The Biggest Loser started again last night.
I hate The Biggest Loser.
It might be my ex-wife’s fault. She watched it obsessively, and often urged me to try out for the show, which made me hate it more than I already did.
The real reason? I hate reality TV as a rule, but I especially hate reality TV when it’s being hurtful while masquerading as social good.
Remember The Swan? The show that took a bunch of ‘ugly’ girls, gave them makeovers and plastic surgery and then made them compete against each other in a beauty pageant? And claimed that this was about making these women feel better about themselves? Yay, empowerment!
Right?
It’s not empowering to tell someone they’re broken and then make a spectacle out of fixing them.
I know that I’m out of shape. I know that I need to lose weight. I have a hard time telling myself, “don’t.” I lived with someone who enabled my bad eating choices half of the time and made me feel like a horrible human being for carrying extra pounds around in the balance. I’m a pretty inveterate foodie.
The thing is, I think that most of that is pretty normal. There are matters of degree, sure, but I think that most people can nod their heads to some of that.
I would like to change. I don’t need to be fixed. Especially not in front of millions of viewers.
There is an argument that this isn’t exploitative because the participants are volunteers, and that is, frankly, a bullshit argument.
The problem is that it’s socially acceptable to hate/mock overweight people. It is the last normative bastion of prejudice. Accuse me of equivocation here, but I don’t think a show with a similar format to The Biggest Loser called The Straightest Guy would last for ninety bajillion seasons or rocket its behavioral coaches to quasi-celeb status.
Is there something to this? Or am I just being an angry contrarian?
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
There is something to this. It makes me really angry, too. Intervention threw me into an irrational rage when it was announced. It’s disgusting.
I hate most reality TV, too and have never seen The Biggest Loser. I can’t even get past the title, which already paints its contestants in a negative light. I could go on for ages on how much the media works to create a negative body image, gives unrealistic standards for what beauty is, etc. I think it’s something I always thought women endure a lot more than men, but I’m starting to realize it’s universal. It seems like the media is hell bent on making pretty much everyone feel crappy about themselves.
My mom, being the emotional & self-conscious roller coaster she is, was certain that being overweight was one of the reasons why when she interviewed for jobs, she didn’t get them. The unfortunate thing is, it almost certainly was a factor.
I think I totally drank the Biggest Loser cool aid, because I like it. I have to admit I do watch some reality TV, basically just to torture myself, but B.L. is a show that I truly enjoy. In the sea of exploitative and abusive shows, I think this is one of the less evil ones. I have actually met a few people who have felt “empowered” (call it what you want) to follow the constestants at home and have had significant weight loss. But I guess everyone takes out of it what they want.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s the Mother Theresa of reality TV. I wish I could make a better argument in favor of the show, but maybe there is none. Maybe I just like it.
But when you have truly awful shows like More to Love, I guess B.L. is not that bad in my book.
Alejandra, if the show is an impetus for someone to really make the effort to get into shape, then I’m glad it’s doing something good for someone on a personal level. It’s certainly not the most evil show (and I never watched More To Love, so I can’t comment on its horribleness), but one that I have a very strong reaction to thanks to personal circumstances, I guess. I wish it could motivate me the same way instead of aggravating me.
But from the negative connotations in the title to the implicit shaming in the weigh-ins/challenges, it just seems too circus-y for me to get behind.
I would rather watch Daisy of Love, because at least it isn’t pretending that it really cares about helping people.
I think I find the Swan *more* conceptually offensive, because at least with weight loss (a) there’s a health principle involved and (b) there’s an educational value in teaching people weight loss techniques that work. So — I can see a competitive show done in a more-or-less nonoffensive way (though it’s still problematic because the amount of weight a person actually *needs* to lose varies with a lot of factors — just b/c one person loses more weight than another doesn’t mean they’ve done more for their health, esp if it’s not a workable long-term weight loss plan). I don’t think there’s any way for ‘women who hate their bodies get medically unnecessary surgery and then compete to live up to fake/shallow beauty standards’ is defensible.
That said, it doesn’t sound like TBL does this in a useful way.
Also, I keep trying not to hate reality TV, conceptually, because it seems to have a lot of possibilities. I just hate most every example I’ve ever seen of it in execution. I still think “Baby Borrowers” was the worst.
ok, the swan was the worst reality tv show ever to disgrace our tvs. i still can’t get over it. that show in no way encouraged people to make healthy choices with their lives.
i disagree with you (though not vociferously) about the biggest loser although i think the title is lame. i know i would love to be able to get personalized diet/exercise help like that! that said, i would never go on tv to do it. i also think most people are cheering these contestants on, not mocking them (although i could be wrong and if so it just reinforces my misanthropic tendencies).
i want to comment on what a bitchy thing that was for your wife to suggest, but i don’t know her. hell, i don’t even really know you!
Ugh, I wanted More to Love to be the best show to ever hit the airwaves. I had my hopes really high up. But it wasn’t, it was awful, and I still watched it. I suck.
Yes. Everything you said. It’s honestly something I never feel comfortable talking about, so I’ve never expressed those opinions, but… yes.
My favorite part about the Swan was that once they finished making the women ‘better’, they told them they were no good all over again!