Noah has been saving up for a wii for some time now and we said we’d match him when he got halfway. He has his paper route money (10% goes towards tzdakah, half goes into saving, half goes into his pocket) from which he gets a tidy little sum but there are snacks to buy, games to trade in for better games, etc. so it’s been slow going until he got to his birthday month and was able to hit Grandma up a little early. So we’re going to buy it any minute now (maybe this weekend — I’ll have to ask Brett).
We have rules about video games — only E for everyone and the occasional T for Teen, no blood or zombies — and the one we all decided on last night is no Wii Fit.
See, the Wii Fit has that BMI thing on it and the BMI is bunk.
I know two fabulous little girls. They are active in their daily lives (regular playful exercise like bikes and rollerskating as well as structured events like dance and sports) and eat well with lots of variety as well as occasional treats. They are healthy and strong and gorgeous. And the Wii Fit just told them they are overweight.
They’re not overweight; they are just right. But being girls, they are likely to struggle with the whole fat idea especially because they are regular-sized girls and not skinny Minnies. They have strong shoulders and strong legs and to get a BMI in the not-fat range they’d have to do some seriously disordered dieting. They would have to hurt themselves and their health in order for the Wii Fit to cut them some slack.
And this is why we’re not getting a Wii Fit. We don’t need that crap in our house especially when we have our own sturdy little girl-child.
Why oh why doesn’t Nintendo set it up so you can turn off that option? Why not have a Wii Fit Kids program that cheers the kids on instead of telling them how fat they are? You (sorta, not really) apologized but you didn’t really do anything, did you? I can only assume that none of you were ever normal-sized little girls on the edge of adolesence and starting to worry about how you look in a bathing suit, were you? And none of you have daughters, right? Otherwise maybe you’d want to help keep our kids from throwing up in bathroom stalls after lunch by at least giving parents the option to turn it off.
(Speaking as one who has been there, once you’ve been called “fat”, there’s precious little your mother can do to convince you otherwise. Because she’s just your mom and she’s supposed to think you’re pretty.)
Seriously, Nintendo — are you listening? These little girls — they get enough criticism about their perfect little curvy bodies everytime they glance at a billboard, magazine, television show or movie. You really want to hit them when they’re just trying to play virtual hula hoops together?
Wii Fit, you suck. And until you shape up (pun intended), you’re not welcome in my house.
(Can you tell if someone is fat according to BMI by looking at them? You might be surprised who got labeled overweight.)
