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WEIGHT WATCHING: TELEVISION, FATNESS, AND THE OBESITY EPIDEMIC

by

Melissa Mae Zimdars

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy

degree in Communication Studies in the Graduate College of

The University of Iowa

May 2015

Thesis Supervisor: Professor Timothy Havens

Copyright by

MELISSA MAE ZIMDARS

2015

All Rights Reserved

Graduate College The University of Iowa

Iowa City, Iowa

CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL

____________________________

PH.D. THESIS

_________________

This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of

Melissa Mae Zimdars

has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Communication Studies at the May 2015 graduation. Thesis Committee: ____________________________________________ Timothy Havens, Thesis Supervisor ____________________________________________ Rita Zajacz ____________________________________________ Elana Levine ____________________________________________ M. Gigi Durham ____________________________________________ Joy Hayes

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I could not have finished this without the support of my parents, Tom and Karla

Zimdars, my brothers, John and Zach Zimdars; and my good friend, Jenna Marchant.

I also feel so grateful for my Communication Studies colleagues-for-life, who put

up with me being “two-points Mish,” humbled me with their intelligence, and made me

laugh and smile during my lowest points. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Adam Rugg

(Ruggles), Michaela Frischherz, Lindsey Thomas, Lauren-Ashley Buchanan, Josh

Pederson, Sarah Nebel Pederson, Ben Morton, Ben Burroughs, Brook Irving, Rebecca

Robinson Chavez, and my other BCSB 122 officemates.

Numerous scholars have inspired, shaped, challenged, and encouraged me while

working on this project, especially Timothy Havens, Rita Zajacz, Elana Levine, M. Gigi

Durham, and Joy Hayes, as well as throughout my graduate studies, including Kembrew

McLeod, Michael Z. Newman, Jeff Bennett, Isaac West, John Durham Peters, Walid

Afifi, and Lesley Baxter.

However, my biggest thanks, perhaps, go to the staff at the café in Prairie Lights.

The caffeine they served me through the years fueled hundreds of pages and helped me

develop hundreds of thought-fragments into semi-coherent arguments.

iii

ABSTRACT

Beyond mapping and analyzing the relationship between representations of

fatness on television, this project has two primary interventions within the field of

television studies. Firstly, this project demonstrates the importance of bringing policy,

from communication and health regulation to initiatives developed by transnational non-

governmental organizations, into media and cultural studies. Secondly, this project

modifies theorizations of television, especially reality television, in relation to

surveillance, governmentality, and the production of neoliberal citizens. I argue that

television contradictorily acts as an extension of government, as opposed to a surveilling

replacement of government, and as a site of multidiscursivity that balances neoliberalism

and social welfare, individualism and interventionism, and issues of agency versus

outside authority over the body. While television circulates discourses of public health,

medicalization, and fat acceptance within the context of the obesity epidemic, it

simultaneously and contradictorily individualizes and massifies viewers, disciplines and

controls while failing to “effectively” discipline and control, and acts as a surveillance

appendage (albeit an inconsistent one) and as an asynchronous cultural forum that weaves

together various weight narratives and ways of thinking about fatness, health, and the

body.

iv

PUBLIC ABSTRACT

From The Biggest Loser to Mike and Molly, globally televised representations of

fatness are multiplying in reflection of heightened governmental and medical concern that

the size of our bodies constitutes a problem of epidemic proportions. This project

demonstrates how television acts as a forum for not only the politics of fat visibility and

world health policies, but also for debating issues of fatness in connection to weight-loss

and self-discipline, self-love and size acceptance, and even disability and discrimination.

Ultimately, this project traces public health, medical, and fat acceptance discourses

throughout culture, from media industry documents and regulatory hearings to newspaper

reports and television texts, in order to understand television’s role in enabling and

constraining the ways in which we understand bodies, fatness, and health as well as

television as a medium of surveillance and discipline.

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1. Televising Fatness ......................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1 Research Questions and Project Interventions ............................................................................ 7 Why TV?: Theory and Methodology .......................................................................................... 9

Power and Resistance ............................................................................................................ 11 A Note on Terminology ............................................................................................................ 18 Literature Review ...................................................................................................................... 19

What’s Wrong With Fat? ....................................................................................................... 20 Mediated Fat Bodies .............................................................................................................. 23 The Realities of Weight-Loss ................................................................................................ 27

Chapter Breakdown ................................................................................................................... 32

Chapter 2. Communication Policies, and Media Industries .......................................................... 37 Chapter Overview and Argument ............................................................................................. 38 Television Makes You Fat? ....................................................................................................... 39 Television and the Public Interest ............................................................................................. 42 Television’s Own “Battle of the Bulge” ................................................................................... 50 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 70

Chapter 3. Exercising Control: Public Health Discourses and the Globesity Epidemic .............. 73 Chapter Overview and Argument ............................................................................................. 74 The Globesity Epidemic ............................................................................................................ 75 Globalizing Personal Responsibility ......................................................................................... 84 Televising Globesity ................................................................................................................. 94

Explaining Fatness ................................................................................................................. 99 Bodies on Display ................................................................................................................ 106 Weight-Loss Worries (Or Disciplinary Discrepancy Across Television) ........................... 120

Viewer Internalization, Negotiation, and Rejection ................................................................ 130 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 133

Chapter 4. The Reciprocal Medicalizing of Television and Fatness .......................................... 135 Medicalization Versus Public Health on TV ........................................................................... 136 Chapter Overview and Argument ........................................................................................... 138 Fat Bodies as Diseased Bodies ................................................................................................ 141 Medical Institutions and Health Policies ................................................................................. 147 Diseased Bodies as Disabled Bodies? ..................................................................................... 152 Medicalized Television ........................................................................................................... 155 Televising Fatness as a Disabling and Impairing Disease ...................................................... 162 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 175

Chapter 5. Celebrating Large Bodies on the Small Screen ......................................................... 178 Chapter Overview and Argument ........................................................................................... 180

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Histories of Fat Resistance and the Fight for Fat Rights ......................................................... 184 Spreading Body Positivity and Emerging Industry Lore ........................................................ 192 Body Size Diversity on Television .......................................................................................... 197

Televising Body Positivity .................................................................................................. 203 Televising Fat Positivity ...................................................................................................... 207

What About Policy? ................................................................................................................ 225 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 226

Final Thoughts ............................................................................................................................ 228

Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 234

1

Chapter 1. Televising Fatness

Vamp Minion: “Does this sweater make me look fat?”

Vamp Leader: “No, the fact that you’re fat makes you look fat. That sweater just makes you look purple.”

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “The Freshman” (1999).

