I don’t often talk candidly about my personal life anymore aside from writing-related stuff, the occasional cool thing my kids did, or something about my part in the LGBTQIA+ community. I’m taking a moment to post about something else: body size, weight, and “health.” It’s long, but please read it.
A Thing happened the other day. My kid brought home an assignment from school for her Home and Careers class. (Note: this is what us folks over age 40 called Home Economics or what some folks in between called Family and Consumer Science [FACS].) No biggie, right? Yeah…
She was supposed to provide her weight and BMI, assess her activity level, keep a food diary for a day, and calculate how many calories per day she needs. She was also supposed to draw herself “according to what [she] ate yesterday” (i.e., tired, ugly, sad, and “unhealthy” for eating “bad” foods and alert, attractive, happy, and “healthy” for eating “good” foods).
No.
Just no.
Hell, no.
Some important points: My kid is 11. Unless a child that age is under the care of a doctor, nutritionist, or other health professional, and a problem has been directly identified, here are the things they should not be doing (and absolutely NOT EVER under the supervision of a school teacher):
- Count calories
- Use BMI as the measure of how they should be eating
- Diet
- Attempt to lose weight
- Attempt to gain weight
These things are bad for growing minds and bodies. Doing them is linked to future actual obesity as well as all manner of disordered eating patterns and diagnosed eating disorders. Children should not be frightened or shamed into eating “correctly” or getting physical activity. They should be provided with information about what makes foods good for a body, such as nutrients. It’s helpful to know that some foods are very low in those nutrients rather than assessed to be “bad,” “unhealthy,” or “dangerous.” Giving them simple recipes they can make at home, teaching them how to select foods in the school cafeteria, helping them learn how to make less appealing but nutrient-dense foods more enjoyable, giving them opportunities to explore many kinds of physical activity—all those are good.
But food- and body-shaming tactics? Not. Ever.
Let me lay it out, since I hold not one but two degrees in health fields and have, in the last three days, had some lay people try to “educate” me on the use of BMI (specifically, my child’s teacher, who claimed that the lesson “could not be changed” as it was part of the curriculum, and a few concern trolls who thought I was inviting their private messages). The measure itself is nearly 200 years old. Until sometime in the 20th century, it was not used as a singular, individual measure to see if a person was “healthy.” It was a fad for a while, but health educators have been warning against this misuse at least since I was in graduate school 15 years ago. At the very least, it is not a tool for growing children, whose bodies change far too rapidly for it to be accurate, let alone useful. It is not a “baseline” for anything. It’s a measurement primarily used to collect aggregate data. For an individual, all other factors have to be assessed to determine optimal health.
Reinforcing: Children do not need to determine their “ideal weight” so they can attempt to change their bodies with diet and exercise. Do not project adult issues around weight and health onto pre-pubertal youth. BMI is not even how an adult should determine their next steps. That simply is not its purpose.
Here’s the thing. A lot of us know what it’s like to grow up having our bodies and our food monitored by other people “because they care” or simply because they think fat people are ugly and deserving of scorn. We know how it feels to be adults who continually get our hands slapped. (For another great post on this, and what it’s like, please go read my colleague and friend Deb’s post on it. But do not comment if you’re going over there to pass judgment or otherwise be a hateful butthead, okay?)
That kind of fear and shame keeps a lot of us locked into thought patterns which are even more unhealthy than our bodies. Here’s where I get real personal: I do not eat in front of people other than family if I can help it. Even then, there are some people who make me feel very uncomfortable. I worry about every little choice. It looks like this:
♦Sometimes they serve cake at church for special occasions. I usually don’t take any, but funnily enough, it’s actually not because of the food shame. I don’t really like it. Last time I had some, I scraped all the frosting off because I think it tastes bad. But you know what I was worried about? Having someone think I was scraping it off to try to make the cake “healthier.” That’s a thing I’ve been complimented for doing in the past because I’m assumed to be “counting my calories.”
♦If I choose to eat a salad or just some fruit for lunch, on a normal day, that’s no biggie; I’m home alone. But if I’m out with people, I always wonder if they’re secretly cheering me on for not eating the hamburger (which I probably didn’t want anyway—I do not eat restaurant hamburgers). If I ask for dressing on the side (because I want to actually taste my greens, so I put hardly any on) or refuse croutons (I’m allergic to garlic, so I can’t risk it), I get comments about how “healthy” or how “good” I’m being. On the flip side, I sometimes get comments on why I don’t just enjoy getting something “bad,” as though my choice to eat something I find tasty is really about dieting.
