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Gwendolyn Williams was deemed overweight by a flawed Department of Education ratings system. Photo: Stephen Yang
This preteen girl is “obese” no more.
After the city’s Department of Education inexplicably branded pencil-thin Gwendolyn Williams as “overweight” on its Body Mass Index last year, the school system admitted the ratings are deeply flawed and vowed to no longer use the fat-shaming term.
“I feel happy that I changed how they feel,” said the now-10-year-old Staten Island girl.
Gwendolyn wound up on The Post front page in May 2014, when she was listed as fat on her DOE-issued “Fitnessgram” — despite being 4-foot-1 and weighing just 66 pounds at the time.
“The [Post] article definitely made a difference,” explained her mother, Laura. “It’s a direct change that you can see.”
The annual fitness reports, meant to evaluate students’ health, were revised with more sensitive words that won’t diminish a child’s self-esteem.
Categories of “underweight,” “health weight,” “overweight” and “obese” were swapped out for the groupings of “very low,” “healthy fitness zone,” and two different categories of “needs improvement.”
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“We’re happy,” said Laura Williams. “At least the kids are not hearing the word ‘obese’ or ‘overweight.’ It’s psychologically a little better, because I think it shows them this is something you can fix.”
“We’re happy,” said Laura Williams. “At least the kids are not hearing the word ‘obese’ or ‘overweight.’ It’s psychologically a little better, because I think it shows them this is something you can fix.”
The Post exclusively reported last year that Gwendolyn, now a fourth-grader, had been labeled “overweight” in her Fitnessgram after her BMI was said to be 19, placing her in the 88th percentile.
“It was really ridiculous,” Gwendolyn said. “In general, they should have never created [the program].”
Laura Williams recalled that after The Post’s article made waves, the DOE said it would adjust how it distributes the Fitnessgrams, which were originally sealed with only a small, easily replaced round sticker, allowing for easy peeking.
“Now they have it where they write ‘confidential’ at the top,” she said, adding that the envelopes were also taped shut.
School officials at PS 29 on Staten Island released the revised handouts Friday. But Gwendolyn didn’t get one — due to the fact that her mother wants to keep her daughter as far away from the school’s fitness program as possible.
“We opted out, on principle at this point,” Laura Williams said. “It’s like a small form of protest.”
BMI is a unit of measurement calculated by dividing a person’s weight by their height squared.
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