Introduction

“I think I'd be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat

kissing each other ... because I'd be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything” (Kelly

2010). This sizeist sentiment was expressed in a blog post on the Marie Claire website shortly

after the debut of CBS’s Mike and Molly (2010- ), which features two fat characters who meet at

an Overeaters Anonymous group and start dating. Other critics of the show questioned whether it

promoted obesity. For example, a Fox News article asked, “Should any of us be ‘comfortable’

with obesity?... Telling our children that weight doesn’t matter because ‘fat people fall in love,

too,’ is just wrong” (McKay 2010). In addition to the TV commentators expressing concern over

the corpulent representations exhibited on Mike and Molly, others were more ambivalent,

praising the show for making fat bodies visible, but simultaneously condemning it for its

frequent use of fat jokes and reliance on stereotypes (Carr 2010; Exton 2010; Cohen 2011).

Before the mid-to-late 2000s, fat representations or storylines about body size were few

and far between on television, despite the fact that many American sitcoms have specific

episodes about dieting, such as The Honeymooners’ (1955-1956) “Ralph’s Diet” or All in the

Family’s (1971-1979) “Archie’s Weighty Problem” (Mosher 2001, 188). One Designing Women

(1986-1993) episode “They Shoot Fat Women, Don’t They?,” which tells the story of Delta

Burke’s character being ridiculed because of her weight at a high school reunion, is one of the

few television instances critically discussing fatness. Elsewhere across the television landscape

fat bodies, or at least non-normatively thin bodies, were sometimes present, exemplified by

2

Roseanne Barr on Roseanne (1988-1997) or Camryn Manheim on The Practice (1997-2004), but

body size rarely became a narrative focus. Despite these instances generally being an exception

to the prevalence of idealized body representations on TV, the medium has also been described

as traditionally “friendlier” to fat, at least in comparison to film, because of attempts to portray

characters as “ordinary” or “everyday” people (Mosher 2001). At the very least, instances of fat

visibility throughout television’s history helped in opening up a discursive space for the greater

frequency of fat representations and weight narratives on television today.

From reality shows about weight-loss, such as The Biggest Loser (2003- ) and Shedding

for the Wedding (2011- ), to dramas that discuss fat issues, such as Addicted to Food (2011- ) and

Drop Dead Diva (2009-2014), dozens of programs about fatness were developed across

numerous channels in the last few years alone. This trend is not only present in the United States,

but on a global scale. Canada’s X-Weighted (2006), Australia’s Big: Extreme Makeover (2011),

and the U.K.’s Supersize vs. Superskinny (2008- ) are just a few examples of the fat TV that is

both created and circulated internationally. This large influx of television shows engaging with

fatness is not surprising amid claims that obesity, to some, is this century’s greatest public health

threat (Hellmich 2010). This proclamation is not only shared by the Dietary Guidelines for

Americans, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that makes

nutrition recommendations to improve individuals' health, but by many medical experts, the U.S.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, governments across the globe, and the World Health

Organization. News reports repeatedly detail the threat of obesity, to the point where the amount

of fat on our bodies has become a concern of epidemic proportions, synonymous with life-

threatening, communicable disease outbreaks. Even as early as the late 1990s, CNN reported,

“Americans are fatter than ever, and getting fatter” (“Study Americans Fatter” 1998). More

3

recently, The New York Times provided information that obesity rates have doubled globally in

the last three decades (“Global Rates Double” 2011).

The CDC estimates that thirty-five percent of adults can be categorized as obese, with

another thirty-four percent categorized as overweight in the United States according to the WHO

standardized body mass index scale1 (“Health” 2012). However, the U.S. is not the only nation

where citizens are labeled as possessing problematically large bodies. The WHO reports that

sixty-five percent of all adults live in countries where body categorizations of overweight or

obese are related to more deaths per year than body categorizations of underweight. In 2008, the

WHO identified 1.4 billion adults twenty-years of age or older as overweight, with over five

hundred million of those individuals considered obese (“WHO Fact Sheet” 2013). Naaru,

Kuwait, Argentina, Egypt, Greece, Mexico, United Arab Emirates, and New Zealand all rank

within the top twenty fattest countries in the world (“World's Fattest Countries” 2007).

Corresponding with the expanding waistlines of people around the world, U.S. news

articles about the obesity epidemic increased from thirty-three stories in 1994 to almost seven

hundred by 2004 (Oliver 2006, 4). In 2008, the number of news reports just detailing obesity

research exceeded six thousand, and that number is undoubtedly much higher today (Saguy and

Almeling 2008). In addition to the increasing commonality of obesity reporting, online news

stories about obesity are more likely to frame fat individuals in particular ways compared to thin

individuals. Firstly, fat individuals are more often shown eating unhealthy “junk” foods

(Wendy's nine-patty “T-Rex Burger”) and engaged in sedentary behavior (TV marathons on the

couch). Secondly, fat bodies are more often depicted through isolated body parts and as lacking

heads and faces (Puhl et al. 2013). With the continuous release of seemingly dire statistics,

reports discussing fatness as a global epidemic, and news framing that perpetuates stereotypes 1 The Body Mass Index is a chart that classifies people as being “normal,” overweight, and

4

and visually objectifies fat individuals, it comes as no surprise that size discrimination is

prevalent.

In fact, studies show that fat individuals have a more difficult time getting into top

colleges, are subject to more severe harassment and stigmatization by their peers and teachers in

school, and have a harder time finding housing or renting apartments in comparison to thin

individuals (Oliver 2006, 60). Fat individuals also tend to be evaluated more negatively, are less

likely to be promoted, and are generally paid less in the workplace than thin individuals (Fikkan

and Rothblum 2011). Some places of work, such as the Citizens Medical Center in Houston,

Texas, won't even hire applicants if they have a body mass index greater than thirty-five

(Ramshaw 2012). All of these examples support statistics documenting a sixty-six percent

increase in the number of instances of weight discrimination in the U.S. over the past ten years

(Puhl, Andreyeva, and Brownell 2008). Again, this is not a uniquely American problem; similar

instances of discrimination are reported in Australia (MacDonald 2012), Mexico (Dickerson and

Mandell 2006), and China (Fan 2007).

Due to the prevalence of fat discrimination and stigmatization, and incessant reports of

fat bodies themselves being a threat to global health, there is also a growing number of people

who instead argue for fat acceptance or being healthy at any size, and who are resistant to the

mainstream assumptions that many journalists, researchers, and other circulators of obesity

epidemic discourses promote, namely that fat individuals are lazy or lack willpower or self-

discipline. For example, the headline for a June of 2013 article in Time reads: “The Best Cure for

Obesity? Personal Responsibility.” The fat acceptance movement is led by the National

Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, which has been around since the 1960s and works to

improve the quality of life for fat people, fat activists, and researchers from the biological

5

sciences, social sciences, and cultural studies, and argues against dominant obesity epidemic

rhetoric from multiple perspectives. For example, medical anthropologists and sociologists

determine how moral, social, and political frames inform medical understandings of obesity

(Brewis 2011; Saguay 2013). Health at Every Size scholars argue against medical research that

positions fat as inevitably unhealthy while simultaneously highlighting studies showing the

benefits of extra adipose tissue (Bacon 2010; Burgard 2009). Some activists and academics

critique the science foundational to understandings of the obesity epidemic, especially studies

assuming links between ill health and higher levels of body fat, as being flawed, ideologically

driven, or haphazardly replicated and reported (Campos 2004; Gard and Wright 2005; Oliver

2006). Feminist scholars explore the cultural and social fears of fatness, which can lead to

oppression and dichotomization between normative, idealized thin bodies and fat bodies (Bordo

2003; LeBesco 2004). Other scholars look at how discourses of the obesity epidemic have

become a way to more closely target and monitor individuals and construct “populations” for

governmental and commercial intervention (Rabinow and Rose 2006; Harwood 2009).

