“I was like, ‘Oh, my God! Why did I get this?’” said the 9-year-old Staten Island girl on the cover of today’s New York Post. “I’m 4-foot-1, and 66 pounds, and I’m like, what?!” The third grader was sent home with a Department of Education “Fitnessgram,” listing her Body Mass Index, among other things, and told not to look before delivering it to her parents. (How about an email? No?) That went about how you’d expect.
The Post reports on the girl’s angry mother, Laura Bruij Williams:
“She said, ‘Hey, Mom. The school told me I’m overweight.’ And then she started jiggling her thighs, and saying, ‘Is this what they mean?’”
“So you guys have seen my kid, right? Does she look overweight to you?” Williams wrote on Facebook. “She is exactly one pound over the ‘average’ weight for her height and age. One pound.” (“BMI is not a diagnostic tool,” says the CDC.)
A Department of Education spokesperson assured parents that the Fitnessgrams are “just one indicator … which helps students develop personal goals for lifelong health.” And it’s never too early to start stoking lifelong insecurities.
