Did you hear about the latest misuse of BMI? Air India decided to ground 130 flight attendants for being “too fat to fly.” According to this article, 600 crew members were given notice 6 months ago that they were on probation and had to lower their BMIs to fall into the range of 18-22 for the women, 18-25 for the men.
Here’s the official Air India version:
“About 130 of them failed the reassessment,” an Air India official told The Telegraph in Calcutta. “We are now declaring them permanently unfit for their job as flight attendants.”
“People who are fitter can respond quicker and more efficiently in case of any untoward situation.”
I hate to get all judgey, but that’s just plain wrong in so many ways. First of all, BMI is not a good indicator of fitness. See Sam’s post “Fit, Fat, and What’s Wrong with BMI” where she says:
Lots of thin people are falsely reassured by their BMI, while lots of people with BMIs in the overweight/obese categories might be worrying with no good reason. Fit and fat are linked but not in the ways most people think. I worry that lots of fat people don’t exercise because they worry what people will think especially if you exercise and don’t get any smaller. Yet fat and fit people can be very healthy.
Not only that, BMI was never even meant to be a measure for individuals. It was meant to offer a way of thinking about populations. According to “Top 10 Reasons Why the BMI Is Bogus”:
The BMI was introduced in the early 19th century by a Belgian named Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. He was a mathematician, not a physician. He produced the formula to give a quick and easy way to measure the degree of obesity of the general population to assist the government in allocating resources. In other words, it is a 200-year-old hack.
If you question whether someone physically fit could have a BMI measure that’s outside of the normal range, think about this, from Sam’s post:
Marc Perry notes in Get Lean that according to BMI most American football players count as obese. So too do many Olympic athletes. There is list here of all of the Gold medal athletes from the 2004 Olympics in Athens who count as overweight or obese according to BMI.
Here are a bunch of other reasons that BMI is a bad way to measure fitness and even fatness.
Not only that, even if it were a way of thinking about individual health and fitness, the fact is, their range is rather on the low side anyway. The Huffington Post’s report on this story points out:
In the U.S., the National Institutes of Health considers individuals with a BMI under 18.5 to be underweight. People with BMIs of 18.5-24.9 re considered to be of normal weight. Those who have BMIs between 25 and 29.9 are overweight, while a BMI of 30 or greater puts people into the obese category.
Having established that BMI is not a good indicator of an individuals fatness, let alone fitness, what can we conclude about Air India’s decision? It’s fair to say that it’s just downright discriminatory and, since it’s had a disproportionate impact on women, it’s sexist. Here’s what one aviation industry consultant had to say:
“This move to impose a certain BMI, ignoring experience and other performance parameters, is immature, misogynistic and shockingly sexist,” said Mark Martin, an aviation industry consultant, in an interview with The Telegraph. “We seem to have lost the plot on what is needed from flight attendants.”
I myself have felt heartened lately while flying (not in general, just on this specific point) because the North American carriers that I tend to frequent are employing people with a range of body types and sizes. That’s a big difference from years ago when all flight attendants were tall and slim. I like the change.
Air India needs to get with the times. It’s just not true that BMI is a good indicator of anything useful, and it’s not okay to fire people because of their weight or size.
But most people disagree with me. When I did the Telegraph‘s on-line vote on the question “should flight attendants be judged by their BMIs?” and voted “no” only 29% agreed with me. 71% thought it was quite alright. I found that astonishing. What do you think?
