Brickbat: Fat, Fat the Water Rat

Gwendolyn Williams stands 4 feet 1 inch tall and weighs 66 pounds. According to a letter sent to her parents by the New York City school system, that makes the 9-year-old girl overweight. The school system sent some 870,000 "Fitnessgrams" home with students recently.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

BMI TMI? Not at all. It's the most important grade that will be sent home with children. The children are the future burdens on our intricately crafted healthcare system. That burden must be minimized through careful systemic bullying.

[Rev-Match]

Gwendolyn Williams stands 4 feet 1 inch tall and weighs 66 pounds.

Look at that horrendously overweight kid! She's like Jabba the Hut's niece!

But, seriously, it is ridiculous that they called this child "overweight". BMI is a fraud.

[Ted S.]

Even if you think BMI isn't a fraud, 4'1" and 66 lbs comes out to a BMI under 20. Or have the defined the standards down again so that a BMI of 20 is now overweight?

[LiveFreeOrDiet]

The kid is slender. If anything she's on the light side at 19.3 BMI.
Somebody at the school has gone nuts.

[BuSab Agent]

They won't be happy until the kids all look like North Koreans apparently.

[Drake]

More important that they OBEY like them.

[Snark Plissken]

Yeah, BMI is lame, but that's more about how it doesn't account for muscle and heavy bone, so someone like Warty gets automatically counted as grossly obese.

Whatever metric they used is apparently much more idiotic than BMI, probably the rand{} function.

[Radioactive]

kiddy porn!!!

[invisible furry hand]

I was going to post this on Friday AM Links, but the commenting system mysteriously broke. None dare call it conspiracy...

This farce has at least engendered some skepticism of the state in the child:

"I know that I'm not overweight, so why should I believe the New York Department of Education?"

[UnCivilServant]

Never believe anything an agency of the State of New York tells you without independant verification. Even if they say that the sky is blue, go out and check.

[Ted S.]

I think this one came from an agency of the City of New York, an entity which might be even more corrupt than the State of New York.

[UnCivilServant]

When I think New York, I think State.

I think we need to reintroduce clarity into the system.

The State retains the rights to the name New York, and the city reverts to its previous name, New Amsterdam.

[Radioactive]

or as we in the hinterland like to call it..."that fucking shithole"

[Old Man With Candy]

Why they changed it, I can't say. Maybe they like it better that way.

[Swiss Servator, CH yeah!]

+1 Istanbul

[Seamus]

Why did Constantinople get the works?

[Old Man With Candy]

That's nobody's business but the Turks'.

[Ted S.]

And Manhattan is New York County.

[Ted S.]

Yes, Reason broke the commenting system just to thwart some antipodean lady. 😉

[BakedPenguin]

It was the server wallabies.

[Swiss Servator, CH yeah!]

Server drop bears

*shivers*

[Notorious G.K.C.]

I'm sure the NYC school system will be just as ruthlessly efficient in dealing with childhood obesity as it is in educating its students.

We're only a few nagging letters away from thin-topia!

[BuSab Agent]

Yet ANOTHER reason to home school.

[Drake]

Another reason NYC is a no-go zone.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

This is scary stuff.

I don't get how people stand for this sort of interference by the state.

[Radioactive]

FYTW

[Ted S.]

They think they're getting to dictate what sort of interference the State is going to do.

[Suthenboy]

This is what happens when you put bean counters in charge of every aspect of life.

Tuttle.... Buttle, what difference does it make?

[Rich]

Laura said the next day she called the principal who she said was sympathetic but said the children were told not to open the letters.

So, not only is Gwendolyn overweight, she blatantly disobeyed the school's directive.

Expel that uppity fattie, or at least get CPS on the case!

[Ted S.]

It also implies the children should be kept in the dark about what the State is doing to them. Because it's For Their Own Good.

[lap83]

Maybe they thought she was fat because she has the classic "thick and sassy" pose.