Wii Fit bad for body image? BMI strikes again
Is 4-foot 9-inch 10-year-old girl who weighs 84 lbs fat? According to Nintendo’s Wii Fit game, she is. Wii Fit’s “fat” or “fit” is based solely on BMI. This young girl is active–she swims and dances–yet she is declared not just “unfit” but “fat” by a video game. The article below reports that the girl in question is “devastated” to be labeled “overweight.” And rightly so. This is such a delicate age for body image issues–and being called fat by your video game is just the kind of thing that triggers serious body image issues.
This is just one more example where BMI does not accurately represent health and fitness.
(Source:Pocket-lint)
Could Wii Fit create bad body image?
Concerns after game labels young girl “fat”
NEWS: 7 May 2008 15:32 GMT by Verity Burns
Parents on an online forum have expressed concerns over Nintendo’s Wii Fit creating a bad body image, particularly with young girls.
The controversy was sparked after a user complained that the game labelled her relative overweight.
“My [relative] came round this weekend and we let her play on our Wii Fit”, she wrote. “We have all laughed and joked about being told that we’re fat and need to lose weight but I was gobsmacked when it told her that she is overweight.”
According to the poster, the girl in question is a healthy 4-foot 9-inch 10-year-old who swims, dances and weighs only six stone [US 84 lbs]. “She is solidly built”, the poster adds, “but not fat”.
Apparently the young girl was “devastated” to be labelled as overweight.
The poster added: “I know it is just a game but seriously we already have to worry about young girls starving themselves to look like the magazine models and now we have a game that tells them they’re fat”.
Forum users have replied with varying responses, many angrily and backing the poster’s decision to write and complain to Nintendo (they are yet to reply).
However as one forum member pointed out, Wii Fit merely utilises the internationally-used BMI scale to calculate whether a user is overweight or not, and so Nintendo cannot be held responsible for the outcome.
BMI is considered by some to not be the best way to measure weight as it does not take into account frame or muscle.
12 comments
I hope this girl’s mother and family helps her accept the experience as a technical error. How sad that now this child will have this dent on her self image. Having an athletic body and it’s abilities and strength are much more valuable than any BMI rating.
http://www.bbspot.com/comics/PC-Weenies/2008/02/3248.php
Zcam is going to make the wii obsolete anyway. It is sad though that the one video game system that is actually encouraging people to get up and move around would have a bug like this.
Oh and love, you might want to edit your google adds.
S.
For the record on this, I went to NIH website and computed that little girl’s BMI.
You know what the results were?
18.2
You know what that means according to the NIH?
It means that that little girl is not fat, obese, overweight or even of average weight.
Under the classification by the National Institutes of Healh, that child so wrongly stigmatized by Wii Fit is actually, dare I say it?
UNDERWEIGHT
So I guess Nintendo needs to recalibrate their BMI calculator.
@MayDarling
Way to do research! While I think that BMI is completely bogus, I did read that calculating BMI for children is very inaccurate, given the way children experience growth spurts, etc.
So, I was prepared to accept that explanation for the BMI debacle. But your research proves that info irrelevant.
Thanks for doing that leg work!
The Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt in Baltimore, Maryland, believes that BMI is not a true reflection of an individual’s health and are concerned that the BMI aspect of the Wii Fit program could have a negative impact on peoples’ perception – both young and old – of their body image. To learn more about BMI and our thoughts on the topic, visit our CED Blog by Googling ‘The Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt, Blog’ and check out the entry entitled ‘BMI Don’t You Judge Mii, Wii
The Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt in Baltimore, Maryland, believes that BMI is not a true reflection of an individual’s health and are concerned that the BMI aspect of the Wii Fit program could have a negative impact on peoples’ perception – both young and old – of their body image. To learn more about BMI and our thoughts on the topic, visit our CED Blog by Googling ‘The Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt, Blog’ and check out the entry entitled ‘Don’t You Judge Mii, Wii.’ http://eatingdisorder.org/blog/2008/06/24/don%e2%80%99t-you-judge-mii-wii/
[...] Now BMI can’t really be used for kids and the Nintendi Wii Fit has caused a few issues, for example here, because it uses BMI as a measure of [...]
Any system that labels virtually every pro athlete either overweight (Lance Armstrong) or obese (Barry Sanders) has got to be bogus. And, in fact, this one was designed by people who had the most to gain financially from finding the greatest number of people overweight.
I run 5K 3-4 times a week, depending on how many times I take 50+ mile bike rides. According to the BMI, I’m 30 pounds overweight, in spite of the fact that I have a flat stomach.
I saw some people issue about this too. I hope thier parents stay with them while they ‘re playing.
The BMI is a guideline not a written in stone, absolute, definitive fact. What the owners should have done was explain that. Thicker skin would have helped too.
idk, my friends was four foot eight and she weighed 85 lbs and it said in the middle of healthy ? soo,,
Angela,
Actually the BMI chart is more of a guideline as opposed to a strict yay or nay. Furthermore there are two charts, an under 18 and over 18 chart. I am not familiar with the Wii Fit, but they might not be using the correct chart or the program could have some scientific issues that still need to be worked out.
For a better analysis of a 10 year old, the parent should take them into a DC that practices nutrition or someone else qualified in nutritional guidance. They can run a B.I.A. (biometric impedance analysis) for a much more thorough explanation including body composition and the BMR (basal metabolic rate) amongst other things.
Hopefully this information will help the parent of the 10 year explain to the child that a video game cannot be accurate for everybody. But of course the goal of the Wii is to allow children (and adults) to enjoy video games without being sedentary.
Brandon
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