Nintendo

Wii Fit Says Girl Is Fat, Traumatizes Her

What happens when games are given too much credit?

By Calin Ciabai, Games Editor

7th of May 2008, 19:06 GMT

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It seems that Nintendo's Wii Fit can be wrong every now and them and, what is even more disturbing for many people, it has adverse

effects on users. At least that's the result of a young ten year-old girl who used the Wii Fit which told her that she was fat. Now, it wouldn't necessarily be a problem, since this is the game's job, but it seems that it went terribly wrong in doing so.

According to a forum post found by the folks over at CVG, the ten year-old girl weighs 92 lbs and has a height of 4'9'', but Wii Fit considered her to be overweight. And this is rather strange, since we all know that the game uses the BMI (Body Mass Index) to calculate if a person is fat or not, and this girl's BMI actually shows that she's just a bit over what could be considered underweight. Still, since there is no real proof and only a forum post, we can't be 100% sure that the Wii Fit went completely wrong or the person is just telling lies.

It seems that it doesn't even matter, since parents are completely shocked about the fact that such programs exist and they tend to create bad body images, which could have negative effects on people. Here's the story, as told by the unhappy person:

"My [relative] came round this weekend and we let her play on our wii-fit. We have all laughed and joked about being told that we're fat and need to lose weight but I was gobsmacked when it told her that she is overweight. She is a healthy ten year-old girl with an active lifestyle, she swims and dances every week. She is 92lbs and 4ft9" tall and there is not an inch of fat on her. She is solidly built but not fat. She was devastated to be called fat and we had to work hard to convince her that she isn't. I know it is just a game but seriously we already have to worry about young girls starving themselves to look like the magazine models and now we have a game that tells them their fat. This to me is very worrying and I hope that is doesn't cause emotional problems for any youngsters out there."

Angry parents have invaded the forum boards suggesting the person to send even angrier e-mails to Nintendo and, of course, she got no responses back. Devastating or not, this is life and we can't do anything about it. Even more, the Wii Fit is just a game and probably shouldn't be taken so seriously. Plus, I really doubt that Nintendo didn't use a correct BMI calculator, so there must be some facts that are not exactly told as they happened. Well... we'll probably never know for sure. We only hope that the little girl is OK now. Both she and everybody else on the planet don't need a game to tell them they're fat or not - that's why mirrors exist.

TAGS:

Wii Fit | Traumatised Girl | Fat | BMI | overweight

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User opinions:

Comment #1 by: john on 08 May 2008, 09:44 GMT	reply to this comment
I got the wii fit yesterday The wii fit does not give a BMI rating called FAT it offers underweight ideal weight overweight Obese It takes into consideration Age, height which have to be manually entered. Is it possible that they may have made an error entering these details ? maybe the familys teasing has more to do with the "trauma" and they are feeling guilty

Comment #2 by: JFargo on 20 Aug 2008, 15:32 GMT	reply to this comment
I'm with John on this one. There is no "Fat" rating, and if it DID call the girl overweight or Obese, I'd have to think that they entered some of the information wrong. OR, the weigh-in was inaccurate. That's happened to a few people that I know, because if the batteries are low, or the board is sitting weirdly, it can cause weights to be read wrong, either way under or over.

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