The excellent medical history and women’s studies blog Nursing Clio is running a series of posts about female presidential candidates. They also recently featured a truly illuminating scholarly blog entry on the history and modern use of obesity and BMI in pediatric settings called “The Problem With Fat-Talk at the Pediatrician’s Office.”
Combined with the fact that some states require “BMI report cards” to be sent home by schools (a practice some argue is necessary for combating obesity but others say pose serious problems and the efficacy of which is unverified), pediatric use of BMI deserves careful attention from those concerned with medical ethics and public health ethics generally, and more specifically with the way that medicalization can reify stigmatized human conditions. This is even more the case than in the adult context given young people’s vulnerability to life-long patterns of body shame and disordered eating.
You may find the Clio blog entry particularly useful in thinking about the use and misuse of these measurements, and why they continue to find traction despite their oversimplification with respect to health. While IJFAB Blog has featured several blog entries on adult clinical uses of obesity and BMI, we don’t have any on pediatric contexts and so commend this to you.
For some of our past entries on adult obesity and BMI, see:
- Obesity: Two Articles (Tim Johnston)
- Fat Phobia and Thin Privilege (Ula Klein)
- Aiming at Body Size: How Medicalizing Obesity Changes the Very Notion of What It Is To Be Healthy (Alison Reiheld)
- Body Image, BMI, and the Continuing Problem of Standards of Beauty (Ula Klein)
- Women and Responsibility for Health: Food, Physical Activity, and Feminism (Alison Reiheld)
- More Fat-Shaming (Pactrick J. Welsh)
- Eating as Shameful: Food, Gender, Daily Life, and Media Messages (Alison Reiheld)
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