Article Link "How your family shapes your body image" [BBC Future]

[Erica H.]

Originally Posted by Vintage VFer

Recent threads about body image and fitness made me remember back in my grade school days (1960's) there was a thing called "The President's Council on Fitness." We had to do fitness tests.

The Origins of the Presidential Fitness Test

I remember it somewhat fondly, but for others, not so much.

In reading that article and other articles, some kids were traumatized for life by having to do the tests in front of their peers. Plus, some gym teachers making snide comments didn't help.

My gym teacher separated me from the rest of the class in elementary school and made me exercise to the song, "Go you chicken fat go" by myself during class. I wasn't a fat child, but I wasn't lean and I was terrible in PE even though I liked being active. I was very slow and uncoordinated and I'm left handed, but don't seem to have a dominant hand for sports so I was just a mess. PE was just mortifying for me.

Erica

[cataddict]

Erica, Hugs! That is a terrible thing to go through!

I WAS a heavy child, and PE WAS mortifying—yes, the “go you chicken fat, go away” song was shameful to me, and that President’s Physical Fitness Test is definitely a bad memory that negatively impacted my self image, well, to this day decades later. I wouldn’t say I was traumatized exactly, but it definitely shaped my personality.

My mother was larger until she went into assisted living in her later years and the food was not to her liking. Although I don’t recall family saying anything to me directly about my size as a child, I was witness to my grandparents’ unkind comments about my mother’s weight and they would send her weight loss books and guides. I saw her crying a number of times after receiving such unsolicited “advice.” The message was that it was the outside that mattered, and I heard it and still do.

[Vintage VFer]

Erica and cataddict. I'm sorry you had to deal with all that.

I had to look up the "chicken fat" song and don't remember it at all. Maybe my school didn't play it?

[Erica H.]

Originally Posted by cataddict

Erica, The message was that it was the outside that mattered, and I heard it and still do.

Me too. My mother was a narcissist and overweight and made it very clear to me that a thin body was necessary to be accepted in life. No such thing as unconditional love and acceptance. This started from when I was very young - I don't remember a time when the focus wasn't on my body/weight/size and how to make me smaller. I could go on and on about it, but I won't.

Erica

[prettyinpink]

Originally Posted by Vintage VFer

Recent threads about body image and fitness made me remember back in my grade school days (1960's) there was a thing called "The President's Council on Fitness." We had to do fitness tests.

The Origins of the Presidential Fitness Test

I remember it somewhat fondly, but for others, not so much.

In reading that article and other articles, some kids were traumatized for life by having to do the tests in front of their peers. Plus, some gym teachers making snide comments didn't help.

Thanks for the article showing all the iterations. I think there was a book I heard of through this forum that also talked about the origins of this fitness test. I had no idea it was traumatizing for so many.

I had the 1976 version, and then later in high school I think we just had the timed mile. This is about the only good memory I have from PE class. I did not shine in sports and dreaded PE, but I remember a couple of years doing relatively well in the fitness test and realizing that I was not terrible at everything physical, that maybe there was not anything wrong with my physical abilities, and the reasons I got picked for teams or not didn’t have much to do with that. And most of all, I could be fit without playing a sport, something that carried over well to my life as an adult. At least one or two years, I remember it was a whole unit, where we took the test, then kept doing the exercises, and took the test again: improvement! That one could get stronger and faster was something of a revelation, too, as a child.

So for me, I would say it was very positive. I think the kids that discovered a sport they liked would feel the same about the sports parts of PE, even though those things were unpleasant for some others. I don’t have the solution for making sure children get enough physical activity at school while hopefully sparking some enjoyment of it and without making anyone feel bad. But surely someone could come up with better ways than young children testing in front of others, picking their own teammates, or doing activities that really embarrass them.

On other traumatizing things in school, I’ve read that some schools weigh and measure children at school, both currently and at times in the past. I have a hard time believing this is a good idea, rather than leaving it to the medical provider.
https://theconversation.com/weighing...ise-you-100387

[Erica H.]

