May 10 2008
10-year-old girl distraught over Wii Fit calling her fat
While a significant number of you out there won’t be picking up Wii Fit until its North American release on May 19th (and even more of you have to wait until second shipments…), Wii Fit is already wreaking havoc and causing psychological damage elsewhere in the world.
My DSD [relative] came round this weekend and we let her play on our wii-fit. 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. She is a healthy 10 year old girl with an active lifestyle, she swims and dances every week. She is 92lbs and 4′9″ tall and there is not an inch of fat on her. She is solidly built but not fat. She was [devastated] to be called fat and we had to work hard to convince her that she isn’t. 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 their fat. This to me is very worrying and I hope that is doesn’t cause emotional problems for any youngsters out there.
It’s just a game, right? I get the feeling that Wii Fit is going to cause a rise in anorexia in little kids and lawsuits from angry parents. Way to go, Nintendo.
DISboards
via Destructoid
7 Responses to “10-year-old girl distraught over Wii Fit calling her fat”
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Tracking kids weight’s is a tricky business. No doubt Nintendo is using a standard weight to height ratio which has indicated that the child is slightly overweight.
These days, kids with an active lifestyle form a minority. All that extra muscle weighs a lot, and will tip the scales when compared to all the couch potatoes or certifiably overweight kids that make up the average North American child.
her BMI is 19.9, which puts her in the 84th percentile, which is healthy weight. why would it calculate it as being overweight??
Just as Wii Sports, Wii Fit results are designed for adults over the age of 18. Which is of course ridiculous!
Careful now, sounds like you’re trying to sensationalize something.
Anyway, BMI is pretty useless, at best it’s a rough estimate at worst it’s a crock. Penn and Teller’s show “Bulls**t” recently did some research on this subject, here’s a short list of what they’ve found:
# BMI is Bulls***. It was invented by some guy in the 1800s for a different purpose than it is used for today: to assign a health evaluation based solely on one’s weight and height.
# Based on the current BMI definitions, Brad Pitt is overweight and George Clooney is obese.
# Penn and a ripped body builder have the same BMI.
# Insurance companies inappropriately use BMI to determine who qualifies for health insurance and how much they must pay.
# The use of the word “epidemic” to describe obesity is sensationalist and doesn’t really mean anything.
You’re better off talking to a doctor if you want to become healthier and having a body fat analysis.
Just look at the picture!! She had the settings of a 6′5′ and 46 year old!
um, davids61 … that was Reggie Fils-Aime’s, the President of NOA, BMI Measurement Results from the 2007 E3 - when Wii Fit was announced and demonstrated.
did you miss the presentation???
=)
you can help Reggie lose weight here:
http://www.petitiononline.com/Reggie/petition.html