Last week, Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP) Dr Benedict Tan, spoke in Parliament regarding the low sports participation in Singapore. In his speech, he went on to highlight many reasons why students do not participate in sports in school.

Not so long ago, I used to be one of them. My reason? I was fat. That's me on the left.

When I was 16,  I tipped the scales at 100kg and was considered to be severely overweight (euphemism used in our report books for extremely fat). And it was not easy for heavier kids like me to participate in sports because of the following three reasons - on top of it being more physically tiring, of course.

1. Fat-shaming jokes

To me, the biggest deterrence for heavier kids is that we are always the butt of some really cruel jokes.

Growing up in an Asian society, we are taught the importance of saving "face". And there is nothing more embarrassing for us than PE classes because of all the fat-shaming jokes.

2.4 km run? "Wei Hao, I think it'd be faster if you rolled." Basketball? "Cher, no ball ah? Use Wei Hao lah!" And the classic chorus of "Earthquake!" whenever I jumped. Despite how soul sapping it was, I forced myself to join in the giggling because I did not want to look like a bad sport.

The humiliation was why many of us fat kids slowly sidelined ourselves during PE because the more we moved, the more ammunition we would be providing for others to use against us.

To plunge the knife deeper, I'd blame it on my laziness for sitting out instead, even though I really wanted to fit in.

2. Protective parents as enablers

To save themselves from the embarassment, many of these kids will try and skip PE. Often, parents are more than willing to let them and even sometimes help the children with it.

Why? Dr Tan summed it up the perfectly:

Singaporeans are pragmatic – we are goal oriented and we monitor closely our key performance indicators (KPIs). We pay close attention to what is tangible and measurable (i.e. medals and grades).

Parents place very little emphasis on PE as compared to other subjects as there are no examinations. True story.

For instance, when I was in polytechnic, I had a sports and wellness module. Admittedly, I skipped a couple of lessons and my parents said nothing about it when I explained to them that all I had to do to pass was to meet the minimum attendance requirement.

Basically, as long as my results meet their expectations, my parents see no need in pushing me to become active and participate in sports as it was something I disliked (see point 1).

Save kids from the verbal torture with no damage done? We've got a deal.

3. No medal no talk.

Dr Tan asked a very poignant question:

Are our schools too focused on winning medals, at the expense of sports participation?

He went on to talk about how school teams face the threat of being scrapped if they do not achieve a podium finish.

I experienced this first-hand when I joined a sports Co-Curricular Activity (CCA) in poly because I wanted to lose weight. During our first day, we were split into two groups: those who could play and those who could not and I belonged to the latter. Subsequent trainings, my group and I were left to our own devices as most resources (e.g. trainers) were dedicated to the former.

Nobody cared when we didn't improve. Nobody cared when we started to slack off. And certainly nobody cared when we slowly stopped coming for trainings.

This is especially prevalent in schools with award-winning sports CCAs. If you do not have a background in that sports, chances are you will not even be considered for a trial.

With schools being so focused on achieving excellence in sports, chubbier students like me who often have no aptitude or background in them but want to give it a shot are naturally neglected.

A plea to everyone reading this: next time you see someone chubby, what you can do is to encourage and help them along; let them too learn the joy of playing sports.

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