We use the words “health” and “weight” too often in this country as if they are one and the same. But what happens when we come to rely too much on weight as the be-all-end-all of health matters, and, more specifically, how dangerous is an overemphasis on weight to our overall health and ability to form a healthy body image?
According to President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama, it all started a while back when extra soda and snacks threw their daughters Sasha and Malia “out of balance.” According to their doctor, who took a gander at their charts indicating escalating body mass indices, the girls were on their way to obesity, and changes needed to be made pronto. After all, overweight First Daughters would most certainly reflect poorly on a mother who had made it her mission to fight childhood obesity. The Obama’s made small changes, including cutting out soda and juices and incorporating more fruits and vegetables, and soon the girls were presumably “back in balance.”
Since then, Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign has garnered extensive attention in the media and the blogosphere, with talk ranging from what exactly is in Sasha and Malia’s school lunches to critiques of the Obamas’ parenting. The world has investigated the motivations behind their decision to effectively make their daughters the poster children for the “Let’s Move” campaign, as well as the implications for them having done so. In light of AU’s upcoming Body Image Awareness Week, which I will speak about later, I thought I would weigh in on this issue.
I think it is important to note that the Obamas’ parenting shouldn’t be held to super high standards — they are just normal parents and, like our own, they can and will make mistakes along the way. What’s important is that their actions have only the best intentions. That being said, it is pretty obvious where my opinion lies, and it is this: an 8- or 11-year-old girl should not have been cast into the public eye on a topic so touchy in our society.
What is most troubling is that the First Family’s actions are in fact so every day in America — they seemingly began paying attention to their family’s eating habits only when a number on the scale told them to. There is so much more to health than weight and healthy eating isn’t something that should be minded only when weight problems are on the horizon.
Growing up, my mother, who has really never been overweight a day in her life, was constantly on some diet or another. I remember her mixing her Medifast concoctions for breakfast when I was probably 5 years old (I didn’t think it was fair she got a chocolate shake and I had to eat oatmeal, though little did I know how awful it actually tasted). Dieting was a very normal part of our household. My family always ate dinner together, but as everyone’s schedules, preferences and diets got more diverse, food became a source of conflict. My parents never put my sister and me, who in our childhood days would have been deemed “chubby” by the Obamas’ standards, on any diets per se. However, it was hard for me to face all of that coupled with the diet talk in the media and not develop erratic relationships with food and obsessions with weight. And at times, just like President Obama, all of us were guilty of making comments to one another about each other’s weight — sometimes out of jest, sometimes out of concern for one another’s health.
But small changes in weight aren’t the best or only indicators of changes in health. I think it is great that Michelle Obama is practicing her efforts to change childhood eating habits within her own family. But the focus should be less on weight and more on returning a healthy relationship with our food, which will open up the door to a healthier body image. This healthier body image will, in turn, perpetuate that healthy relationship with food and solidify it for later in life. Already body-conscious pre-teens shouldn’t be made to feel even more self-conscious and fearful that what they are eating will make them fat.
The best way to ensure that we collectively cultivate healthier body images and relationships with food is by getting the conversation started. On Sunday, a group of AU organizations, including the Office of Campus Life, Office of Dean of Students, Student Health Center and Wellness Center, will begin a week of activities focused on raising awareness for body image-related problems and solutions. The week will kick off with a 3.6-mile walk beginning on the quad at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday. The $10 registration fee will go directly to the Gail R. Schoenbach Foundation for Recovery and Elimination of Eating Disorders (F.R.E.E.D. Foundation), a non-profit organization that assists patients in funding the cost of eating disorder treatment, something insurance often does not cover. You can register online or arrive at 10:30 Sunday morning if you'd like to donate and participate.
Body Image Awareness Week is AU’s response to National Eating Disorder Week that’s hosted in many different colleges throughout the country. AU wants to instead include everyone who has negative feelings about his or her body and uses dieting to deal with it instead of forming healthy eating patterns and embracing him or herself, regardless of weight and appearance.
None of us can know what is going on inside the minds of the Obama children, or any children who have had their weight and eating habits put under the microscope by someone they care about. Perhaps this whole thing is setting them up for a future of hyper-vigilance about their weight, or perhaps it will leave them stronger and more confident later on when they enter adulthood. If they are anything like me, they will experience the first of these and then the second.
In my next column, I’ll continue this discussion on the “Let’s Move” campaign and talk about how Michelle Obama can use it and her power as First Lady to help us get at the real food problems we have in this country.
You can reach this columnist at kbarrett@theeagleonline.com.