♦I like most foods. I’m not that picky, aside from disliking frosting and peas and my garlic allergy. Heck, I even like stuff many people hate, like Brussels sprouts. But there is no way I’ll ever tell most people that I think something is yummy. Everything from an apple to a French fry has moral value attached to it. There’s no way to win when it comes to picking things other people might use to evaluate me.
♦I have lost track of the number of friends who have sent me weight loss stuff or asked if I wanted to do a body challenge with them. (I don’t.) When someone who is far thinner than I am, and very attractive, talks about “feeling fat and ugly,” I don’t know what to think. I’ve been called both of those for most of my life, and that’s how I was bullied in school. It makes me wonder what they are thinking when they look at me, and then I can’t eat in front of them because I don’t know whether they’re adding up the calories in my food and calculating my portion size or what I should eat instead. I don’t know if they look at me and see a troll, or if their negative self-talk is truly not a reflection on me or people with my body type. If a naturally thin person who has never been considered overweight (by society or the medical community) believes themselves to be “too fat,” then how do they see me? How do they view someone much bigger than I am? I’m not in their head; I don’t have that data. And when they combine that with doing diet and exercise challenges (and inviting me), well, I can only guess what they think of what I’m doing.
♦Being out with friends can be stressful just by itself, even without food. In a group, there’s always at least one person who likes to lean over and whisper about someone else, “She’s really gotten fat, hasn’t she?” As though it’s my business (or theirs), as though I care, as though I want to discuss anyone else’s body.
♦There is no possible way I can relax and enjoy a treat. If a skinny person is consuming chips and beer, most folks probably assume they’re splurging or they’re going to go work out later. If I eat them, then I run the risk of having it assumed I eat like that every day. It doesn’t matter whether I do or not—the mere fact of my body shape and size leads to that conclusion.
I’m not exaggerating that last point, by the way, and it’s also different for boys vs. girls. My 13yo is 6 feet tall and so thin they don’t make men’s pants in his size (but he can’t wear boys’ pants because he’s too tall). He eats like a moose. Or rather, he eats like an athlete, which he is: he’s a dancer. People try all the time to give him extra portions, even of treats. No one blinks if he has a huge bowl of ice cream. They assume he’ll burn it off in the studio. They don’t even consider whether they could be overfeeding him when they offer extra food. Comments about how teenage boys eat abound. My daughter, on the other hand, is short and round, like me. She is also a dancer but takes fewer classes. She does not generally eat like food is going out of style; she’s appropriate for her age and activity level. But she’s already had other kids say things about her body or her food choices. No one ever offers her seconds or extra treats, and plenty of people like to talk about how great it is that I’m teaching her healthy habits now so she won’t have to worry about it later.
Every single one of us who doesn’t have a “beach body” (and heck, even most people who do) have had our food and our bodies monitored and evaluated. Fun fact: If you add disability into the mix, it invites even more harassment. I developed fibromyalgia a few years ago. Until then, I was active, happy, and healthy. It began subtly, but I thought I was just in need of more exercise. So I worked out more, but it only made me sicker. Instead of support, I got “advice.” Diet advice. Weight loss advice. Exercise advice. “If you just got rid of some of the excess, you’d feel better.” No, damn it. I would feel better if my body weren’t in pain all the time and I didn’t have to choose between working out and doing my paid job. I’d feel better if I didn’t wake up every morning wondering what degree of pain I’ll be in when I stand up because long hours of not moving (i.e., sleep) makes it all worse.
So now you know. This is why we cannot teach young children to view their bodies as the enemy.
My daughter’s response to the assignment was perfect. She drew a picture which she said is what would happen from this lesson—a child concluding they need to stop eating or go on a diet in order to be pretty and healthy. Her message at the end is a good one:
Love yourself the way you are. Don’t change anything about yourself. You’re BEAUTIFUL. Remember that.
Right on, kiddo. Someday, I’m going to write that story. I’m going to write a book about a beautiful fat person being awesome at life and not giving a crap anymore what other people think of their body. And they’ll be allowed to eat what they like, dance up a storm, and fall in love, and no one will tell them they need to be thin.
This is excellent (though I wish it weren’t necessary).
Ugh. All that food policing. Just awful. So much of it is mindless small talk – with devastating consequences.
Thanks for the mention. 🙂
Your daughter is very wise. ?
<3 No one should have to go through this. No child should be made to feel uncomfortable in the classroom. I honestly cannot believe I'm having to say this.
