By Kimberly Spykerman
News Reporter
kimspyke@sph.com.sg

 

JUST days ago as I was surfing the net, the online newsweek archives threw up an interesting find.

It was reported that barely two months ago, more pro-anorexia groups began apearing on public platforms, forming communities on Facebook and Myspace for ‘thinspiration’.

Blogs have also been set up where members share tips and track their progress toward their common goal of radical weight loss.

I was shocked by what I read and went straight to Google to suss out these sites.

It was horrifying.

One blog had a food log of one anorexia sufferer. In a week, she had barely consumed 500 calories. Most of the time she was on a fast. What was worse was that she received comments encouraging her for her ‘progress’.

Girls today are already being inundated by images saying that thin is beautiful.

That said, I believe that it’s absolutely necessary that our youth learn the importance of cultivating a healthy self-image.

Cue the Holistic Health Framework (HHF) , formerly known as the TAF Club.

While TAF was actually an acronym for Trim and Fit, a few of us used to joke that TAF Club was just Fat club spelled backwards.

But I guess it wasn’t that much of a laughing matter.

I was a member of TAF club back in secondary school and junior college.

We would have to spend three recess breaks a week doing laps around the school, while our classmates got to have their lunch.

We were also separated from the rest of our class during PE lessons for more intensive sessions.

I remember a teacher coming into class with a tray of home-made pasta carbonara and saying: "Ok everybody but the TAF club girls can have some of this."

It’s a funny thing. While I acknowledge that the TAF club was implemented with the best of intentions, somehow I felt the message came up a little short.

TAF club was meant to help kids lose weight by becoming more active but I felt that using the Body Mass Index (BMI) to determine which kids should be in the programme might not be the most accurate means of doing so.

I remember quite a number of my fellow TAF Club members were active members of school sports clubs, many of which required them to do some form of weight training to build muscle, which could explain why they were over their healthy BMI range.

I believe I would not be far wrong to say that some began questioning their body image, even though it was clear that they were fighting fit.

They also began to feel quite demoralised, which in itself reduced the effects of the training.

I’m just glad that the renaming of the TAF Club helps ease the stigma by centring the focus on the individual’s physical, mental and social health, rather than purely on weight loss.

In today’s image-conscious society, the last thing our youth need is to feel that they are less of an individual just because they don’t fit into size 0 jeans.