Morgan Stacy is in recovery from bulimia. She has been behavior-free for six months, which is major progress.
However, Morgan’s college is putting her recovery in serious jeopardy with one of their required courses.
Morgan is a student at Vanguard University, a four-year, private “Christian” school that receives state funding. At Vanguard, every undergraduate is required to take a class in which they must calculate their Body Mass Index (BMI), which is a ratio of weight and height. They are also required to measure their body composition via Biometric Impedance Analysis (BIA) and measure and calculate their waist-to-hip ratio.
In another lab, they are required to keep a food log and answer questions about their caloric intake like “what are you eating too much of?” Students are next given an assignment to determine the “factors” that “influenced your performance in these tests,” create a “body composition goal,” and then develop a plan for how they will achieve the results.
In addition to this class being utterly inappropriate (because a weigh-in shouldn’t be required for an English degree) and fatphobic, it’s dangerous. The University has no way of knowing the circumstances of each student — who might be on the edge of an eating disorder, who might be in the throes, and who is trying to recover. For those of us practicing Health at Every Size and/or Intuitive Eating for whatever reason, these assignments go against our core beliefs and practices and can conflict with the recommendations of our healthcare providers.
That the class exists at all tells us that the University doesn’t understand the danger they are dragging students into. They have no idea how many students they have hurt, are currently hurting, and will hurt in the future.
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I think nucking-futs fits this here. And I will bet the class will lean female. State funded doesn’t matter too much on the weight issue, outside of Michigan we are not protected. Religion and school, eh.
Pathetic is my thought, but you know someone, lots of someones’, are gonna take this serious. Like my boby dimensions are really important, maybe as much if not more than my education. I imagine the class skews weight loss, but I would have some fun and go in at my size calculate all the bs and then say no, I am happy where I am, I don’t have a plan to drastically alter my weight, height, appearance or behavior one way or t’other. Ta. Wonder if I’d be kicked out?
What complete and utter DOGSHIT this course is! And making it a requirement? Oh hell no. Someone needs to sue the hell out of them.
Ugh. I had to take a course like this in my high school. It was the biggest waste of time ever. Private health information was read in front of the class, with “bad” numbers jeered (the teachers did not openly encourage the jeering but they didn’t exactly trip over themselves to stop it, either). I was accused of lying twice: once when I turned in my exercise routine, as one teacher insisted nobody my size could do a 45 min. routine and stay my size and failed me when I refused to redo the assignment to his tastes, and again when I turned in my food log, although at least that teacher passed me on the premise that the meals I’d “made up” were healthy and well-planned enough to show I’d understood the material. 9_9
There are helpful and informative fitness and/or nutrition classes out there. These are not those classes. The one I was in couldn’t have been more of a clown show if it was set to Yakety Sax, and it couldn’t have been more of a horror show if the teacher I’d “sassed” had canned me and fed me to the other students. I begrudge every minute I lost to it.
Barf on his shoes. What a twerp. The health class I did was 1984 ish and they were only doing weight and height for statistics. When the teacher got to me, every head in the room swung around and stared at me with bare suppressed snarky excitement. I weighed maybe 220 in HS? No idea, I didn’t weight myself, it is enough to know I was so Not Thin every kid in the class (minus one) must have left health class with a kink in their neck from the rubber neckin to hear my weight announced (and see me weighed in the front of the classroom). I said, very quietly, I’d come in after class and do it. The teacher, a woman, said O.K. The only other kid who didn’t stare was the other fat girl. She was behind me in the alphabet and asked to come in later too. I actually did show up after school but the teacher, and the other girl, weren’t there.
I Can Not Imagine being a fat child today. Dante’s first circle of Hell comes to mind.
Exactly. There is,some excuse for health classes that offer insight into the physiology of exercise and diet without getting too damn preachy, or good/badding bodies and foods, or fucking WEIGHING STUDENTS.