I do think that if you come up with a system of ranking humans on their inherent worth, and you end up on the top of it. It's an extra fucking bad idea when we only ever put white people in charge, right? Īubrey: Because what happens with the BMI, what happens with IQ tests, all of that stuff came to be in the 1800s and early 1900s, is that whether or not they said that that was what they were doing, what white people were functionally doing is looking for reasons to prove that we were “genetically superior.” It's just always a bad idea.Īubrey: Well, and it's always a bad idea to try and boil all that stuff down into one measure. I've spent the last couple of weeks actually reading a bunch of books about race and IQ, and this whole nightmare of an academic field, and I don't know much about the history of the BMI, but I do think that basically, any scientific effort to boil a complex phenomenon, such as health or intelligence, down to one number is just pre-doomed. As we will learn today, its history is absolutely not as a tried-and-true medical tool. In many medical systems around the country and around the world, it has become central to accessing medical care. It is truly just your weight divided by your height, the end. It doesn't measure muscle mass or body fat or build or age or anything else. It is your weight in kilograms divided by your height in meters squared. You know it's my wheelhouse, Mike.Īubrey: The BMI is a simple calculation. Mike: I hope we mostly focus on skinny shaming in this episode. That applies to underweight people, and it applies really, really prominently to people who are “overweight.” It only applies to bodies that we deem deviant in their size. They were like, “Okay.” Hopefully, that means that doctors’ offices are becoming more chill about this, but I think it also means that like, “He's a thin guy, and we don't need to weigh him.” I think that's obviously playing into it too.Īubrey: Right. It's not related to health,” blah, blah, blah. I actually went to the doctor's office a couple of months ago, and they asked to weigh me, and I was like, “I prefer not to be weighed.” I was ready to have a big fight about it, be like, “This is ridiculous. As a guy who presents as “normal” on the BMI, I think it doesn't play much of a role at all. I am curious, Mike, what kind of role would you say the BMI has played in your life? How does it show up for you? Mike: We did a whole episode on Bono stuff, and now, we're doing one on BMI stuff.Īubrey: BMI. Today, Mike, we are going to talk about the body mass index, better known as the BMI. Mike: And if you want to support the show, we are on Patreon at /maintenancephase, where you can listen to our adorable bonus episodes about things like Meghan and Harry and The Bachelor, or you can buy t-shirts, or just give us money for no reason, or do none of that, and just continue listening quietly.Īubrey: That's right. Describe another person as morbidly anything and see how that goes. Mike: When you apply morbidly to anything else, you see how shitty it is- Īubrey: Yeah. I just want to make the tagline of our podcast, just permanently, the podcast that is morbidly too long. Mike: Welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that is just right between 20 and 25, too long to 25 and 30, and morbidly too long from 30 to 35.Īubrey: Oh, God. Mike: This one might be kind of offensive.
Mindful of eugenics’ dark history, researchers are reexamining the genetics of social mobility (Quartz).Adolphe Quetelet, Social Physics, and the Average Men of Science, 1796-1874 (University of Pittsburgh Press).The Bizarre and Racist History of the BMI (Elemental).
MAINTENANCE PHASE PODCAST SERIES
This week, Mike and Aubrey tackle the first in a two-part series about the BMI and the “Obesity Epidemic.” Along the way they visit 18th century Belgium, learn a gross new acronym and dissect Dracula's facial features. But is it scientific or scientif-ish? While many Americans think of the body mass index as an objective measure of health, its history reveals a more complicated story.
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