Thursday, August 20, 2009

Small Victories

It's nice to occasionally have a HAES victory, even when it's small. I'm doing a rotation in a psychiatric ward this month, and in their examination room there was a huge BMI poster on the door. It was the same kind of poster you see everywhere with a graph to see how fat you are, and a table explaining that anything over a BMI of 25 means you need to lose weight.

BMI posters are incredibly irritating no matter where they are, but in a psychiatric ward it makes even less sense: People are already feeling pretty badly about themselves, let's berate them about their weight! And if they are in the psychiatric ward to treat an eating disorder, even better to remind them that they might be fat! So, I asked the individual in charge if it could be removed, and she took a look, agreed with me, and pulled the poster down.

One BMI poster less in the world is one of those small but very satisfying victories.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Woohoo! Good for you for noticing, and good for you for speaking up!

Anonymous said...

Congratulations, and thank you for sharing this story. We need the small victories to keep us going!

On a more general note, I look forward to when you finish medical school and there is one more fat-friendly doctor in the world.

Anonymous said...

I love you. But you knew that :)

Unknown said...

Hooray!

I complained about them in my dr's office and the next time I went, they were gone! I don't know if they just took them out of some of the rooms or what but it was pretty amazing.

Piffle said...

Thumbs up!

Anonymous said...

Well Done! Those charts are ridiculous and meaningless.