It is well-known that we have a taste for the peculiar. Children clamour over the Guinness Book of World Records; the queues outside Ripley’s Believe It Or Not snake down Piccadilly Circus and our Facebook newsfeeds teem with YouTube videos of the bizarre. Still, we tell ourselves that this is a tame enjoyment of the strange, not the cruel sniggering at, for example, a carnival freak show. And yet television programmes which centre on fat people seem to be the twenty-first century incarnation of such freak shows, appealing to our lustful schadenfreude and exploiting physical form in the name of entertainment.
Fat Families, Secret Eaters, Obese: A Year to Save My Life: a plethora of programmes to remind armchair athletes that a penchant for Doritos is a mere peccadillo compared to the grotesque habits of these others, who unwittingly eat themselves into oblivion. Overweight people in these programmes are consistently portrayed as lazy, stupid and gluttonous, and the vilification that ensues is permitted under the guise of health awareness. The assumption that being heavy correlates with being unhealthy goes unquestioned. Private medical consultations are nationally broadcast with the weak justification that this infantilisation is benevolent in aim.
Some programmes emphasise the importance of nutrition, but patronising reminders that celery sticks are healthier than crisps do little to educate about dietetics, or look into why people have chosen to ignore these well-known guidelines. If any psychological issues are raised, they are dismissed with a cursory reference to ‘comfort eating’. Struggles to adhere to prescribed diets are treated with condescension, or perhaps a voyeuristic trip to the home of someone entirely incapacitated by their weight. The curtain is lifted on the seriously dysfunctional and then dropped again swiftly. It’s enough to know that they’re out there.
Another remedial option is exercise, a commendable pursuit to ameliorate physical and mental wellbeing. Unsurprisingly, however, producers know that 40 minutes of steady jogging round the park would make tedious television. A competitive element is introduced: let’s have the fatties put through their fatty paces and whichever of their fatty faces hasn’t shifted the pounds will be sent home. I watched a series of The Biggest Loser USA. Its Willy-Wonka-meets-PE-teacher approach of discarding the failing contestants until the laurel wreath can be presented to the champion is pretty addictive. At moments the programme is moving, but the humiliation endemic in it is distasteful and nasty. Watching adults crumple into self-abasement at public weigh-ins is uncomfortable viewing. We should flinch, wince and cringe, but not at the contestants.
Yet, perhaps the most insidious example of this genre is the programme which professes to seek balance: Supersize versus Superskinny. For the uninitiated, an obese person and a severely underweight one are invited to swap eating habits to encourage food-related anxieties to surface. The producers supplement this ‘journey’ by following a group of recovering anorexia patients as they attempt everyday challenges like supermarket shopping and choosing food at a buffet. While engagement with these issues is important, the way that progress is expected from the patients each week fails to appreciate the non-linear nature of eating disorder recovery, which can be affected by internal factors and other circumstances. Relapses form a part of this ebb-and-flow recovery process, and the pressure to appear to be snacking for victory in the weekly segment must be agonising.
NHS research in 2007 suggested that 6.4% of the UK adult population display signs of eating disorders. The media focus on size must be considered, and Supersize versus Superskinny has been accused of broadcasting ‘thinspirational’ content. The repeated images of underweight people, with reference to precise measurements, have made it onto many ‘pro-ana’ websites, offering unhealthy paradigms for weight-loss. Although the programme stresses the dangers of extreme eating habits, Channel 4 declares its target audience age to be 16-34, which includes the age bracket most vulnerable to eating disorders: 16-19.
Nevertheless, Supersize versus Superskinny remains a symptom of a wider problem. The elusive, perfect, ‘real woman’ shape means that women are constantly assessing themselves to ensure they have lost weight in ‘the right places’. The dream of being ‘real’ is an ideal that seems kinder than that of the hollow-cheeked catwalk model. But it’s still not enough. When the capricious eye of the media decides that a celebrity is ‘embracing her curves’ as opposed to ‘piling on the pounds’, the assumption that her womanhood is in her dress size is insulting. Fat is a feminist issue, yes, but imagine if it weren’t. We will only have truly abandoned the freak show mentality when we consider all body shapes valid and cease to engage with the ‘fat, thin and normal’ cataloguing we see all around us.
