Get Herald RSSIt's hardly a secret that Americans are fat. This is the land of the Big Mac and the midnight snack. Portions at restaurants are liable to outweigh newborn infants, and we pretty much bathe in corn syrup. If we are cut, we do not bleed; rather, we dispense ketchup from our wounds. Our Brobdingnagian butts have made us the butt of many a joke across the world. None of us is above reproach. For instance, though I try to eat well, my ringtone features the jingle from my favorite pizza restaurant, which offers a $3.99 all-you-can-eat buffet.
Fortunately, enterprising lawmakers in Georgia have come up with the perfect solution to the burgeoning obesity epidemic. The State Senate recently passed a law that mandates biannual weigh-ins for elementary school students across the state. Combined with the students' height data, each school will be required to calculate an aggregate body mass index (or BMI). These average BMI values will be posted online for the world to see, inviting comparisons between rival schools. It's like Friday Night Lights for the under-10 crowd, with the lights in question more akin to the heating lamps at Wendy's than stadium spotlights.
How, you ask, do these aggregate values curb the obesity epidemic? Through the pure and utter humiliation of impressionable young minds. Sure, sure. With public officials must put up with an unwritten requirement to be politically correct, the new law was written with student privacy in mind. The weigh-ins in question would take place one at a time in the seclusion of the school's office. "Sally, step into the office, step onto the scale, that's about as invasive as it gets," remarked State Senator Joseph Carter in a Feb. 29 interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Carter, a Tifton Republican, sponsored both this bill and a failed 2006 counterpart that would have increased physical education requirements in elementary and middle schools.
Privacy, my ass. Though the classmates of the one in three Georgia children who are obese may not get to see a precise number when it comes to the weight of their porkier peers, there is very little mystery when it comes to the question of which students are bringing up the school's average BMI. It's the elephant in the room, so to speak. The skinny students know. The fat students know that the skinny students know, and it's humiliating. God willing, it's humiliating enough to force the kids to make a change.
Of course, whinier members of the Georgia Senate have raised concerns about the role of the government in enforcing such a proposition. The Journal-Constitution reported that State Senator Preston Smith, a Republican from Rome, remarked that "the long arm of the government should stop reaching into people's private lives" during a heated discussion of the bill. He argued that if the long arm of the obese wanted to reach into the bottom of an empty bag of Lay's to finish off the last oily dregs of crushed potato chips, that is their God-given right and it's not the place of the government to tell them otherwise. He also questioned whether the new weigh-ins would place undue pressure on children and would subject them to increased stigmatization, despondent over the possibility that school officials might say, "'Come on, pick it up fat kid, we're not going to get money if you don't!'"
Although he may have a point about the role of the government in mandating healthy habits, I'd like to point out to Smith that stigmatization of the obese is nothing new, especially among the young. Kids are mean, and they say what's on their minds. To think that kids pussyfoot around the issue now is hopelessly naive.
Fortunately, when Smith left the chamber podium without opening himself up to debate a fellow legislator demonstrated to him precisely how the bill is supposed to work. "Chicken!" shouted State Senator Renee Unterman, a Buford Republican and supporter of Carter's bill. Despite his witty rejoinder of "I'm rubber and you're glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you," I wouldn't hesitate to imagine that Smith will think twice next time he wants to wimp out of an argument.
That's exactly how public humiliation is supposed to work; the jibes of our more jejune peers are supposed to make us change our behavior. Is it damaging? Probably. But the victims of the humiliation this bill proposes will undoubtedly be better off in the long run; it's better to have one's heart figuratively scarred for what would be a long, healthy life instead of literally clogged with cholesterol and plaque. Teasing victims may not have an emotional leg to stand on, but that's still an improvement over losing a leg to diabetes. Our nation is getting bigger, and this is one case where bigger isn't better. Only by wreaking some serious emotional havoc can we reverse the trend.
Adam Cambier '09 really regrets the time he ate a QuadrupleStuf Oreo.
