Things that make me turn off the radio

[tim]

Overheard during a Think Out Loud discussion of health care reform: some guy (a guest, not a caller!) suggesting that [schools?] should
'notify parents of their children's height, weight and body mass index, so that they can be empowered and take charge'

Can you name all the reasons why this is a horrible idea?

Comments

[talia_et_alia]

...surely they mean doctor's offices, not school?

I think the reasons may be innumerable, but off the top of my head: if parents require extra information to be empowered and take charge wrt their kids, that's a tip-off that maybe this isn't one of their responsibilities; family discourse around weight and body issues is based in reality ~5% of the time, from what I can tell; assuming your relationship with your child is not already horribly broken and dysfunctional, you can acquire their height and weight on your own, and BMI is a worthless scale anyway; any semi-automated transfer of information between schools and parents is typically open to interception and abuse; children are growing and changing by definition, so flailing about momentary non-ideal states is almost certainly less useful than teaching general health/medical/activity skills, so *they're* empowered to take care of themselves in whatever way seems best as adults...

I would poke at the notion that a child's height is something that might need parental regulation, except that there totally are people feeding their kids growth hormones for non-pathological shortness. Also doing that awful Gattaca leg-lengthening thing.

[tim]

Nope, they really meant schools (as in, examinations that would take place in school nurse's offices -- I guess? I don't really know how this stuff works).

family discourse around weight and body issues is based in reality ~5% of the time, from what I can tell

Bingo! Well, everything you said. But especially this.

Plus, can you imagine what the threat of your abusive parent finding out that you're OMGZ TOO FAT could induce some kids to do?

man, this is why I don't write to LJ anymore

[talia_et_alia]

Oh, and the meta-issue that lack of information about individual bodies is not causing whatever height-weight-proportionalism (or, probably, lack thereof) that our commentator is perceiving. Tell media and its consuming public to go fuck themselves with a Photoshop disc, get the government to subsidize food rather than products (and war), and let's talk about how this country prefers to starve its poor as a matter of policy, first.