Diaries of a Chubby Kid

En Sabah Nur · (#1 (**permalink**))

They weighed you in school? In front of other kids? I don't think that is right. Especially not in front of other kids in a move that seems designed to encourage shame. Your gym teacher was out of order for that.

Nnebabe · (#2 (**permalink**))

Yeh, I had a weigh in when I was in primary school, yr 3 (7/8 yrs) but we were taken out of the class in a group of around 3-4 kids and a parentteacher

I remember in yr 6 (10/11yrs) our chest measuremrnts were beingtaken to measure our different capacities for inhaling and exhaling. This one boys capacity was over 100 cms when people in my class were only in their late 80cms to 90cms. He ran out of the classroom because of it. It must have been so embarassing for him.I can even rememberthe teacher having a little smile on her face as some of the kids laughed.

En Sabah Nur · (#3 (**permalink**))

He was embarassed because he had a good lung capacity? That's a thing to be proud of! He was healthy. They usually measure lung capacity with a peak flow meter though.

It wasn't the weighing itself which got me, rather the fact it took place in front of other studenst.

Mezmerized · (#4 (**permalink**))

Timeline wrote:

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What experiences do you remember as a chubby kid? How did your perception change when you lost the weight? How did your experience scar or enlighten you? Or if you did not lose weight, how has that affected you in your personal/social life?

Unlike you, i was a very skinny little waif to begin with. Even the gentle African wind used to literaly blow me off guard.lol

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Untill one day my hips, thighs andbackside took a life of its own....lol, Then it was aurevoir skinny dock, in with chubby hippo orpiglet or whatever suited the sad little twats' hormonial moods.

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One importantthing that alsosaved me was that i had a prety much safe andhappy home....so the school thing really never bothered me much. Plus, we had a school system where the top ten students were always given privileges as school captains, class chiefs ect. I was one of them so if the silly buggers pissed me off too much i'd just fix them up for detention for days on end.....all i needed was fix them up as messing up with the Nun's flowers and my words would stand as truth.

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I think like with most life experiences, with bullying of this kind, time is the greatest healer. By the time i was about 16 i could barely remember much of those insults. By then i was a bubbly teenager more preocupied with getting part time jobs, going out etc......and i lost most of the baby fat naturally during my teenage hyper activities.

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I also think that weight related bullying is worse in western societies. Back in Africa its never as damaging as it can be here, maybe thats why i never paid much attention to it in the fist place. How was i gone cry about having big hips and thighs when majority of the women population prided themselves on having those same beauty easthetics?

Mokele Mbembe · (#5 (**permalink**))

Kids are mean in general. Really they are. Whatever it is about you the rest will pick on it and that becomes the thing to attack you with.

Fat kid
Skinny kid
Tall kid (beanpole)
Short kid
Kid with glasses
Lighter kid
Darker kid
Poor kid
Posh kid
Smart kid
Dumb kid
etc etc

They all get it.

Some kids take it to heart and others don't really.Depends on the sensitivity of that particular kid. Some of those most upset by such things don't realise that they go and do it to somebody else too. Fat kid used to join in and cuss the one with goggle glasses in my school while making big bawling dramatic scenes when people cussed him.

Now the thing is. From your perspective as a kid it may seem as if it's always about you and it's only you getting picked on. From my observations of kids and my own recollections it seems to me that it is always somebodys turn.

Like others have said timeline i have a problem with the fact that in your situation the teachers (adults) seemed complicit in the bullying. Anybody with sense and experience knows all these things about kids anyway so weighing them in front of each other to me is cruel.

Shemsi en Tehuti · (#6 (**permalink**))

@ Timeline

Were you tall in the 4th grade? How tall are you now?..if you don't mind me asking...

Shemsi en Tehuti · (#7 (**permalink**))

I was always "too heavy" for my age, but for kind of the opposite reasons. I am not very tall, and often was the shortest person growing up. I am only about 5'9'' now. While growing up, I was kind of stocky until about the age of 12 when I started to get taller. The men in my family are mostly of a muscular build, and so I always had dense muscles even in elementary school.

Kids will tease you about almost anything. I was often teased for being too strong, where other kids would make flexing motions like a body builder towards me to try to incite anger. I also could never play little league football for my age group because I was always too heavy. You had to be within a certain weight range with your age, but I was always too heavy. They tried making me run with plastic jogging suits on to burn the weight off, but my doctor made me (or my mother) stop from losing weightbecause it was getting bad for my health. My body fat was getting dangerously low (for a child), where I couldn't lose much more weight because I was mostly muscle mass, not fat. I was teased bad about that since all my friends were on the football team growing up. Kids are just cruel. I even gottalked about because my lipswere considered too big. There was a football player for the Pittsburgh Steelers (wide receiver) at the time named Louis Lipps...and of course, when we did anything recreational, I would be called that name from time to time.

It wasn't until I was about 13-14 years old that I began to fill into my body. Ironically, bythe timeI was inhigh school all the things people made fun of became an asset of some sort...go figure.

ChubbiChix · (#8 (**permalink**))

Well ihad good and bad experiences but they got better as I got older.Kids are cruel and I know because I got picked on and I picked on people. The worstthingyou can do is be quiet and let them pick on you. I use to always want to fight if someone tried to play me, male or female butI had a few times where I tookit because I was afraid of being jumped or thrown out of school.I use to hate gym class not because i was embarrassed but because i hadthis dike gym teacherthat had us running around the gym like 30 times everyday. I use to cut school just so i didn't have to do the workout but i wasent the only one even the thin people were complaining. I got weighed in jr high in front of my classmates and it was definitly embarrassing. Matter of fact I end up getting in a fight with a spanish dude in my class right after because he was telling my weight.

Mokele Mbembe · (#9 (**permalink**))

Men don't seem to be as sensitive about weight as women.

I think that is a fallacy Timeline. I have a chubby cousin (boy) who used to be reduced to tears by kids teasing him and adults chastising his weight. I think males just don't show it as much. Or if they do, they cover it with aggression towards somebody else. Thinking back, the kids who used to cuss me the most were the chubby ones. They were the most aggresive too.