threevue

I’m a little mad at Wii Fit right now, mostly because I can’t find a copy. But as I was looking for a good picture of the game for this post, I realized that there is some serious racial profiling going on in the Wii Fit world.

To cover my butt, I first went to the CDC for statistics concerning race and being overweight, and gleaned the following information, taken from 2001-2004:

White only, male: 71.1%
White only, female: 57.1%
Black or African American only, male: 66.8%
Black or African American only, female: 79.5%
Mexican male: 75.8%
Mexican female: 73.2%

First and foremost, every picture ad is portrayed overwhelmingly by white females, who have the lowest overweight rate. The official Wii Fit homepage shows racial profiles contradictory to the statistics above, too: three-quarters of the people on their front page fill up the bottom two overweight rates.

I found only one video on YouTube (with a funny voiceover to boot) that portrayed an African-American female, and she was given hula-hoop and dancing duties. Not cool. It’s okay though, because they left the yoga segment to…an Asian-American! How very stereotypical of Mr. Nintendo!

I haven’t seen one person of Hispanic origin in any promotion or advertisement. And I don’t know why Asian-Americans weren’t included in the CDC survey, so maybe they’re racist, too.

I assume that these racial profiles are attached to the game because they are the ones most likely to be interested in and buy the game, but I still don’t like it. If Nintendo was actually concerned about America losing weight, and not just making money, they would target those that are most at risk, even if it would mean less profit.