Oh lordy, I don’t even know where to begin. I have spent a great proportion of my working life nursing children, some as young as eight and nine, with eating disorders, sometimes from the brink of death. A handful were boys but most of them were girls. Some came to us at thirteen and fourteen having spent years hiding the fact that they were restricting their food intake because of school assignments like this one.
Granted, there were many other factors involved that helped the slippery slide into these horrible illnesses, but nine times out of ten, it was a school project on “healthy eating” that was the quoted catalyst. Schools have such a responsibility to protect these vulnerable children. Why can’t they just think before they hand out these homework assignments?
Yep. My daughter says they did a similar “healthy lifestyle” thing in physical education, but it was fun. So I know it can be done. I don’t at all object to teaching kids about making nutritious choices. It’s all the other stuff that I can’t believe. I worked for years as a school nurse, and there are much better options for helping kids than having their teacher try to do it. The fact that my daughter, unprompted, said she thought some kids might develop eating disorders after the lesson, is telling.
Thanks for writing this, Amy. It reminds me of an assignment I got my first year in college. In Speech, teacher gave us an assignment and broke us into groups. We had to choose a topic and each of us in our group had to speak on it. The skinny bitches in my group chose Dieting, so that’s what we did. I was fat then (still am) and remember how awkward it felt to get up in front of that class and talk about weight loss while everyone stared at me.
Some people are just mean.
That is horrifying. I recall getting some stuff in health class in middle school (or maybe it was something similar to this class) and having classmates use it to mock me. But nothing where they found a way to humiliate me quite so publicly.
I do recall being in cooking class and learning to make a casserole with tofu. It was really good, but I knew on instinct that I should not say so. My classmates were all saying it was gross. I knew even then if I admitted I liked it, they would find a way to use that info to bully me.
Calling thin women “bitches” is also body shaming.
But…it sounds like these particular women were being mean to this particular poster. So the name calling is not unwarranted. I will, however, agree that the choice of name is not great, because of it’s misogynistic overtones. Maybe we can call the meany poopooheads?
I’ve taught nutrition lessons to kindergartners and third graders that meet state curricula requirements. You don’t talk calories or even whoa-go-slow with a group of young kids. You talk about food coming from plants and animals (plant parts, animal types, ecosystems), exploring the smell/taste/textures of foods, trying new foods, eating different kinds of foods together (think eat a veg and a protein and a starch and a dairy at each meal), and exploring culture through food. Making a food three different ways and taste testing it at home would be far more appropriate for that age group, or a meal planning assignment if you want to avoid parental involvement (heat/sharp objects/groceries).
Whoa-slow-go can be age appropriate, but I wouldn’t use it is general classroom.
Focusing on cooking skills, basic food knowledge, food literacy or agricultural literacy is more appropriate than trying to do clinical assessments (because that is a clinical assessment– done by an 11 year old with no knowledge).
I know they do a lot with cooking in 7th grade, and they’ve had a fitness unit in phys ed. My daughter says that was actually fun, so I assume it didn’t include the moralizing about food.
It would be great if they did stuff on choosing a menu and how to shop for and prepare foods. The whole thing could be kept very positive. I don’t even mind suggesting alternatives to things kids tend to eat that aren’t great.
I think this was when my spouse was a substitute teacher, but he taught a lesson on handwashing to first graders. They watched a video on how healthy it is. After, they all wanted to try it out. I know that when my kids learn something in school even now, they can’t wait to come home and show me. So if the goal is, say, to get kids to drink more water, showing them how cool, clean, and refreshing it is will do more good than trying to convince them they’ll get fat if they drink soda.
Holy freaking cow! Whoever that teacher is needs to be raked over some very hot coals and forced to walk barefoot on Levi’s. That assignment is not acceptable for kids that age.
Back when I was in school, the only class we covered healthy eating in was health science (I think that’s the name of it – it was a one semester class that covered healthy eating, exercise, sex ed, and various diseases like cancer). But the eating healthy portion of that class really just covered the fact that fast food and candy was bad, so don’t eat so much of it, and here’s what the food pyramid looks like, so try to follow that. That’s it. Nothing more. How the hell did this teacher think that this was even remotely okay?
No idea. My son says he learned more in his biology class than in health or 6th grade home economics.
I don’t recall cooking or home ec or health class in school being this bad with the negative messages. We certainly never learned to count calories or restrict intake or keep food/exercise logs, and we absolutely never had to report our weight on an assignment. Definitely not for the purpose of calculating BMI (wasn’t even much of a big thing when I was in school) and then determining how much food to eat.