In addition to these more academically oriented approaches, some fat activists blog about

fat fashion in order to encourage readers to love and accept their bodies as they are, such as The

Curvy Fashionista or Fat in the City. Others circulate zines, such as Fat Girl or Fat is Beautiful;

write books, such as Fat!So? (Wann 1998), hold demonstrations outside of Victoria's Secret

stores to protest mediated idealizations of thin women (Peppers 2013), create art that both

celebrates fat bodies and challenges prejudicial ideas (Zavos 2011; Nelson 2013), and

provocatively, call for the conservation of fat individuals in the face of medical, governmental,

and dieting industry attempts to get people to shed some pounds (Museum for Obeast

Conservation Studies 2013).

6

While these ideas were once relegated to independent presses, such as the Iowa City

Women’s Press which released some of the first fat acceptance literature in the late 1970s, or

alternative websites advocating coalition building and the development of fat acceptance

communities, such as The Rotund, they are gaining more traction in mainstream news

publications and in fat television texts. The New York Times even published two op-eds in

January of 2013 that question dominant obesity epidemic logics by discussing whether genes

play a more significant role than our personal dietary choices in determining weight (Kristoff

2013), and questioning why contemporary society seems to fear fat fundamentally (Campos

2013). In a similar vein, Time reviewed academic research showing that “overweight”

individuals actually have lower mortality rates than “normal weight” individuals, which is

contrary to the conventional wisdom of the obesity epidemic established and circulated by the

CDC and WHO (Blue 2013). Furthermore, BBC News published an article titled, “People can be

fat yet fit, research suggests,” which destabilizes the assumption that the presence of fat on one’s

body visually signifies poor health (Roberts 2012). Questioning or complicating articles with

regard to fatness and the body rarely occurred even a decade ago, but now they are commonplace

along with the normalization of obesity as an epidemic or disease. In other words, these instances

indicate resistance to the dominant discourses of fatness, resistance that instead centers issues of

fat shame, stigma, and discrimination, systemic and structural explorations of fatness, and fat and

body acceptance. Television, in particular, is an increasingly important forum for fat visibility

and for debating discourses of public health, medicalization, and fat and size acceptance within

the context of the obesity epidemic

7

Research Questions and Project Interventions

There are several research questions I seek to answer throughout this project. How are

understandings of the fat body on television changing, and how do different types of

programming reflect particular public health, medical, and fat acceptance discourses as well as

specific social, political, regulatory, medical, or industrial contexts? How do fat TV programs,

from scripted comedies and dramas to multiple forms of reality television, support, challenge,

and balance neoliberalism and social welfare, both of which frame conceptualizations of the

obesity epidemic and the way television itself operates? How is the prevalence of fat television

explained by, and variations in fat television content shaped by, the relationship between

television industries, communication and health, and international non-governmental

organizations? Additionally, in accordance with a majority of reality television scholarship, is

television best understood as a tool for surveillance, governing, and discipline?

In consideration of these questions, this project has two primary interventions beyond

exploring and trying to better understand fatness on television and the body itself as a site of

discursive struggle. Firstly, this project demonstrates the importance of bringing policy into

media and cultural studies, and the need to read televised discourses alongside policy and

industrial discourses as well as considering the structures and institutions that produce those

discourses. By policy, I mean organizations that debate and regulate communication and health,

as well as non-governmental organizations, such as the World Health Organization and the

American Medical Association, which set policy goals and recommendations often discussed and

taken up by various nation-states. The policy debates considered in this project show that

television is not necessarily replacing government, or operating in place of government

intervention, but rather how it operates as an extension of government. In other words, I argue

8

that television maintains and even intensifies government’s role in shaping media and how we

understand fatness and fat bodies.

Secondly, and in consideration of the influence of policy and regulatory debates on

television, this project modifies theorizations of television, especially reality television, in

relation to surveillance, governmentality, and the production of neoliberal citizens. Each

discourse2 is already a terrain of struggle (Fiske 1996, 4) and the complex and contradictory

discourses circulating about health, fatness, and the body already negotiate numerous,

dichotomous notions, including agency and authority, public and private, and individualism and

interventionism. These various discourses are further negotiated across television, which

remains, and is perhaps even more so in the post-network era, a site of multidiscursivity. So even

as TV works to govern indirectly and circulate dominant discourses serving dominant social and

political interests in the context of neoliberalism, it still negotiates and destabilizes those

discourses. TV, then, exposes the limits of individualism and its own ability to effectively govern

at a distance, or transform our bodies and behaviors, while it simultaneously weaves together

alternative, competing, and co-present notions of health, fatness, and the body. Thus, instead of

television just reinforcing individualism and discipline in reflection of neoliberalism, television

instead contradictorily individualizes and massifies, and disciplines and controls while

simultaneously exhibiting its own ineffectiveness to discipline and control. In other words,

although television may govern at a distance or act as a surveillance appendage (albeit an

inconsistent one), it also operates as an asynchronous cultural forum that weaves together various

weight narratives and ways of thinking about fatness, health, and the body. In this sense, reality 2 My definition of the term discourse follows Hall (1997, 6): “Discourses are ways of referring to or constructing knowledge about a particular topic of practice: a cluster (or formation) of ideas, images and practices, which provide ways of talking about, forms of knowledge and conduct associated with a particular topic, social activity or institutional site in society.”

9

television, like all television, should be considered in accordance with Julie D’Acci’s (1994, 2)

integrated model of television studies, which considers the way discourses and ideas “interact,

overlap, and clash within individual sites as well as between and among them.”

Why TV?: Theory and Methodology

John Fiske and John Hartley (1978, 85) argue that understanding television as a source of

cultural engagement and understanding requires studying the messages that are created, the

languages that are used, and the institutions that produce them. Fundamentally, all

representations operate similarly in terms of producing and circulating different types of

knowledge. Representations across all types of media platforms negotiate identity politics by

supporting dominant ideologies through particular discourses, and by negotiating or rejecting

those ideologies through discourses in favor of alternative ones. No one text is produced or

understood in isolation, and all texts “interrelate in a network of meanings that constitutes our

cultural world” (Fiske 1987, 4). That being said, I argue that since television programs often

allow for narrative development, and character or participant identification to develop over

multiple episodes, there may be greater emotional investment, attachment, or meaning derived

from the types of representations seen on television as opposed to images in a magazine or on a

blog post. Further, TV representations still maintain a unique position, especially in terms of

their relevance and popularity. If you consider the scale and reach of television representations,

the medium remains one of the central modes of getting information and entertainment around

the world (Spiegel 2004, 2).

