WiiFat

So, my girlfriend owns a Wii. And its pretty fun. I never expected to like it, but the Wiimote controls are actually very easy to use and a lot of fun. One thing that's bothered me, though, is the way the Wii is often promoted as an "anti-obesity" tool. Ya know, cuz kids have to move and stuff and because video games had already been on the long list of things that are making kids teh fat.

Nintendo hasn't exactly stopped this talk and they are about the release the "Wii Fit" to really push their point. A more expressly fitness oriented accessory, its essentially just a balance board. Oh, but it doubles as a scale. With a weight limit, of course. In Japan it was around 300lbs, but I'm told its up to 330lbs for the American and European releases. This is actually a little higher than I thought, but obviously is still going to prevent a lot of fat people from using the product. The one being marketed as a weight loss tool.

Probably just as well. This story from Kotaku tells of a user in Japan who had the game tell her 10 year old daughter that she was fat. She was 4'9" and 92lbs at 10 years old. Which, for the record, is a "healthy" weight. Naturally, you've got no shortage of commentators taking the software's side and calling this unknown girl fat, so read the comments at your peril. The parent in the story told of how they had to reassure the girl who was devastated by the video games judgment of her. That's screwed up. We don't need video games expanding the threshold of who gets to hate their bodies. We don't need video games teaching children to hate their bodies. We already have too much of that as it is. Shame on Nintendo. For all their talk emphasizing "fitness" its seems clear that this is yet another effort to define fitness by fatness and nothing else.