Like Debbie, I wish this wasn’t necessary, but I definitely loved what you wrote (I say this as another person who loves salads, doesn’t like cake [especially the frosting] or ice cream that much, does like her dressing on the side too)…. I’ve experienced a lot of what you’re describing.
Thankfully I’ve somehow missed the whispered “Hasn’t she gotten…” Oops! No I haven’t. I heard it all the time from my mother and grandmothers growing up.
Damn! Though… truthfully, it was never whispered. Just said later in the car or over dinner.
Yeah, what do people think about us as they watch us eat…. I hate going to dinner at my in-law’s for precisely that reason. my MiL is always dieting or adding artificial sweeteners to foods to “be good”.
To BE good…
Sorry, this is getting incoherent, I didn’t think I’d be as upset as I am, even knowing it’s a topic that pushes my buttons. I’m still glad you brought it up though. Thank you, Amy
*high fives* Frosting haters unite! LOL.
Yep, I got lots of “you’ll eventually lose your baby fat” comments. There are people I specifically do not like to eat with. I will say, my in-laws are fine. They’re all on the smaller side, but they’re not into body-shaming. I don’t think they care what I eat. At least, no one has ever said anything. Heck, my MIL is always trying to offer me stuff! It’s a hospitality thing, I think, trying to make sure I feel welcome. But my in-laws are great; they don’t need to do much to make me feel at home.
Both my parents had issues with food/dieting in different ways. My mother managed eventually to stop dieting and just eat nutritious foods. I’ve tried very hard to keep my own body issues from becoming my kids’ problem. Now that they’re older, I’ve been honest with them about my history and struggles, but I tell them those are *my* issues, not theirs.
This was a brave and beautiful article. Thank you for sharing it.
Thank you! 🙂
My mother fat shamed me all of my childhood and into adulthood. But the thing is, when I look back at pictures, I wasn’t fat. Not even close. I wish I had that body now. I was curvy, and had some extra padding, but not the big deal she made of me.
Anymore I’m not a person you’d want to police, in any fashion, Lol. Most people sense that.
Ugh, I’m sorry you experienced that. Most of the fat-shaming I got was at school from peers. And same thing, I look back and my body was nowhere near fat. I was built exactly like my daughter—short and a little round, but not anything that was ever worrisome to anyone. I don’t ever recall even my doctors being concerned. But my schoolmates sure did make a big thing over it.
I’m no longer a person who tolerates being policed about my body either, LOL.
I love this! However, I do want to make a note about the section on thinner people talking about feeling fat. Growing up I was basically banned from making comments about my body because my younger sibling was larger than me. I totally understand my parents concern, but at the same time, it felt like was allowed to have valid body image problems. And I did. I also had an altercation with a woman who basically told me I had no right to feel bad about my body because I was smaller than her. The fact is that I don’t care what other people weigh. People who are heavier than me are not less attractive to me. But being smaller doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to express concern about my body. I’ve struggled on and off with milk bullimia, and it’s totally unfair for other women to act like I can’t feel certain things because my body is different. Thin women have body shame too. That’s the whole problem with body shaming to begin with. No one feels good enough. This is why women of all sizes need to be able to talk about how they feel about their body without other women taking it personally. And why we all need to take turns listening and building one another up.
I’ve had to ‘police’ this with my own daughters – one who is larger with big boobs, and the other who is slimmer and has next to no boobs – and who was bullied mercilessly at school to the point she refused to go. This is in spite of all the media messages that ‘thin is good, healthy, attractive, aspirational’.
I do think, however, that ‘fat shaming’ is a very specific form of body shaming, and it begins with failing to acknowledge that some people are fat people. They can never be even close to the ideal. I agree with you that this is all the same to the extent that it’s all body shaming, and we need to not only have conversations about how we feel about our bodies, but, more importantly, about how society makes us feel, and we need to fight that, all of us together.
I’ll be honest and say, as someone who has fought being fat all of my adult life, I find it very difficult to be empathetic with slimmer people lamenting how they need to lose a few pounds, or about how much they put on over their holiday, or that they’ve been denying themselves dessert for years to keep their figure. I don’t choose to be the shape I am, nor to eat all that food, nor to fail at exercise. It’s a huge, complex psychosocial problem, and what you’re talking about – bulimia – is the same. But what most slimmer people do is feed the ‘thin is ideal’ myth, and that damages all of us. People won’t see your health struggle when they judge you as having no right to talk about your body issues. They’ll see ‘thin is good, healthy, attractive, aspirational’ and assume you’re doing just fine.