Of course, arguments about scope, reach, or popularity are more difficult to make in a

post-network era of hundreds of channels and options to stream content on the web. During the

network era, arguments for the importance of understanding television representations were

10

easier to make because extremely large segments of the U.S. audience would be watching the

same program at any given time. Watching the same television shows lent itself to a common

culture or shared experience among large groups of diverse people (although there is some

debate as whether that was ever the case, considering the lack of programs that specifically spoke

to women or minorities historically). Because of this, TV scholars could understand the presence

or popularity of particular representations as evidence of broader social or political trends,

discussions, and negotiations. However, instead of television acting as a cultural forum like it

was theorized in the network era, which emphasized the importance of TV because of its

audience reach as a medium and role in the representation and negotiation of different ideologies

(Newcomb and Hirsch 1983), television in the post-network era produces multiple cultural

forums, or an expanded forum due to the multiplicity of content types available (Lotz 2004, 438).

In this respect, individual series or channels may be less important than looking for particular

representational trends across channels (Lotz 2004, 430), platforms, and even television markets.

While audiences for particular programs may be smaller and less heterogeneous, meaning that

each individual program may not be as significant as it once was, there is increased importance

in understanding across programs and how and why particular types of content are disseminated

in the first place (Lotz 2004, 438). Additionally, if we see particular kinds of representational

politics emerge across multiple channels, especially ones that target various demographics across

different distribution platforms, television can still elucidate broader cultural, social, and political

trends. In this way, television may be less of a synchronic cultural forum, in the sense that

different ideologies or discourses may not be in dialogue within the same text or at the same

time, but may instead be an asynchronous cultural forum, where different ideologies or

11

discourses, which are themselves already terrains of struggle, are encountered at different times,

across multiple programs, channels, or distribution platforms.

For these reasons, and numerous others, I find continued value in the interrogation of

television representations and narratives, especially when connected to social, political, medical,

industrial, and regulatory contexts; however, debates over fatness and fat bodies also extend

across multiple, mediated platforms, including newspapers, magazines, and blogs, necessitating

their inclusion in this project as well. While I may privilege TV as an important site for

discursive interplay, I acknowledge that dominant discourses, as well as resistant discourses, are

found at multiple levels, and both within the same texts and across texts and genres. As a result,

this project will weave together policy initiatives and debates as well as textual and discursive

analyses of numerous television programs across distribution platforms, and in some cases

television markets, and contextualize them with relevant articles from industry trade

publications, news reports, and medical studies. By doing this, I demonstrate the way fat

television texts not only transmit various messages of fatness, but become sites through which

we can understand how social, industrial, and regulatory influences and negotiations both

constrain and make possible different types of fat representations (Ang 2002, 42).

Power and Resistance

For Michel Foucault (1978; 2003) power is not only determined by economic structures,

macrosocial systems, or social institutions, but also as something occurring across a multiplicity

of sites and levels, and in numerous directions. Correspondingly, Foucault (1979, 95) argues that

there is a “multiplicity of points of resistance . . . present everywhere in the power network.”

Ultimately, power “must be analyzed as something which circulates” (Foucault 1980, 98). He

continues:

12

What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn't only weigh on us a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression. (1980, 119)

This productive network circulating particular kinds of knowledge and discourses of the body

leads to what Foucault refers to as normalization. Regulation and scientific standardization

position the body itself as an object of knowledge, one that normalizes particular kinds of bodies

from which other bodies, such as fat bodies, deviate (Foucault 1979). The normalization of these

forms of knowledge by those in positions of power then creates and maintains certain “regimes

of truth,” which not only assumes the authority of “the truth,” but actually “makes itself true”

(Hall 1997, 49).

Furthermore, Foucault (2003, 33-34) explains, “The delicate mechanisms of power

cannot function unless knowledge, or rather knowledge apparatuses, are formed, organized, and

put into circulation, and those apparatuses are not ideological trimmings or edifices.” In other

words, knowledge apparatuses, which he also refers to as dispositif, are systems or discursive

formations, including things like regulations, laws, administrative measures, and scientific

statements, which use knowledge to maintain or gain control or power (Foucault 1977). These

knowledge apparatuses are then put to work through particular discursive practices, in specific

institutional and historically situated circumstances, in order to regulate the conduct of

individuals (Hall 1997, 47).

Foucault's theories of normalization, knowledge/power, and knowledge apparatuses are

especially important for understanding the way discourses of the obesity epidemic sediment into

a kind of Gramscian ‘‘common sense.’’ Particular systems and structures, such as governmental

attention to fatness and the framing of fatness in terms of an epidemic, and the dissemination of

13

“official” or “expert” knowledge from medical practitioners or public health officials,

legitimizes-- or normalizes-- particular discourses of the body, namely those that reinforce low

body mass indexes as desirable and healthy. In addition, Foucault views the body itself as a

primary site of struggle between different formations of power/knowledge because different

discursive formations and knowledge apparatuses classify and monitor the body based on

different regimes of power and “truth” (Hall 1997, 50).

The normalization of health discourses and subsequent construction of large populations

for public health and medical comparison, monitoring, and weight-loss interventions and

treatments exist simultaneously with neoliberal discourses instead emphasizing individual

responsibility over the health of the body. Foucault’s (1984) conceptualization of biopower is

useful for understanding these discursive incompatibilities. Instead of power being derived from

the ability to decide whether someone should live or die (Foucault 1984, 135), biopower instead

focuses on living, albeit “to seize hold of life in order to suppress it” (1984, 136), reconfiguring

death as the limit of power (1984, 138). Lauren Berlant explains that biopower is thus the power

to regularize life, or to “force living” in particular ways, by connecting it to administration,

discipline, and changing understandings of what “health” means (2011, 756). Explaining this

within the context of the obesity epidemic, Deborah Lupton (2013, 25) says:

From this perspective, medical and public health researchers and practitioners play an important role in the defining, regulation and surveilling of bodies, pronouncing on what should be considered ‘normal’ and what should be considered liable to expert intervention. Foucault’s analysis of the medical gaze as it constitutes and disciplines patients’ bodies is related in the critical literature to the ways in which medical discourses prescribe the ‘proper’ weight and size of bodies and define certain bodies- including fat bodies- as pathological and others as normal. Moreover, Foucault explains that biopower thus has two modes of deployment; one

involves disciplining the individual body, while the other creates and regulates broader

populations (Foucault 2003, 242). Discipline over the individual body occurs when individuals

14

internalize surveillance, or particular discourses of the body circulated by governments or news

media, and discipline themselves accordingly (Foucault 1991). In consideration of these two

aspects of biopower, Foucault argues that biopower is both individualizing and “massifying,”

and both directed at “man-as-body” and “man-as-species” (2003, 243). Discussing the potential

incompatibility of these emphases, Gilles Deleuze states in “Postscript on the Societies of

Control”: “... at the same time power individualizes and masses together, that is, constitutes those

over whom it exercises power into a body and models the individuality of each member of that

body” (1992, 5). Applying this to the obesity epidemic, specifically, supranational organizations,

various nation-states, and metrics like BMI construct populations (or “massify”) for

categorization and comparison, while also establishing bodily norms that shape the way

individuals understand and comport themselves.

