Smart, Young, and Too Thin?
Chan felt pressured by Yale to eat large amounts of food due to school officials believing she had an eating disorder.
In today’s world where women are pressured to fit into a skinny and “beautiful” mold, Yale University student, Frances Chan, was told the exact opposite. Chan was told she was “too skinny.”
Chan felt pressured by Yale to eat large amounts of food due to school officials believing she had an eating disorder. She was followed up with mandatory weight check-ins, and if she did not gain weight the school officials threatened to put her on medical leave.
At age 20, Chan stands at a bold five-foot-two with a weight of 92 pounds according to ABC News. Naturally small, she had a low BMI, but healthy for her stature. Chan says she is perfectly healthy.
But after Yale deemed her not as healthy, Chan took on the challenge of gaining the two required pounds she needed to be exempt from medical leave. She started by stuffing herself with carbs and junk food, such as three to four scoops of ice cream two times a day with snacks at night. Doing this daily, Chan gained the two pounds needed, but to Yale this was not enough.
It was then when Chan didn’t want to follow their rules anymore.
Chan commented that Yale University cares about their students for voicing their concern on eating disorders, but there was a line they crossed for someone who can’t help her height and weight. Apparently, this was also not the first time Yale had policed someone’s body, and it lead to similar cases of trauma according to the Huffington Post.
“They won’t look past the number on the scale, to see the person right in front of them,” Chan wrote in her own article about the ordeal.
In a world where there are impossible standards of beauty in the media, this still crosses a line even though she was told the opposite of what the media tells us all. It’s great that a university is addressing an issue that affects students across campuses, that eating disorders are a prevalent issue. The problem is that Chan is documented as being healthy for her stature, yet someone is telling her it is still not good enough.
People are constantly being told that they’re “too fat,” “too skinny,” and many more “too whatevers.” It not only affects people physically, such as eating disorders, but also mentally. In our minds, we start to nitpick at every word someone says, and we can begin to hate ourselves. Even if you are “too skinny” in Chan’s case, or “too fat,” “too tall,” “too short,” or have some “weird flaw,” you’re still beautiful and you’re still a person with capability .