Originally Posted by prettyinpink

On other traumatizing things in school, I’ve read that some schools weigh and measure children at school, both currently and at times in the past. I have a hard time believing this is a good idea, rather than leaving it to the medical provider.
https://theconversation.com/weighing...ise-you-100387

Our elementary school did that and the PE teacher was horrible to the kids who weren't *average* weight. This teacher had so many complaints from parents over the years over issues like this, but nothing was done. She finally retired.
The state also had (has?) BMI testing for students, which parents could opt out of.

Erica

[hch]

Originally Posted by toaster

whereas I tended to have more weight in my lower body (aka "pear shape" although I know that hch and others don't like referring to the body as fruit ).

Heh--I don't very strongly hate the habit per se, but the term became a pejorative and the label became a stricture (as in "people with this body type must do this and shouldn't do that") in places like VF.

I found it especially interesting because I first heard of a apple-pear distinction based on waist-hip ratio (it appeared in Reader's Digest in probably the early 1990s)--in a setting where being a "pear" was actually favored. I don't want to promote an overly simple model of disease risk, but in this context, the battle against "pear"-ness seemed especially perverse.

I was actually thinking about the idea of "body types" recently as one example of topics from VF's past that I don't think are "taught" as much as they once were.

[toaster]

Henry, ITA that we shouldn't get locked into "shoulds" based on body type, size, or shape - I'm pretty resistant to black and white thinking. On the other hand, my body is shaped roughly like a pear - it is what it is! And yes, for health reasons, I'm glad that I don't carry as much fat around my waist. (I also have to admit that for aesthetic reasons, I'm glad that having a big booty is much more in vogue than it was when I was in high school! )

[prettyinpink]

Originally Posted by toaster

Henry, ITA that we shouldn't get locked into "shoulds" based on body type, size, or shape - I'm pretty resistant to black and white thinking. On the other hand, my body is shaped roughly like a pear - it is what it is! And yes, for health reasons, I'm glad that I don't carry as much fat around my waist. (I also have to admit that for aesthetic reasons, I'm glad that having a big booty is much more in vogue than it was when I was in high school! )

As a kinda-sorta-hey, if the description fits!- pear, I only ever heard it as a description for suggestions on how to dress. And I found it somewhat useful, except maybe in the 80’s when the idea was that narrower shoulders needed extra-large shoulder pads to “balance” the body, lol.

I never really saw or heard negativity about it, in fact, sometimes quite the opposite. And yes, health benefits. It is quite normal for younger women to be larger in the lower body than the upper.

[Abby]

I can relate to the gym class horror stories. I am a nerd and not athletic at all. I cannot catch balls, do a cartwheel, or anything. I was always picked last or next to last for teams. It actually made sense to me that I was picked last since I wasn't good at sports and didn't enjoy or care about sports--I just did not like it being pointed out publicly. We never pointed out who got the worst test scores, for instance.

The last year I had to take gym class, I made an effort to practice for the presidential fitness test thing (late 80s) and I passed all of it except one thing.

The gym teacher called us up one by one in front of everyone and took calipers and measured our body fat percentage and called out our numbers loudly so everyone heard and someone wrote it down. The back of the upper arm and the back of the calf on the inner side below the knee were measured. I had never noticed fat on anyone's upper inner calf before that day. I had never thought about it before.

Well, I failed the caliper test and it was announced loudly and publicly. I think the teacher was a little embarrassed about shouting it. She knew I had passed all the other parts.

I'm short, but not at all tiny. I could never wear a petite shirt because the sleeves were too short and even women's shirts are sometimes too short. My rib cage was bigger than most other girls my age in high school. I come from Ukrainian wheat farmers.

We got letter sweaters in 10th grade. The teacher ordered several 32 and 34s. Well, I passed that size by fifth grade. I tried on the biggest sweater and it wouldn't fit across my back. I told the teacher to get a roomy 42 for me.

I was the only girl who didn't fit.

I still have the sweater. Nobody wore them in high school because the letter jackets were cooler. I took the letter off the sweater when I found it in a box thus year. I wear it now. It's warm.