Pages

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

This Little Piggy...

Have you noticed the trend these days to seize upon the January price markdowns to acquire those gifts that somehow failed to show up under the tree on Christmas morning? I know I've contemplated it every now and then... Kids, too, aren't immune to this desire—often lobbying for that one little thing that they didn't receive, even if they got most all they'd wished for.



This year that item was Wii Fit, which didn't Fit into our holiday budget. All in my family got plenty of lovely gifts, though, so Wii Fit would have to wait for the coffers to be replenished.

At least that's what I thought until, on the day after Christmas, we visited my brother-in-law's house and my teens became captivated by their game. Normally, kids being fixated on a video game is reason enough not to purchase it. Who wants their children to be perpetually tuned out, clamoring for the controllers, spending all waking hours in pursuit of mindless video game obsession? But Wii Fit actually has a purpose: to eliminate the sedentary nature of gaming, at least to some degree.

And this piqued my interest: if it could motivate kids to work out, might it also impel slacker middle-aged moms bored with their normal exercise routine to get off their butts and exercise more? So I struck a deal with my kids: since everyone wanted it so badly, we'd split the cost and get one as a post-holiday motivator. Which seemed like a great idea, until my sister-in-law Martha exposed the ugly truth about the game: the game platform—the Wii balance board—is actually a scale. As in: the thing that I've been hiding in my closet for years with the notion that out of sight is out of mind and thus can't be true. Denial thy name is Jenny.

Martha went on to tell me that not only does the balance board accurately and undeniably determine your weight (probably more so than the precise scales they use to glean poundage of each item loaded onto the Space Shuttle), but the higher your BMI (body mass index), the fatter you Wii "Mii" icon gets. Seriously. So to add insult to injury, you have a Tubby Tessa avatar staring back at you from the television screen. Can we get more humiliated? It's like a chase-me-beat-me workout. Or maybe that hairbrush spanking for getting a D in handwriting in second grade (not that that ever happened, mind you). To me, exercise really should not be mortifying, it should be gratifying. And a public flogging was not what I signed up for.



So my grand plans to get on board the Wii Fit train were immediately keboshed. Yet I'd already committed to spending my own cash to help buy the damned thing, which has led to all sorts of scheming on my part to circumvent this unpleasant, uh, shall we say, side effect of the game.

Fortunately necessity is still the mother of invention, especially when it comes to truths about which we choose to remain blissfully ignorant (despite those rotten harbingers of reality that are unavoidable, such as tight jeans). And I've got a plan: I'm going to make one of my kids (or perhaps one of my dogs) mount the board in my stead each time I use the game in order to get set up with the dreaded "body test," and then I will simply ignore the taunting evidence: Wii Fit telling me I've got the fitness stamina of a great-grandmother, for instance. I'll just do my thing, flap my arms, hula my hips, or whatever other silly games they have that will make me actually move, and not worry about the true number of calories burned or exact fitness level.

I felt a reprieve of guilt when I saw on Twitter a number of other women whose children had gotten Wii Fit for Christmas also trying to figure out how to outwit the scale dilemma. Clearly when evolving Wii Fit Plus into Wii Fit Plus Plus, the Nintendo engineers should consider the vanity of women world-wide and provide a way to turn off the scale temporarily, or at least, as we all do with the elliptical machine at the gym, simply lie and enter in 120 pounds when asked our weight.

Does this diminish the point to the game? Well, sort of. But can it enable me to remain cloaked in ignorance and retain some faux dignity where I so choose? You bet.

Wii Fit? No way! Wii Fat is more like it, at least if the public weigh-in is the only "weigh" to go. And in that case, this little piggy might just go wii wii wii all the way back to the gym, where I can easily lie about my weight when the exercise equipment demands an answer.

9 comments:

Pat Cochran said...

I laughed my "weigh" through your
post, does that count as exercise?
Daughter and family have a Wii and
I actually gave SIL the balance
board contraption for Christmas!
No way will I find my "weigh" onto
the board, I can guarantee that!
I am looking for an easy exercise
program to help maintain my weight
loss. But I don't think Wii is my
"weigh"!!

Pat Cochran

Rebekah E. said...

Thanks for the great post.

Jenny Gardiner said...

Oh Pat, that is definitely your workout for the day!
Thanks Rebekah!

Michele L. said...

I was at our neighbor's house and played bowling with the kids on their WII system. Great fun! It took me a while to get the hang of letting go of the ball in time. Ha,ha!

I would love to try the other WII fitness games. They sound like so much fun, even the fitness ones!

Great having you here Jenny! You shook things up a bit! -grin-

Jenny Gardiner said...

thanks Michele!

Suzanne Macpherson said...

OY they really need to fix that!
Nice one Jenny! Let's write to Wii and get them to upgrade! oh wait that'll just cost us more. Obviously done by MEN!!

Jenny Gardiner said...

omg that is SO totally invented by men. No woman in her right mind would ever do such a thing!

Linda Henderson said...

My daughter and son-in-law bought this for his daughter for Christmas. She is very thin and I can't figure out why she wanted it in the first place. She is 13 and way too concerned about body image.

runner10 said...

I'm with you!!