In browsing through the news yesterday, I came across this article:

British Schools Ban The Word Obese

It got me thinking about how I feel about the word and brought back horrible nightmares of my own elementary school years.

Obese, fat, overweight.  They all generally mean the same thing, but each word has a very unique connotation to it.  I despise the word obese.  I don’t quite hate it as much as I did before I started Weight Watchers, but the very word made me cringe.  Probably because it hit a little too close to home.  I also dislike the word fat.

And it’s not actually the words themselves that I have a problem with, because a word can’t be negative.  It’s the connotation itself that becomes the issue.  The meaning that people place on the word.  I feel that both of these words have become almost hate words or insults in the current world, when the words themselves were created to merely describe a medical condition.

As I said, this article brought back memories of my own elementary school days.  My gym class was a horror.  My gym teacher herself probably inspired multiple scary movies.  She was so proud of being “on the cutting edge” of physical fitness.  Every so often, we would have to go through these almost military physical examinations.  How much did I weigh, how tall was I, how many push-ups could I do, how many sit-ups could I do, how many pull-ups could I do, etc.  And then she would create these lovely computer printouts of data analyzing all of these test results, including percentiles.  Of course, after I started gaining weight, my test results probably saw a rapid decline.  In fact, maybe it was all of the pressure to excel that made me start gaining weight. There we go!  I’m going to blame my elementary school gym teacher for my weight problems.

The main issue I had with this was that she would hand out these reports to us in class and expect us to take them home to our parents.  I don’t remember actually handing them over to my mom, but being the good girl that I was, I’m sure I did.  In fact, they’re probably still in a box somewhere.  I’d love to find them some day.  But the problem with this was that in a class of 30-some kids, there are multiple sets of prying eyes.  Inevitably, everyone’s results would get out whether you intended for them to or not (which, of course, I didn’t).  So within a matter of hours, the entire grade would know how much you weigh.  I remember one time in particular that someone saw my weight and it became a source of ridicule for several weeks after that.  Okay, it never really let up.  I remember exactly one person standing up for me.

Of course, I have lots of other stories such as this.  Like the time in 5th grade when my nemesis dubbed me ”beach ball.”  Yeah, I went to school with some great kids.  Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t all like that, but the ones who were were so vocal as to overshadow any good school memories I may have had of those years.  Needless to say, I hated elementary school.

To top it off, my school was one of the only schools in the area using the skinfold or caliper test for measuring body fat.  So during this portion of our exam, you had to stand there in front of the entire class while she pulled at your underarm fat or side fat and pinched you with those damn things.  Yes, traumatizing.  The idea is enough to make me shudder 20 years later.

So, that really long story was to say that while I’m okay with the word obese being used as merely a medical description, I don’t think that it should be said to the actual child.  As long as these letters are completely sealed and mailed directly to the parents, I don’t think I’d have a problem with that term being used.  With children of a younger age, I think it is the parents’ responsibility to decide how to handle it without devastating that child’s self-esteem.  In my case, if our exams had been handled a bit more tactfully, and those reports had been sent directly to my parents, I would never have had to face that ridicule from my classmates having known my weight.  Yes, I’d still get made fun of because it was obvious that I was overweight, but they wouldn’t have had that additional factual ammunition to throw at me.

Before I actually publish any post on my website, I usually go back and re-read it to make sure that it make sense.  Of course, many of them still don’t make sense when I’m done, but I still do it.  In re-reading this, the first thought that came to my head was why is this being placed in the hands of schools anyway?  They aren’t medical professionals.  This is a matter for the family and the family’s doctor.  Maybe I just don’t understand, because I don’t have kids, but if I did and a gym teacher ever put my kid through what my gym teacher put me through, that teacher wouldn’t hear the end of it.

Thoughts?  Comments?  Did you have to go through anything like this in your childhood gym class?  Any parents out there to put in their two cents or tell me I’m psycho?