The Scale

When I was 16, I was on vacation from school and I chaperoned a field trip with my mom's 6th grade students. I was assigned to a group of 4 girls - they were best friends and I instantly felt a connection to them, as I too had a clique of 4 best friends in 6th grade (actually, I think I've had a clique of 2-4 best friends up through college - I might be a clique-y person). We went to the Exploratorium in SF. On one particular exhibit, you stepped on a scale and the scale showed you your weight on Mars or some other planet (for the record, you weigh much less on the planet). Each of the kids got on, including my 4 girls. The first girl who got on was really small - they were all skinny, but she was the shortest. So naturally she weighed the lightest. I watched, very disturbed, how her 3 best friends weighed themselves after her and each made an excuse for why her weight was higher than the first girl's. I mean they were really embarrassed that they weighed 65 lbs as opposed to the first girl's 60 lbs. Looking back, I probably should've stepped on the scale to maybe downplay the importance of it, but well, I was 16. Not exactly evolved.

A couple years ago, my mom gave me her fancy scale. For the most part it serves as a doorstop in my bathroom, gathering dust. But now that I'm Operation Baby Weight, I've been weighing myself every day and writing it down in my calendar (a la Bridget Jones).

I hate the scale. It turns the sane into the insane. The secure into the insecure. I mean, I watched 4 tiny little 11 year old girls unnecessarily obsess about their weight because of a damn scale - and one that was created for fun. Your weight should be the last thing in your mind when you're 11 and at the Exploratorium on a field trip with your best friends and the coolest chaperone in the world (me). I hate that every time I go to the doctor I get weighed - and they refuse to subtract 5 lbs for clothes. I hate that it gives me an arbitrary number that can plummet me back into frustration and sadness, even if I've been eating well and exercising.

In graduate school they drilled into our heads the importance of tools of measurement. People can be swayed to change policy with certain things - data being one. And you need tools of measurement to get data. So as much as I hate the scale - its starkness, its unwillingness to be flexible, its inability to recognize when I'm trying - I recognize that I need it. Though I'd like to measure my progress by whether or not I fit into my jeans, that's not the most objective measure (since sometimes I fit them in the morning before breakfast and sometimes I don't fit them in the evening after dinner). But if the number on the scale is decreasing daily, maybe I am doing the right thing. And if it's not, maybe I should switch it up.

Either way, I'm sure I'd prefer to be measured by my weight on Mars . . .