In the “Postscript on Societies of Control” Deleuze further argues that we have actually

transitioned from a disciplinary society to a society of control. Whereas discipline is “of long

duration, infinite, and discontinuous,” control is short-term, but also continuous and without

limit, and this now substitutes for traditional disciplinary sites of enclosure or “distinct analogical

spaces that converge toward an owner,” like the government or private powers (1992, 6-7).

Deleuze continues that we no longer have the mass and individual dyad, but instead individuals

are now “dividuals” (who can be reduced down to data points) and masses are now samples and

data sets controlled by markets and corporations (1992, 5). But rather than a distinction between

a society of discipline or control, I agree with Michael Hardt and his conceptualization of global

societies of control. We may be reducible to data points in a sample or numbers on the body

mass index chart managed by dispersed entities, but Hardt argues that instead of disciplinary

logics becoming ineffective or replaceable in the contemporary context, they are “generalized in

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fluid forms across the social field” (1998, 139), making control a generalization and

intensification of discipline. He continues, saying, “The modern dialectic of inside and outside

has been replaced by a play of degrees and intensities, of hybridity and artificiality” (141). In

this sense, the logics and technologies found in certain sites of discipline, such as those in the

prison system, may be increasingly influential and applied throughout society (150). Thus,

instead of replacing traditional disciplinary sites, Deleuze’s notion of control seems to be

happening in addition to the intensification of traditional disciplinary sites. A non-health

example of this can be found in the United States’ prison system. While probation and electronic

monitoring are now common alternative sanctions for those who commit crimes, we’ve also

witnessed a corresponding seven hundred and ninety percent increase in incarceration rates

within federal penitentiaries since 1980 (James 2014).

Just like television itself, discourses of the obesity epidemic, especially proposed

“solutions” to fatness, also reflect a seeming incompatibility between social welfare and

neoliberalism. Emma Rich and John Evans elaborate that social welfare discourses “celebrate

care, protection and social responsibility through regulation and intervention,” while neoliberal

discourses “laud individuals, autonomy, freedom from constraint and independent action on the

part of the individual” (2009, 158). According to Brenda Weber, neoliberalism “favors the

abdication of state obligations that might address obesity, poor nutrition, or bad self-esteem, in

favor of individual solutions, obligations, and decisions” (2009, 51). Laurie Ouellette also argues

that reality television’s emphasis on free choice and personal responsibility, in particular,

complements these neoliberal discourses of the collapsing welfare state, the privatization of

public life, and individualism (2004, 233). But just as power both individualizes and massifies,

obesity policies and medical recommendations tend to be both broadly intervening and

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emphasizing of individualism. Thus, at least in relation to fatness, instead of just shifting or

abdicating responsibility for social welfare from governments to individuals and commercial

markets, there is concurrently a superficial shift away from government and an intensification of

government’s roles. This example also demonstrates the strengthening of traditional sites of

discipline as well as the generalization of disciplinary logics throughout a society of control.

While governments develop regulatory policies and promote health programs and initiatives to

encourage weight-loss, these actions are regularly, according to Emma Rich and John Evans,

“couched in a language affirming that ‘ultimately’ individuals are blameworthy, should be more

disciplined and take greater responsibility for their parlous state of health” (2009, 158). A New

York Times reporter summarizes this logic well: “The government can help, but no one can force

you to turn down that slice of chocolate cake” (Zernike 2003).

The theory of articulation is also useful for understanding fat TV within the context of the

“obesity epidemic.” Stuart Hall (1996) argues that meaning is derived from a text’s position

within a discursive formation, which he understands as not being that different from the concept

of ideology, and from what else is articulated (or linked) to it. In other words, individual texts are

not necessarily or inherently political, but become so when they form a discursive terrain with

similar texts or are articulated to particular discourses (1996, 143). Various fat TV texts, then,

are understood in particular ways because of their articulation with knowledge of the obesity

epidemic in relation to public health, medicalization, or fat acceptance.

While the concept of discourse is clearly central to this project, by incorporating analyses

of policy and industry I also emphasize the importance of different material, economic, and

structural factors in the way power/knowledge operates, and the way in which all of these

different ideas, systems, and institutions constitutively influence the creation and meanings of

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various fat representations. So, also following Hall (1985, 96), I argue that these systems and

structures, such as media industries, “determine” in the sense that they constrain, shape, or

channel (and therefore legitimize or normalize) particular discourses and types of knowledge,

influencing what kinds of representations and narratives we may see in the first place.

Even though a considerable number of the fat television I consider is produced and

exhibited in the U.S., I also incorporate texts that are produced, distributed, and viewed

internationally. Just as fat individuals exist everywhere, fat television can be found in numerous

international markets as both U.S. programs are exported internationally and international

programs are imported for U.S. audiences. The expectation that television programs should

easily move across a range of markets is largely the result of the gradually deregulated and

increasingly globalized nature of the television industry during the multi-channel transition of the

1980s and 1990s (Moran 1998; Waisbord 2004). Although this project primarily tells the story of

fat TV in the U.S., in a world in which discourses often circulate internationally and industrial

logics and practices operate with global audiences and markets in mind, this project is inherently

global in nature. For instance, dozens of countries have versions of The Biggest Loser, and

numerous others are also producing and exporting original programing (U.K.’s Supersize vs.

Superskinny, Canada’s X-Weighted). Additionally, an increasing number of countries are also

implementing regulations concerning television and advertising, especially children’s television,

because of the global scale of the obesity epidemic. These global textual travels and international

policy initiatives undoubtedly impact both the type of content that is produced in the U.S. and the

way that content takes shape in terms of representational and narrative choices.

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A Note on Terminology

Throughout this project I use the term fat for specific reasons. According to Deborah

Lupton (2013, 3), “in and of itself, fat has no meaning,” but of course fat means different things

to difference groups of people. Similar to the reappropriation of the term queer, fat has been

reclaimed as a descriptor or type of body as opposed to an insult or derogatory term. I use the

term fat to acknowledge that much like height, our weights naturally vary, resulting in some

people having less body fat while others have more. Further, I use the term fat in solidarity with

the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance and in accordance with the growing

academic field of Fat Studies. In saying fat I also reject the terms overweight and obese as body

descriptors because of their pathologized and medicalized connotations, which inherently

position fat bodies as, at the very least, problematic, and often as diseased. For example, a recent

article in the medical journal Clinical Cornerstone calls for the classification of obesity as a

disease in order to better treat the condition, “the condition” being defined as having a large

waist circumference (Aronne et al. 2009). Additionally, the terms overweight and obese imply

that an ideal or “normal” weight does exist and should be sought after (Brown 1989; Fikkan and

Rothblum 2011). When I do utilize the terms overweight or obese in this project, it is because

those are the ones used by the bloggers, journalists, researchers, or television programs I am

referencing or citing, and knowing the specific terms being used is important for understanding

what discourses are being articulated, not because I agree with the connotations those words

have in regard to fatness or fat bodies. Throughout this project I also frequently use the phrases

“fat television” or “fat TV,” which are purposefully broad so as to include all television texts that

consistently reference body size or weight, whether in terms of weight-loss, acceptance, food

addiction, or disability, among numerous other narrative possibilities. While I consider a variety

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of television examples, such as segments on daytime talk show like Dr. Oz (2009- ) or The

Doctors (2008- ), about body size and weight, I primarily focus on television programs where

fatness is the dominant or central narrative.

