How Much Does a Child Weigh?

I just want to caveat this post with the knowledge that I am new to researching the history and current thinking on fat activism and fat liberation, that though I have a science degree, I am not a medical professional and that I have had a lifetime of seeing and hearing fat people treated woefully just because of their weight and no other factors and have felt the effects of that on my relationship with my body.

Recently, the UK government announced measures they are putting in place to crackdown on the “obesity crisis” including the National Child Measurement Programme. This programme will involve the weighing and measuring of children from as young as four in schools across the country. The website says the information will be used by the NHS to provide better health services for children.

The website says that the measurements will be done in private and no results will be shared with teachers or other children. Now, I don’t know if you went to school, but I can bet that when those children leave that room, they will talk about it and depending on the language they have about weight, those conversations will have the power to leave other children feeling great or shit about themselves. Again, I don’t know if you went to school, but when I was at school nobody had a healthy language about body image or indeed obesity. In fact, weight was prime ammunition for bullies.

Instead, the results will be shared with parents/guardians and it will be their job to decide what to do with that information. To share it with their child or not, to change their child’s food habits or not, to use it to abuse them or not. Many people grow up around people with poor relationships with their weight and body image due to many factors including years of damaging societal thoughts and language (currently called ‘Diet Culture’) so even parents/guardians with the best of intentions may plant the seed that their child’s body is wrong.

The results parents/guardians will receive will contain the weight category that their child falls into based on their body mass index (BMI). This will be calculated from the child's measurements - weight and height are the only measurements used in the calculation. BMI, as it’s known today, was coined in a paper in the 1970’s but the basis for BMI goes back much further. It was devised by Adolphe Quetelet, a belgian astronomer, mathematician and statistician a.k.a not a doctor. The studies used to create the index, used mainly white, male westerners with no people of colour and virtually no women. At the time it was created (mid 1800s), it was criticized. It was felt that though it was appropriate for certain population studies, it was inappropriate for individual evaluation. It doesn’t even account for muscle and as a result lean athletes, for example, often have a high BMI placing them in the overweight or even obese categories. Many, many, studies since then have shown why BMI is a poor predictor of health and yet it is still being used because why? It’s simple, quick, cheap and no one can be arsed to implement better indicators in my opinion. Also, insurance companies love it and adopted it in the early 20th century to charge higher premiums to fat people.

For me, just measuring a child’s BMI and putting them in a weight category is not teaching them about health. It’s teaching them that fat is unhealthy and thin is healthy. Look at the website for the National Child Measurement Programme. Look at the categories that children will be placed in. Underweight is one of the categories and yet the website discusses all the options for overweight children numerous times but nothing about what to do if your child is underweight. You are not teaching children about health. You are teaching children that fat is unhealthy and thin is healthy. This is simply not true.

For me, tackling the “obesity crisis” is not about teaching children that fat bodies are wrong bodies. It’s looking at the systems that teach us to hate our bodies and radically altering them. It's looking at the damage that diets do to people of all sizes and changing that. It's looking at language around body image and health and making sure everyone is treated with compassion. It’s looking at areas of high poverty and increasing access to affordable, good quality food and to education around preparing and cooking food. It's taxing food with high sugar content because they are bad for everyone's health, not because it will help fat people become thin. It’s looking at all of the benefits to physical exercise, not just the effect it has on calories. It’s understanding that our mental wellbeing has a huge impact on our bodies internally and externally. It’s understanding that a mathematical equation from the 1800’s designed for white men does not apply to everyone on the planet. It’s not equating weight with health. It’s not visualising health as a definitive end goal with moral obligations. It’s not teaching people to shame or blame people for their outward appearance when we have no idea why they look that way and that it’s none of our business to know why.

If the UK Government is so concerned about health then they wouldn't wrap up this fatphobia as a concern for health. They would find better ways of teaching children about health instead of using an outdated assessment index which is sure to give children body image complexes. They would ensure that everyone having access to affordable health care is a top priority instead of selling it off to the highest bidder. They would care about health at every size

Further Work

I feel very passionately about this and wanted to know what the people around me thought so I devised a play around the topic for Degenerate Fox, the awesome theatre company I am part of. I asked several members of the company to read the website and share their initial gut reactions - using their bellies as puppets of course! You can watch it below. Also, I highly encourage getting familiar with the Health at Every Size (HAES) community and the principles around it.