BMI slideshow

Justine Lavaworm tweeted this link today and I just spend the last half hour or so looking at the images and reading the comments. I used to work in a health club and my continuing education credits when I was a CA were in rehab so I've got a pretty good idea of how radically different people who have the same weight and height or BMI can look, but the slideshow was still eyeopening. (Obviously BMI is bullshit, for more see Paul Campos' excellent book The Obesity Myth.)

The comments are interesting also, especially the ones that really push home the point of how much a gym class can spoil a perfectly good love of exercise and activity. I had some horrid run-ins myself, not because I was fat but because I was small and skinny and afraid of the ball. I also had some fantastic teachers, in particular I really enjoyed when we did gymnastics, loving the hell out of the uneven parallel bars.

But a lot of gym classes are awful, boring and demeaning. And showering when you're in your awkward years and people are being mean, forget it.