Finally, I do not intend this project to demonstrate that concerns over the size of our

bodies are entirely unwarranted. Moreover, I acknowledge that there may be health and medical

concerns in relation to fatness and that some individuals may experience fatness as a health

problem, socially disabling, or physically impairing. The mere presence of this disclaimer stems

from the fact that fat feminist scholarship and discourses of fat acceptance are often met with

accusations of irresponsibility, or are framed as embracing or recommending “unhealthy

behaviors” because they counter dominant, legitimized public health and medical discourses of

obesity. I am also not necessarily claiming that fat acceptance or critical biomedical claims are

more accurate or true, nor am I trying to reveal some kind of “hidden truth” or “conspiracy”

about fatness within the context of the obesity epidemic, but rather how particular discourses and

constructions of obesity and the obesity epidemic shape the kinds of television content we see,

and thus, how we broadly understand fatness, our own bodies, and our identities as individuals.

Thus, instead of trying to argue that public health and medical understandings of fat are

incorrect, untrue, or merely ideological the way some scholars do (Campos 2004; Oliver 2006), I

instead explore both the changing and static, medicalized, public health-focused, and fat

acceptance mediations of fatness and fat bodies.

Literature Review

The literature review is divided into three sections. The first discusses theories as to why

the fat body is viewed as socially problematic and resistant to body norms, the second reviews

analyses of representations of fatness across magazines and television, and the third surveys

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reality television scholarship in relation to surveillance, transformation, and self-discipline or

self-control.

What’s Wrong With Fat?

Fatness is often framed as a problem in need of management, and increasingly

governmental and “expert” attention to fatness as obesity legitimizes particular discourses of the

body, namely that thin bodies are healthy and beautiful while fat bodies are aesthetically

displeasing or unhealthy.3 Furthermore, the framing of fatness as a disease or epidemic provides

the drive for intensified body monitoring in the name of prevention, intervention, or treatment

(Wright 2009, 3). Examples of this body monitoring can be found in government health

campaigns, such as Michelle Obama’s childhood obesity campaign, “Let’s Move!,” and in

television texts encouraging weight-loss, such as Extreme Weight Loss (2011- ). These

campaigns and television programs are only two examples of the countless ways in which public

health discourses and medicalized discourses within the context of the obesity epidemic circulate

and support the logic that fat bodies are aberrant and in need of discipline and control and/or

intervention and treatment.

Like many identity categories, such as gender, race, or ethnicity, being fat marks one as

“Other” and becomes a way of maintaining social hierarchies and power for some groups at the

expense of others. More specifically, like maleness or whiteness, thinness becomes the default,

privileged category, while fatness is marked as oppositional to that normative or idealized body

size. Sandra Bartky (1998, 28) argues that fatness, abundance (in height or muscle), or strength

in women’s bodies is met with distaste whereas emaciated bodies reminiscent of adolescent boys 3 Health is a vague and all-encompassing term that is incredibly hard to define. We generally think of health as something positive or a desired state of being, but Jonathan M. Metzel notes that health is a contested term, and one that is also a “prescribed state and an ideological position” (2010, 1-2).

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are privileged or idealized. Laura Brown (1989, 85) echoes a similar argument, explaining how

womanly hips, stomachs, breasts, and thighs are inherently threatening because they are the

expression of how women’s bodies are different from men’s bodies. Ironically, these differences

that distinctly mark bodies as female often become “most of the ways in which women feel

physically ‘wrong’” (Brown 1989, 63). This trend is more than evident just by looking at the

way women’s magazine covers target the body: “Get a body you’ll love: Flat belly moves!”

(Fitness, April 2010) and “Shrink your Belly!” (Women’s Health, October 2009).

Bartky (1990, 80) argues that the very definitions of femininity or womanhood are

derived from women’s bodies, not by their reproductive functions or what they do, but instead

predominantly by how they appear. In terms of appearance, according to Cecilia Hartley (2001,

67), women's bodies are “inscribed as necessarily thin,” meaning that women must be thin so

they appear visibly smaller and are implicitly weaker. In patriarchal society, women are often

denied space, power, and visibility (Brown 1989, 63), and fat bodies inherently transgress those

norms as they physically take up more space and are therefore more visible, which implicitly

makes fat female bodies appear more powerful and more threatening to patriarchal power

hierarchies. This places women in a particularly interesting bind because the extra body fat

women tend to carry is simultaneously central to reproductive health and what marks them as

heterosexually undesirable (Hartley 2001, 67). Another example of this contradictory bind can be

found in the way anorexic and fat women are situated as asexual and hypersexual. Cecelia

Hartley (2001, 68) argues that anorectics tend to have less fat, fewer “curves,” and often

discontinue ovulation and menstruation. In many ways, then, anorectics become asexual, but are

nevertheless hypersexualized in terms of social idealization. Fat women, on the other hand, have

exaggerated outward sexuality and tend to store more estrogen, marking them as

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hypersexualized, yet asexual, unfeminine, and undesirable in terms of social idealizations.

Beyond these binds, if women do comply with these body norms, or “succeed” in disciplining

their bodies by making them visibly smaller and spatially compact, it gains them attention, but

rarely respect or social power (Bartky 1998, 35).

There are several potential explanations as to why women’s bodies are being positioned

as sites of struggle for control. On one hand, Susan Bordo (1993, 140) suggests that women may

try to correct “problems” they perceive to be within their control like body size and shape due to

feeling too helpless to “tackle global or social problems that seem too big and complicated to

have any hope of bringing about change, like the arms race, terrorism, environmental

degradation, or global warming.” On the other hand, the focus on the body is another way in

which women’s “inferiority” can be established in the face of increasing gains intellectually,

economically, politically, and socially in terms of power and equality (Hartley 2001, 62). These

differing conceptions both position the body as the only site where individual women can exert

control, and as one of the last places in which control and power can be exerted on women.

These notions may seem competing, but that very competition is necessary for the maintenance

of power hierarchies because both logics foster similar senses of empowerment regardless of

difference in perspective. Some women can feel in control over their increasing power and

equality beyond the body; other women, who may feel powerless or unequal, can turn inward for

those feelings of control. Conversely, fat bodies are often seen as “out of control” or excessive,

and any excessiveness associated with women, whether in fatness, style, age, or speech, can also

be seen as a violation against norms dictating that women should not only be invisible, but

should also avoid being “unruly” and from making “spectacles” of themselves (Karlyn and

McNaughton 2003, 253). By embracing excess and spectacle, or being “too visual,” fat bodies

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can reject the “objectifying gaze of others,” refuse dichotomies between “legitimate” and

“illegitimate” bodies, and expose body and beauty norms for the socially contigent constructs

that they are (Karlyn and McNaughton 2003, 257-260).

