"The Student Body": Do Students’ BMI Tests Do More Harm Than Good?

When Bailey Webber interviewed people for her new documentary, The Student Body, she took a set of bathroom scales with her. And every person with whom she spoke, she asked, “Would you be willing to step on the scales so we can get your BMI?” To a person, they balked. Most ultimately refused, though some reluctantly agreed.A lot of kids in our schools don’t get the choice to decline. And then a letter arrives notifying them that they are too skinny or too fat.In the ground-breaking and excellently produced film she made with her dad, Bailey, a young journalist, tackles the heated topic of childhood obesity and misguided efforts to solve our national childhood obesity epidemic.And just what are those misguided efforts? Lawmakers in dozens of states have passed mandates requiring schools to perform body mass index (BMI) tests on students and then send letters stating their results. Coined the “Fat Letters” by students, these notifications go to kids whose bodies fall outside a narrowly acceptable range, essentially notifying children, even as young as kindergarten age, that they are abnormal. Sometimes the results are devastating.When a determined sixth grader in Ohio voiced her protest against the mandatory weigh-ins and the embarrassing letters, Bailey took up the girl's fight. Bailey's investigation is chronicled in The Student Body, the story of how she and a friend took on law-makers for their fat-shaming. But in it she also explores the broader complexities of childhood obesity.Hosted by The National Eating Disorders Association, the award-winning father/daughter team who made this film have been honored by the National Association of University Women. Michael Webber is a motion-picture producer and renowned documentary filmmaker whose film, The Elephant in the Living Room, I reviewed here in 2011.Although makers of The Student Body acknowledge that obesity is a real national crisis, the Webbers’ stance is that requiring kids to reveal their weight at school in addition to receiving impersonal notifications is cruel and bully-like behavior. Good intentions, perhaps, but horrible execution.Webber does interview those who support the BMI screenings/notifications. But the film is definitely weighted toward those who believe the notifications cause damage.The film has excellent production values, a bit of humor, and it'll inspire your faith in the next generation of journalists. Watch it with a young person and have a great discussion. Look for screenings near you this fall (and in video next year) and check out The Student Body web site. 

In the Footsteps of St. Paul with David Suchet

David Suchet, a British TV actor best known for his role asAgatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot, received a 1991 British AcademyTelevision Award (BAFTA) nomination.

            As an actorhe travels a lot, and one day he picked up a Bible in a hotel-room drawer. Heread the letter of St. Paul to the Romans, and in the interview below he talks about that experience,which led to a life-long interest in and respect for the apostle:

One result of reading Romans is that Suchet set out on a personal journey around the Mediterranean touncover the story of the man he has longed to play since that experience. David Suchet: In the Footsteps of St. Paul is the documentary he created in association with the BBC. The two-part series ran last Christmas and may run again at Easter. But it's also now available on video. Suchet and the BBC are now in production for a similarjourney with St. Peter.

In this 90-minute work, Suchet takes viewers along as he visits ancient and modernlocations; interviews Jewish, Roman Catholic, Islamic, and Orthodox experts; and deciphers evidence from the latestarchaeological research. The film contains beautiful scenery on the way to and in places relevant to Paul such as Tarsus, Antioch, Jerusalem, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, Thessaloniki, Caesarea, and Philippi.  

Mostly I loved this film. Really loved it. Suchet's enthusiasm for his subject made the content come alive. And his use of Paul's own words at appropriate times in the contexts of where they would have been heard added clarity to their meanings. Additionally, the scenery in the places where Paul walked, sailed, and lived is beautiful throughout, making this a visual feast. That feast can help readers of the New Testament easily envision the world Paul inhabited. 

But while I heartily recommend this work, I must give some qualifications. Being an actor, at times Suchet imagines what drove Paul's actions. His conversion, for example, is treated as a result of inner turmoil and an identity crisis rather than the biblical text's depiction of it as a supernatural encounter with the living God that made him do a 180.

 Sometimes Suchet refers to finding out what really happened, leaving the viewer wondering if the text's explanation is untrue. And the result is that in his passion to reach the Gentiles, Paul comes off as a bit of a maverick driven by a newfangled religious idea rather than being motivated by the love of Christ. I understand that sometimes we have to fill in the blanks when we have incomplete information about people we're profiling, but Paul gave us insight into his own motivations when he wrote "the love of Christ constrains me" (2 Cor. 5:14).

In one scene, Suchet stands on the steps of the Ephesus library, which was completed in AD 135. The expert with him says they know a synagogue existed in Ephesus in Paul's day because a menorah appears on the stone steps to this library. But Paul was in Ephesus long before the middle of the second century, when those steps were hewn. Perhaps a synagogue did exist there in Paul's day, but those steps aren't the evidence. Suchet also refers to the Ephesian Artemis as a fertility goddess, and anyone familiar with my dissertation knows that a conflation of Artemis with the local Ephesians' goddess might have meant she was associated with fertility in earlier centuries, but not by the time Paul was there.

Suchet concludes that Paul saw life in black and white. Yet Paul became "all things to all people" rather than being rigid. John the Baptist saw things in black and white. But Paul ate meat sacrificed to idols, insisting that in the gray areas, believers should "let each person be convinced in his own mind."

Those studying the role of women in NT times will be interested in knowing that the experts Suchet asks about Paul's take see the apostle as pro-women and somewhat of a radical in his times on that topic. Suchet himself says this is a real shift in perspective for him. 

The film ends with a look at how tradition says Paul died (beheading, the merciful option, because he was a Roman citizen) and where he is believed to have been buried. Following an intriguing look at the evidence about Paul's last days, Suchet shifts from guide to actor. He closes with a dramatic reading of some of Paul's words about the resurrection. In the context of having just walked with Paul for some of the ten thousand miles he traversed in the ancient world, the words of Scripture in closing come off as quite moving.

I recommend viewing/purchasing this video and reading Walter Wangerin's novel, Paul, as a companion guide. The DVD comes with a small helpful booklet, but strangely it calls into question the Pauline authorship of the Book of Ephesians while not raising such a question with the pastoral epistles, which for many is more hotly debated. A bio of the actor is included as an "extra" in the video.