seriously underweight? Or borderline? Does this not seem like a somewhat useful stat to some people?
I dunno - I get that it specifically said “obese” in the article linked, but from a purely practicle point of view, it seems like it would be useful to more than just the large.
YMMV.
(BTW - I also agree that BMI may not be the most usefull statistic)
OtakuLoki-
You seem to have a bit of an issue with your body image and your weight. You should seriously consider getting both psychiatric and medical help to deal with these problems. Your body image nor your weight seem to be close to the healthy range and I sincerely hope that you can solve these issues.
To the rest:
Why exactly is it shameing the child to inform the parent of the BMI? I’ll bet there are parents out there that ignore the reality of the situation and give little jimmy whatever he wants. The shock of seeing a large number and obese range might be enough to change their behavior and begin to properly care for their child.
We send home report cards with Fs all the time whats the difference in sending home an F for body weight?
Politicians? Follow the same rules they impose on the rest of us? That’ll be the day. :rolleyes:
Master Wang-Ka, it’s teachers like you (And I know there are more of them out there than we know.) who give me what hope I have for public education. Alas, even at my most generous, I don’t think that you represent a majority of the teachers out there.
On preview, Alice my concern is not so much with the idea of having the schools checking some basic health stats and informing parents of a potential problem. I have two concerns - first, report cards are not a private means of communication, and never have been; second, I have reason to question whether the schools will be able to effectively measure such a concern. Like I said earlier, if the school nurse was willing to fudge my eyesight test to keep from having to fill out the paperwork, why won’t this be more of the same? If it hadn’t have been for the eyesight test, I suspect I’d have gotten glasses sooner, since there wouldn’t be evidence that my eyesight was fine, when questions first came up.
Oh, I’m not arguing for or against the BMI report card. It just pissed me off when the Meat guy said we should use diet, exercise and shame to whip the fatties into shape. It worked on him!
As for the BMI report-- eh. In and of itself it isn’t a bad thing but you can bet your bottom dollar that those who are skinnier, holier and smarter than me will find a way to use it against others. It’s how the continue to feel superior.
I assume you don’t mean it this way, but this part of your post came off as really, really condescending.
OtakuLoki - In my opinion, a BMI is not exactly personal information. If you have a high BMI, pretty much everyone already knows it. I assume that if a child had a particularly high or low one, they would guard their report card the same way as if they received all “F’s”.
Secondly, you had a crappy school nurse. Mine seemed to be decent (although I’m in Canada), obviously, any program, health, educational or otherwise depends on the school having competent people to run it.
Yes, they’d guard it, with the same effective results on the playground as for the kid with all 'F’s. i.e. None, the fact that the data was being concealed would confirm any guesses made by peers.
And I’m afraid I have to disagree on your second point, I had not a crappy school nurse, I had a crappy public school system. The teachers added to the ostracization I experienced; the school nurse was arguably incompetent, or at least negligent in this case; the students were at least as judgemental as any group of pre-teens can be, and I believe more so, since they had the active support of the teachers; and the parents were completely unwilling to allow any criticism of the teachers or the way things were handled.
Okay, how does anyone learn what’s on your report card if you don’t want them to?
But, if a kid’s BMI is 50, all his or her classmates already know. Really, this doesn’t seem like something a person can hide in the way they can hide a dangerously low BMI, fer instance.
I don’t know where you went to school but my report cards were most definitely private. I didn’t show anyone that I didn’t want to see them.
Are there people somewhere holding down kids on the playground to see their report card?
It won’t stay private. Schools are terrible at safeguarding information. My high school broadcast on the PA my ACT score as soon as my counselor got it - I was at the magnet school at the time so everyone in my high school knew my score hours before I did.
Regardless of the number, I didn’t want it public.
The kids have doctors, right? Let the health issues stay private.
For an adult this is easy to keep private. For kids it’s harder.
The dynamic I recall went something like this:
Kid A: Whadja get?
Kid B: I don’t want to talk about it.
Kid C: It can’t be that bad. Come on, I told everyone my D in Social Sciences.
Kid A: It’s not like we can’t guess, if you don’t tell.
Kid B: It’s none of your business. I just don’t care to talk about it.
Kid D: OOooooOOOOOoooh! Somebody’s flunking everything.
Kid B: No, it’s not that, I just don’t think it’s your business.
Kid A: Sure it’s not. You’ve already seen mine, and C’s and D’s, you have to show us.
Kid E: Yeah! It’s only fair!
Kid F: Naw, B just flunked everything, and doesn’t want to let us see it.
Kids G through Z: B’s a retaaaard… B’s a retaaaard. Gonna ride the short bus, soon.
If your school dynamics weren’t like that as a pre-teen I shall be heartily surprised. I’ve compressed the scenario for brevity, but I think anyone who’s honest can say they’ve seen, or participated in that little play at one point in their lives. And yes, I remember when things got physical, too.
Either you were one mightily precocious child (not an impossibility, I’ll admit) or your school district was all of Heaven and Earth from the one I went through. Frankly, I put the odds for either possibility at about equal.
And all this is presupposing that a teacher doesn’t, for whatever reason, decide to let something slip. And, again, if you’ve never seen a certain kind of teacher let that sort of information accidentally slip, I can only envy you.
I don’t really have a problem with schools sending parents information about a child’s BMI. I think it’s kind of pointless (how many kids are completely unaware that they’re fat until they see their BMI?), but I don’t really mind it.
I don’t like the idea of putting it on the report card. Maybe sending it on a separate sheet of paper but not on the report card itself. I say this because I was proud of my report cards. I’d hang them up on my bulletin board in my room and I still have some of them in my old scrap books. Damned if I’d want my freaking BMI on there! It’s not part of my academic record.
No, I was not fat in high school (in fact, seeing my old BMI may actually shame me today to see how much it’s grown). However, like many teenagers I always thought I should be thinner. No way would I be proud of a report card showing a BMI of 19 when I thought 18 would be better. No way would I put up a report card showing that on my bulletin board in my room. I’d hide it away or destroy it as soon as possible.
So I’d hate to see something a kid may, rightfully, be proud of turn into something they hide.
Umm… if it’s already that well known, why is there a need to broadcast it, then?
Consistency, people, consistency. You can either argue that this is potentially life-saving information that the student and their parents is unaware of, or you can argue that it’s no secret, but you can’t argue both at the same time.