Word: mattering
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...teachers, mentors and public role models are fighting it as they help kids navigate a culture that fosters fat but idealizes thin and as they teach them that what truly counts is getting themselves as fit as their body type and genes allow - and then loving that body no matter what...
...designer was to be a sort of mechanic, running chunky, graceless type across posters of model peasants or valiant soldiers. In Hong Kong and Taiwan, designers spent much of the 20th century toiling in the service of another omnipotent master - the export market, which required packaging and other printed matter produced strictly to Western specifications and sensibilities. Questions of form, style and color were not settled upon locally, but in British or American head offices...
...esteem takes a bigger hit in black kids than in white kids; another sees the problem as being worse for Hispanic children. One study finds significantly higher rates of depression in overweight girls; another finds overweight boys taking a huge self-esteem hit when teased by their peers. No matter who feels the most pain, however, they're all getting hurt...
...remote village in eastern China's Shandong province, took detailed measurements of her shoulder width, thigh length and waist circumference--and announced she would have the honor of serving her motherland as a weight lifter. The then 14-year-old daughter of vegetable farmers had little choice in the matter. She had been chosen to be a cog in China's vast sports machine, a multibillion-dollar apparatus designed with one primary goal in mind: churning out Olympic gold medalists...
...approved policy called "Winning pride at the Olympics." The program built on China's long-standing "Gold-medal strategy" of targeting sports that offer the most Olympic golds because of different weight classes or race lengths. (Fencing, for instance, holds 10 golds, while canoeing/kayaking has 16.) It didn't matter that most Chinese knew nothing of these sports. The point was to accumulate gold medals. Women's sports, which tend to receive less funding in the West, received a cash infusion. Around the same time, the nation's athletics czars started the "119 project," which aimed for success...