A 17-year-old CEGEP student, Alice, decries the weigh-in that took place as part of her physical education class at Cégep du Vieux Montréal.
The teacher had the students take turns on a scale, revealing their weight and body mass index to them in front of their classmates.
Alice was traumatized from the practice because she never weighed herself at home. For her and her relatives, the weight is not important.
Alice texted her mother-in-law Chantal Déry after physical education class.
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“She said to me ‘I can’t believe it, I just got weighed in a physical education class.’ There I said it’s inconceivable, and why?” she. “She didn’t even know that was why it was so scary for her. She had a number in her head, I don’t have a scale here. So she didn’t know how much she weighed, and there she realized that she was heavier than all of her friends, so she questioned herself. She is 17 years old, she is a young girl, she is in good shape, and there we put a number in her head. ”
The practice of weighing was banned in 2017 by Quebec for elementary and secondary schools, but not at CEGEP. On the other hand, we had asked CEGEP professors that if they weighed in, it had to be in a certain setting and in private.
The situation is denounced by Anorexie et boulimie Québec, which saw the number of requests increase by 128% during the pandemic because young people experience anxiety and food problems.
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