It’s Time to Talk to Children about Weight Identity!

Welcome students! I’m so excited to have you here for the first day of school. Before we get started, I’d like to do introductions. Please state your name and your weight identity. I’ll go first: My name is Ms. Takenidea, and I identify as weighing 124 pounds…

Thank you all for introducing yourselves. I appreciate that some of you were a bit confused about announcing your weight identities, but I just want to express that we are doing this to create an inclusive community here at school this year. And we want everyone to feel welcome here, right? Which leads me to today’s lesson…

As teenagers, by now you are aware that people have different identities, right? Some of you might be– no, Jacob, I’m not talking about liking football. Please, don’t interrupt next time. If you have a connection, just link your fingers like this, okay? Then, I’ll call on you later. Okay? Where was I. Right…

Some of you have different identities. Joey here might be… Jewish, and Katya might be Muslim. Right- no -of course, this is just an example, I know you’re not, but you could be. That would be okay, right? Right. So people can identify as being Jewish or Muslim or, you know, Christian or whatever. Well, okay – I see what you mean. Some religions you have to convert or be baptized or whatever, but some you are just born into. Right? Right – okay – so let’s set that aside. But a big identity is race, correct? So like Ty here is black – what? You’re not? Oh- I’m so sorry. Biracial? Really? Mexican and Chinese? Huh. Oh- that is so cool. We have a “Brown Boys” affinity group you should join. Oh, you don’t? Huh. Right – so you don’t “identify” as a “Brown Boy,” but if you did, you could join. Okay. So Ty doesn’t identify as Brown, so we should all respect that. It’s really about respecting what people say. That’s the key here. No, Joey, you can’t identify as a Brown Boy. Please, that’s not how this works. Remember the finger link, okay? Wait, what - really? Your Grandad was a Tuskegee pilot? That’s super cool. We should have him come in and speak. Okay. Okay. Hold on. We’re off topic here.

So, people can have their religious identity and their racial identity – like what we can see or assume from outside. But we also have these internal senses of identity - how we feel. So, today, I want to talk about a new one: weight identity.

In the past, there were people who felt uncomfortable about their weight. There were some kids who thought they were too fat, and even a few who thought they were too thin. In order to better match their internal weight identity, they tried to starve themselves, or exercise too much, or make themselves throw up. Some of them binged and ate tons or took steroids. Most of these kids were deeply, deeply unhappy, so they sometimes hurt themselves. Some even had to be hospitalized. Some were suicidal. Sometimes they just died because they were so sick. It was awful. The therapists tried to convince these kids that their thinking about their weight identity was wrong, and that their actual weight should be “normal.” Some of these doctors and families even practiced weight conversion therapy by feeding their thin kids protein shakes or encouraging their fat kids to join a sports team. For a while, our society used to label these kids as “anorexic” or “obese,” but these terms have a negative connotation. So we shifted to saying they had an “eating disorder.” But recently, we’ve discovered a new way to help these kids! There was a new study out of Finland where they realized our approach was wrong the whole time.

The problem wasn’t that these kids were thinking or feeling wrong, it’s that their bodies were wrong! They were born in the wrong body! They just had a thin brain in a medium body, or a fat brain in a medium body. Once the doctors realized this, their approach to weight management completely changed. Now, if a “medium” girl identifies as being thin and says, “my body doesn’t match by weight identity”, we support her by getting her a prescription for Ozempic or some other weight loss drug. Now her body starts to match her brain. She is happy and tells people how much happier she is! Problem solved.

What’s that, Ty? Well – yes – some people say that Ozempic should not be used for thin-identified teenagers, since it was created for clinically diabetic adults, but those people are gatekeepers, and gatekeeping is bad. Who are we to say what the ideal weight is for someone? That’s just being body-normative, which is really disrespectful. Weight is a spectrum, and we respect all weights in our school.

So, in order to help create an affirming environment for our kids struggling with weight identity, we have decided to announce our weights on our name tags, at each introduction, and at the end of our email signatures. That way, no one will ever be confused about what our internal weight identity is, and they can respect it. No one should make assumptions about your weight just by looking at you.

Whoops- there’s the lunch bell. To summarize: in order to create an ideal world where weight doesn’t matter, and where we support our students with weight issues, we are going to announce our weight identities after each introduction. Tonight’s assignment: please write an essay about your internal weight identity and how much in impacts you. Tomorrow we will read these aloud and analyze them, then make collages about our weight identities.