As I’ve mentioned before, one of my favorite things about this series is when friends and family send me links they think would make good Fat Tuesday fodder. Today’s link comes from my good friend Esther (thanks, Esther!).
Darryl Roberts is the film maker behind America the Beautiful – a look at how the beauty industry targets women and skews our idea of what is truly beautiful. In his latest film – a follow up to the first – he targets our correlation between weight and height. Spurred by a doctors visit in which his body-mass index (“BMI”) caused him to be classified as obese, Mr Roberts unravels the folly of the BMI system:
“So according to this [BMI-calculating] website, the BMI of Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Mel Gibson, The Rock, Christian Bale, LeBron James — all these celebrities — make them either overweight or obese.”
Mr Roberts may not be the first person to bring to our attention that BMI is not an accurate measure of health, but the interview is replete with sound bites I can truly get behind:
“So what we may have as a problem in this country is a health problem … And what we also show in the film is that health problems come to people with or without weight. So the film is making the point that we should be focusing on the health of people and not their weight.”
Yes and yes. Health and weight – while related – are not perfect indicators of one another. I’m sure we all have that friend with the super-fast metabolism who can eat whatever and rock a bikini five minutes later. Is she healthier? Maybe. Maybe not. As the photo project I posted last week shows, bodies are different.
I believe we’ve discussed this here, even. It’s so easy to become obsessed with numbers – especially those on the scale. It’s far better for body and spirit to obsess over health instead. For me, this will require a shift in focus from what I weigh to how I feel. Easier said than done, yes, but this film will hopefully help push us in that direction.
Screenings in Chicago start on Friday, December 2, and run for a week. I guarantee I’ll be attending a show – perhaps even opening night as Mr Roberts will be in attendance for a Q&A session. Let me know if you are local and interested in a field trip!