A Bit Fit
It is now official that American TV and Film have run out of stories to tell. It seems that there were only a finite number and having run out of them, the only thing to do is ‘reboot’ old ones. So just as we have had ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ rebooted in the cinema, we are now going to have a reboot of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘Charmed’ on TV.
I liked ‘Charmed’. In fact, I would say that it was a stable part of my life between about 1998 and 2006 and one year I even had a Charmed calendar. If you never saw what must now be called ‘the original series’, it featured three sisters who discover that they are powerful witches after the death of their grandmother (their father having left many years previously and their mother having drowned in mysterious circumstances). Following this revelation they try to live normal lives while also being targeted by supernatural forces and having to save ‘innocents’.
Okay, it was never quite so poltically-motivated as Buffy and it never had the tongue-in-cheek fun of Xena, but as a female-driven show it had its moments. The sisters deal with some quite epic issues about death, love, bereavement and whether you are dating a demon (done far better than the interminable Angel-Buffy romance in Buffy the Vampire Slayer). It could also be immensely dark – there were episodes where it was established that when people die, they die. When I think that Buffy would have gone for a dramatic plot twist to save a beloved character, Charmed killed people off and told the audience that they needed to learn to accept it.
The new cast of Charmed has been revealed and the great news is that it has been ‘updated’ and yes, now the sisters will be fighting against modern problems such as ... demons who hack their fitbit. I am not saying the original Charmed was a feminist classic, but you need to weep at how little progress has been made for female characters on television sometimes. Nevertheless, this does bring us to the subject of this blog – the fitbit (hacked by a demon or not).
If you have not come across the fitbit, then there is an internet sketch which sums it up perfectly. Five women are having their lunch outside an office. One announces that she needs to go for a walk as her fitbit is telling her that she has not done enough steps that day and she invites the others along. The second woman says that her fitbit is telling her that she has to rest because she has done enough exercise for the day. The third woman claims to have a ‘fatbit’ which is telling her to eat more (which she is doing). The fourth claims that her ‘f***bit’ is telling her to go and meet her boyfriend because she has not had enough sex that day. They stare at the fifth woman, who is happily eating her lunch and enjoying the break from the office. She explains, ‘Oh, I don’t have a fitbit, I am just happy and do what I enjoy’. The other women conclude that she is weird.
I will admit that when I first heard about the attempt to make people walk ’10,000 steps’ per day, I did think of the campaign to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables per day. That is based on no scientific recommendation. Well, it is obviously good to eat more fruit and vegetables, but the number five was used simply because it was better than nothing and it would seem achievable. For lovers of unininted consequences, it has led to a major increase in fruit consumption with the problem that fruit can be quite acidic. Where have all those toothpaste adverts that say ‘dentists are increasing worried about acid erosion’ come from? Blame getting your five a day, but do not expect anyone to admit it.
You could then say that people wearing a device on their wrist that tells them how many steps they have taken is a good thing. Movement is clearly beneficial compared to not moving and if people are encouraged to do a certain amount of exercise per day then that must be a good thing. It would seem to be no coincidence that the internet sketch features women rather than men, but I have met men who use fitbits and agonise over their lack of steps. However, if I meet someone walking around in a circle and explaining that it is to get some more steps in, then that is likely to be a woman.
I could make the same criticism as with the ‘five a day’ message. Just as people should be eating healthy, balanced diets then so they should be thinking about the kind of exercise they do, how vigorous it is and how it keeps them healthy. However, like with the five a day, I will accept that it is better to do something than nothing when it comes to public health messages. Except of course, the fitbit takes things further. The fitbit is about people taking on their own healthcare regime and I think that that is an interesting change.
There was a time when you could go to your doctor and be given an exercise regime to keep fit. Wealthier people could buy the services of a personal trainer to shout at them in the gym if that was what they enjoyed (the person paying for it that is, I have always assumed that to be a personal trainer you need to enjoy shouting at people). You might have an idea of keeping active each day or taking up a sport once a week, but the fitbit is something that sits on your wrist and is a constant reminder of how you are doing. More than that, it tracks your general health statistics. No more putting your finger to your jugular vein, your fitbit will tell you your heartrate for you.
I suppose that this move to self-monitoring fitness is to be applauded in the sense that it involves a certain degree of empowerment. You are now in control of monitoring your own health. I am not sure what the demons in the new version of Charmed are going to be doing, but I do look forward to the first time someone tries to excuse a crime on the basis of ‘my fitbit told me to do it’ (I think that I might steal a car on the basis that I had already exceeded my 10,000 steps so I needed to drive home).
Personally, I doubt that I would ever have one. I know how to check my heart rate and I know how much exercise I have done in one day. I also dislike the idea of having to wear something around my wrist all day. A fitbit monitors how much you sleep too, but I know this as well. If subtracting the time I wake up from the time I go to sleep does not work, I can also tell from how tired I am whether I have slept enough hours or not. This strikes me as the odd contrast at the heart of the fitbit’s rise – on the one hand it is telling you not to trust your own senses or perhaps even traditional medical advice, but it is also telling you to trust in technology to provide you with all the knowledge you need.
Maybe though this is what medical advances should be about. There are no end of government ‘efficiency drives’ where the NHS is supposed to be able to use technology as a substitute for human interaction. This will never work, partly as it misunderstands the skill of the doctor in the minutiae of diagnosis but also partly because computer systems are simple things compared to human beings – MAD magazine once satirised this beautifully as a man with a knife in his back repeatedly tries to press a touchscreen option to describe the kind of pain he is feeling. However, the unspoken secret to improving healthcare in the UK is getting people to live healthier lifestyle. Sorry smokers, you need to give up. Sorry drinkers, you need to cut down ... and so on. Do not hold your breath for any politician choosing to admit this, mind you.
It is at this point that I think that the fitbit is on to something. Maybe if traditional medical advice to move more, eat less and stay healthy is being ignored, then maybe people will trust their fitbit instead. Can you imagine a world where the fitbit tracks the alcohol in your bloodstream and you remember that you should have set it for the ‘tedious wedding exception’? Maybe fitbit will stop you at eleven o’clock to ask you why you are snacking again and, no, you tried pressing ‘office leaving do’ the last three days. Perhaps that internet sketch is actually predicting the future where there are four woman whose activities are regulated by their fitbits ... except that that is starting to sound creepy.
When I was a child, teachers would never accept the excuse that someone told you to do something naughty and would ask, ‘if they told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?’ (sadly it is only when you an adult that you work out that this is a stupid question, which should be answered with ‘it depends on the circumstances’). I wonder if teachers will soon have to demand, ‘and if your fitbit told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?’. The correct answer is, of course, ‘if it helps achieve my 10,000 steps then yes, of course’.