A couple of weeks ago, I enthusiastically recommended that you read Becoming by Michelle Obama. I stand by my thoughts on this book and I still have an unwavering love of Michelle and the way she approached the office of First Lady with poise, confidence and kindness.
Except.
Of course there has to be an ‘except’ after a paragraph like that, right?
There was one part of the book that didn’t sit right with me and I keep coming back to it again and again, circling the wagons in my brain because my review read as ‘enthusiastic without reservations’ and I do have one big reservation about Michelle’s perspective on childhood obesity that I need to comment upon. I’m not much of a critic, preferring to amplify the positive in this world with my voice, but in this situation I feel a bit irresponsible if I don’t share my perspective. So, here goes:
One of the causes that Michelle championed as First Lady was her ‘Let’s Move!’ program. This is how she described the initiative in the book: ‘It centered on one goal – ending the childhood obesity epidemic within a generation’. The impetus for this initiative came from an experience that Michelle had with Malia’s pediatrician during a well-child visit during the Presidential campaign where he expressed concern for Malia’s Body Mass Index ‘a measure of health that factors together height, weight, and age’ saying: ‘it was beginning to creep up. It wasn’t a crisis, he said, but it was a trend to take seriously. If we didn’t begin changing some habits, it could become a real problem over time, increasing her risk for high blood pressure or type 2 diabetes.’
The focus on obesity and B.M.I is what made me feel uncomfortable about the initiative. Ostensibly, I support the tactics of her campaign for kids: encouraging play and joyful movement and increasing the nutritional density of the foods kids eat by increasing access to less processed foods for those who can’t afford them, but I bristle at the fact that her daughter’s B.M.I. was the catalyst for this program. I also bristle against the fact that Barack Obama signed a memorandum to create a federal task force on childhood obesity.
What’s the problem here? Well, first B.M.I. has been largely and widely debunked as flawed measure or marker of health on its own. Read this article to better understand why, but here’s the takeaway: “so to be using BMI as a health proxy — particularly for everyone within that category — is simply incorrect. Our study should be the final nail in the coffin for BMI.” Guys, this isn’t some quack study. It was by UCSB and UCLA. If you really want to learn more, here’s how BMI came to be via NPR. It was basically flawed from the outset.
Now, let’s move onto obesity. Lord, I have so many issues with the word obese. I hate it. Is there a more shameful way to describe someone in our society than obese? Why is that? It’s because we are afraid of being fat. We have such a focus on beauty and such a narrow definition of beauty that people dread being fat. Fat or obese people are seen as slothful, not taking care of themselves, unconcerned with their health.
Want to hear something a bit crazy? Being fat or even ‘obese’ doesn’t automatically mean that you are unhealthy. Read Health at Every Size and this study to understand more. Even if obesity were an actual bad thing, having a federal task force on childhood obesity encourages us to look at people on the outside to judge how they feel and how healthy they are on the inside. It allows us to discriminate and hate on people on the basis for how they look under a guise of caring about their health. By targeting obesity in children, Michelle Obama basically encouraged our kids to be judged on their size and to be made to feel ashamed of how they look. It’s not right and I know from my own personal experience just how damaging it is.
I’m technically obese. I eat a predominantly vegan diet and workout at least four times a week. My health markers at recent blood tests were all positive, but according to my B.M.I., I am obese. My obesity has roots into my childhood. In fact, I can draw a straight line from my childhood obesity to my current body size. Let me tell you the story.
My mom raised me and my two older sisters as a single mother. Struggle is probably how she would describe most of her life, especially into my childhood. She struggled to pay the bills, to find a healthy and supportive relationship and to raise three daughters by herself. One summer when I was about 7 or 8 I think, she needed a break and asked her twin sister in Arkansas to take me for the bulk of the season so she could catch her breath. The weeks I spent with my Aunt Sue-Sue that summer are my most treasured. I loved her so, so much. We spent the summer going to church camp, working in her garden, cooking, taking naps, riding four wheelers and just feeling more carefree than I could ever remember feeling in my childhood. Gosh, I was so happy.
When I came home at the end of the summer, I had gained weight. My mom said that I was so fat when I got off the plane that she barely recognized me. I hadn’t realized it when I was with Aunt Sue-Sue, but I knew as soon as I got home that my body was a problem. I remember the feeling so acutely that it’s hard for me to think about it without crying. Almost instantly, my body became a something that I needed to fix and I started what would become about a twenty year yo-yo diet. Looking back now, I wonder if my weight was just a normal fluctuation. Maybe I was a bit bigger, but perhaps a growth spurt was coming? Until that moment, I hadn’t lived in a ‘big’ body. My mom’s and my sister’s bodies were actually on the smaller side, so it’s totally conceivable that I might not have ended up obese if I wasn’t made to feel shameful about the way I looked. But I felt so, so much shame. I felt at 7 years old that I had done something wrong to cause the extra fat on my body. I started dieting then, which led to me binging and feeling unsafe around food. It led to me feeling my fatness before anything else about myself. It led to food obsession and calorie restricting and counting and lack of self-confidence. It led to all sorts of unhealthy behaviors and shame that I know without a doubt were far more damaging than being overweight. I know it.
This was before the ‘wars on obesity’ started, so I can only imagine how I would’ve felt about myself in the current climate. This is why I had to revisit my review, because I couldn’t bear someone thinking that I tacitly approved of Michelle’s ‘Let’s Move’ campaign. I think targeting obesity is harmful and I’m not afraid to say it. I want to say that I believe that we can try to do all of the things she encouraged like moving and playing and eating more nutritiously without having to target the way a person looks on the outside. I also want to say that I still love the First Lady and I truly believe she had no intent of harming kids and their body image with her program, but the way she presented the initiative in her book was harmful and something that I absolutely do not condone. I think kids should be taught to eat intuitively, to accept all sorts of bodies as beautiful, to learn how to move in ways that are joyful to them and to understand that health embodies so much more than a number on the scale – it is found in true wellness in all sorts of realms, like emotional, physical, intellectual and even spiritual practice.
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