In addition to resisting gendered norms, fat bodies also challenge fundamental social and

political logics. According to Kathleen LeBesco (2004, 56), “a fat person makes the ultimate bad

citizen in that she or he reveals the American Dream for what it is: a fabrication.” LeBesco

continues that our society emphasizes the idea that anyone is capable of “limitless individual

achievement” or getting what he or she wants if they only work hard enough. Fat people are thus

exemplars of the reality that not everyone can get what they want (or should get what they

want?), which LeBesco argues is one of the reasons that fat people are shamed and punished

(2004, 56). The characterization of fat bodies as lazy also supports the way they inherently

challenge and threaten rhetoric of the American Dream. Not only can people not have whatever

they want, but not every individual is successfully “productive” – in this case “productive” in

producing a normative body– even if they have the desire to do so or work hard to do so.

Positioning the fat body as inherently oppositional to dominant social and political discourses,

and as exposing the weaknesses in neoliberal rhetoric and the supremacy of individualism, shows

that fat bodies can be viewed, fundamentally, as sites of resistance and discursive negotiation.

Mediated Fat Bodies

There exists a limited amount of scholarship at the intersection of fat studies and media

studies, and an even smaller amount examining televised fatness. In fact, a majority of television

research concerned with the relationship between representation and body size focus on thinness,

body image, and the internalization of those message by viewers and readers. Furthermore, many

of these analyses rely on the frequency of certain types of images in the form of content analyses

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as opposed to interpretation or critical interrogation of the images and how they connect to

particular contexts and discourses of the body and health.

For example, one of the first studies looking at the relationship between representation

and body image is a content analysis of participant body sizes across televised Miss America

pageants between 1960 and 1978. The study finds that the average weight of contestants is well

below the average weight of American women (Garner et al. 1980). Similarly, and more

recently, Gregory Fouts and Kimberly Burggraf (1999) find through another content analysis that

thirty-three percent of women on television can be considered underweight according to the

Body Mass index, and that thinner women receive more compliments about physical appearance

from other television characters. In consideration of these studies, Alexandria Hendricks (2002,

109) argues that if television sets the standards for beauty and weight norms, and those standards

do not match a majority of women’s lived experiences, then it’s likely that women will desire to

look like the women represented on screen. Her survey of media effects and body image research

supports this idea, as women who diverge most from what they see on television, specifically fat

women, report being more dissatisfied with their bodies. Additionally, Dina Giovanelli and

Stephen Osterag (2000) use content analysis to determine the total number of overweight women

present across primetime, broadcast television during the 1990s. Not surprisingly, they only find

a few fat female characters, but note that fat characters tend to be styled less attractively (frizzy

hair, bland wardrobe), desexualized, awkward, and positioned as the antithesis to thin characters.

While this study is problematic for only engaging with broadcast depictions in a post-network

era, it is useful in terms of beginning a dialogue on how fatness is represented on television.

Further, although these studies provide important empirical evidence of television’s historical

preference for thinness (making the current trend of fat television all the more interesting), my

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research is instead in conversation with the limited number of critical analyses of fat bodies on

television.

Critical interrogations of fatness, or “plus-size” bodies primarily focus on images in

magazines, but only minimally on television. Overall, these analyses are less concerned with the

prevalence of particular kinds of body images or in figuring out “media effects,” but instead

critically engage with and interpret the meanings and representations of thinness or fatness. For

example, in a special issue of Feminist Media Studies, several scholars offer brief analyses

concerning the state of fat women across media texts. Laura Patterson (2005) and Deborah

Sarbin (2005) both look at the problematic representations of fat women in magazines, from the

ways in which they are desexualized as fat women to the ephemeral nature of plus-size

magazines. Additionally, Sonya Brown (2005, 248) finds that plus-size fashion magazines still

generally feature normative-sized models, arguing that the trend of size acceptance does not

really extend to all sizes. Brown cites the example of a 2002 cover of Good Housekeeping that

features Christie Brinkley under the headline "Bigger Bodies are Back" in order to show the

limited body-size range circulated by media.

Also interrogating images of bodies in magazines, Melinda Young (2005, 250) argues

that fat is consistently positioned in women’s magazines as a body deficiency or disease that can

be overcome if women are disciplined enough, saying, “like the illusion of the oasis in the desert,

women are promised by magazines that the thin, homogenized, normalized, disciplined, cultural,

feminine body will grant access to dominant narratives of financial, personal, work, social, and

aesthetic success.” According to Young, these representations are particularly damaging because

they always positions bodies as “works in progress,” connecting an individual’s sense of self-

worth to the “size of our pants.” Natalie Wilson (2005, 255) finds a similar binary between thin

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and fat representations, showing that thin “equals beauty, willpower, and success, and fat equals

failure, gluttony, and ill-health.” Ultimately, this binary creates a hierarchy of bodies, positioning

some bodies as ideal and desirable, and other bodies as sources of discomfort, anxiety, or shame.

Other analyses of fatness examine the intersectionality of identity politics. In a

comparison of male and female celebrities, Julie Ferris and Karen Pritcher (2005) examine the

weight and body discourses surrounding both Al Roker and Carnie Wilson’s weight-loss

surgeries. They find that Wilson’s surgery is framed as vain and self-centered whereas Roker’s

is framed as a legitimate health decision, demonstrating the ways in which fatness is understood

and experienced in gendered ways. Also focusing on gender, Jerry Mosher considers the greater

visibility of fat male characters on television, arguing that fat men on TV are represented as both

being successful and lazy, “bumbling idiots.” Mosher further understands representations of fat

men on television as symbolizing a “crisis in masculinity” or fear of the “impotence of

patriarchal power” (2001, 186) as well as subversive to dominant body idealizations (2001, 177).

Continuing with the subversive potential of fat bodies in an analysis of the television

sitcom Roseanne (1988-1997), Kathleen Rowe (2003, 253) argues that fat female bodies are

unruly bodies, which “violate the unspoken feminine sanction against making a ‘spectacle’ of

oneself.” Rowe contends that Roseanne Barr represents an unruly and excessive body that

becomes a form of female grotesqueness and makes laughable conventional tropes of femininity.

Correspondingly, Ferris and Pritcher (2005, 1) agree that the excessive body can be a site to

interrogate the “myths and regulations even to which non-celebrity women are bound” (Ferris

and Pritcher 2005, 254). Thus, Rowe, Ferris and Pritcher demonstrate the ways in which

mediated representations of fatness offer critiques of broadly circulated idealized and normative

body standards. Examples like Roseanne also speak to the importance of understanding

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representations instead of just looking at the quantity of a particular kind of representation. In

other words, if we only counted Roseanne as an instance of a fat body on television, we would

have failed to account for the subversive potential and possible cultural impact of such a

representation. While all of these analyses go a long way toward understanding mediations of

fatness, they neither delve into the logics behind their production nor their imbrication with

communication and health policies around the world, and there is little discussion of the way

large bodies on the small screen are articulated to discourses of public health, medical, or fat

acceptance.

The Realities of Weight-Loss

Reality television, which a majority of fat television programming can be categorized as,

is frequently understood in relation to surveillance and discipline. And while reality television

scholarship specifically focusing on weight-loss in reference to discourses of public health,

medicalization, and fat acceptance are rare; research on makeover programming provides an

important theoretical foundation. Laurie Ouellette and James Hay (2008) look specifically at the

makeover reality television and its use of hidden camera surveillance, public humiliation, and

other controlling techniques. They argue that on-screen discipline works to prevent others,

specifically television viewers, from misbehaving in the future. In other words, reality television

makeovers or interventions teach viewers at home how to be independent and self-disciplined as

opposed to reliant on the state, specifically saying, “The political rationality of the life

intervention is that people who are floundering can and must be taught to develop and maximize

their capacities for normalcy, happiness, material stability, and success rather than rely on a

public ‘safety net’” (2008, 476). The logics or rationalities of televised life interventions

reinforcing messages of self-discipline, self-control, self-governance, self-help, and other

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emphases on the self, of course, extend beyond programming, circulating throughout the late

capitalist context, influencing everything from discussions of social welfare to the obesity

epidemic.

Correspondingly, Brenda Weber (2009, 4) contends that makeover reality shows support

messages of self-governance by showcasing bodies in “need” of self-discipline and by

reproducing a critical social gaze that “exposes the shame of the ‘ugly’ body as it reinforces

these messages.” Weber asserts that makeover programs support the idea that unless “deviant

bodies” conform to normative codes, “the wayward soul who has been derelict in attending to

signifying values of the body merits reduced privileges until such a time as she or he conforms to

governing” (2009, 73). These “wayward souls” who submit themselves to the critical social gaze

and ever-present surveillance on makeover programs, according to Weber, are taking part in

shame-induced governmentality and a form of affective domination that relies on shame, power,

and love (2009, 82). Shame is felt by those who originally lacked self-control and self-discipline

with their bodies, or who did not work hard enough to “please the gazer,” specifically the experts

on the show and the audience watching at home. Gareth Palmer (2006) adds that through the use

of shame, reality TV viewers are encouraged to rethink their behaviors and are offered examples

of ways to police or govern themselves. Echoing an analogous sentiment, Martin Roberts (2007,

228) argues that lifestyle television, specifically What Not to Wear (2003-2013), transforms

consumption into a form of citizenship and publicly shames participations, which acts as a

warning for viewers at home, into being good consuming subjects in a neoliberal economy.

Lastly, Jennifer Fremline (2008) agrees that the televisual gaze is indeed punishing and

surveilling, but adds that it can also act as a source of pleasure or arousal for some viewers.

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Numerous other studies also look at the way reality television works to inspire change

and transformation. Also looking at What Not to Wear, as well as A Makeover Story (2000- ) and

Extreme Makeover (2002-2007), Amanda Gallagher and Lisa Pecot-Hébert (2007, 58-63) argue

that these programs provide a temporary fix to complex social problems, positioning the female

body as a fragmented commodity that is held to hegemonic, patriarchal beauty ideals.

Furthermore, they contend that these messages teach us that our appearances are never good

enough and that change is an imperative to becoming an “acceptable” individual. Additionally,

Cressida Heyes (2007, 17) asserts that many makeover TV shows function as contemporary

versions of Foucault’s theory of normalization, which is a process that simultaneously defines

people in relation to and deviance from particular norms and encourages conformity and

homogeneity. Finally, Jessica Francombe, Michael Silk, and F. Bachelor (2009, 370) argue that

The Biggest Loser, specifically, operates as a cultural technology working to shape conduct and

behavior, educate subjects, discipline the “non-compliant,” and differentiate between “good” and

“bad” citizens.

In response to this influx of television research focusing on surveillance, discipline, and

governmentality, Dana Heller (2009, 77) argues that recent television scholarship focusing on

neoliberalism and governmentality has “become a bit too, well, governing.” Instead, Heller calls

for us to look at the way makeover culture is dialectical and “marked by incessant border

skirmishes over questions of elitism and populism, power and subordination, knowledge and

exclusion, resistance and consent” (2009, 78). Here, Heller outlines a more complex process that

does not assume that reality TV programs govern us, and calls for scholars to look at

contradictory messages within programs and the way people “talk back” to agents of governance

or claims of expertise. Following Heller’s critique, this project seeks to understand both how

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television operates and fails to operate in terms of discipline and control; how television itself

undermines and negotiates its own articulations to discourses of public health and medicalization

of the body, which are already terrains of struggle, within the context of the obesity epidemic.

Despite the fact that reality TV does not exist in a vacuum, but instead exists as a part of

a larger meaning-making system, a lot of reality TV scholarship still focuses primarily on the

texts themselves as opposed to the social discourses that circulate or contradict each show’s

already contradictory messages, or the ways audiences interpret those messages. As is evident,

most research on reality and makeover programming focuses on the way television replaces

government and governs indirectly, at a distant, which means that both participants and

audiences at home are encouraged to submit to surveillance and then self-monitor and self-

discipline (Andrejevic 2004). But much of the scholarship on reality or makeover television

discuss governing and discipline on television without considering the polysemic nature of

television and popular culture, even if the range of possible meanings or interpretations are

limited. John Fiske (1987, 154) argues that representations contain as many contradictions as our

social experiences, and I believe the messages across fat TV shows are as contradictory as the

public health and medical discourses circulating about weight and the body. Not all weight-loss

reality shows, specifically, offer the same steadfast messages of self-discipline, nor do audiences

only internalize that message; instead viewers often find themselves sympathizing, cheering for

participants, sharing in their pride and disappointment, while also potentially ridiculing and

blaming them for being fat. When looking at reality weight-loss television programs as a whole,

whether circulating public health or medical discourses of the fat body, the ways in which

different series tell stories and create dramatic tensions problematize notions of self-discipline or

self-control, surveillance, individualism, and the difficulty of changing or transforming oneself

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as much as these programs reinforce them. This is evident by contradictions within the weight-

loss texts themselves (and texts as multi-platform meaning-making systems), the fact that these

texts exist in a discursive terrain characters competing programs and discourses of public health,

medicalization, and fat acceptance, and the numerous interpretations and reactions to these texts

by viewers.

Two studies, in particular, expand the logics usually found in or applied to reality and

makeover television programs. Firstly, Katherine Sender and Margaret Sullivan (2008, 574)

focus on audience reception of both The Biggest Loser (US version) and What Not to Wear (UK

version). They find that many viewers actually critique the messages in these programs for being

too narrow, inadequate, or as offering “bad advice.” However, they also determine that audiences

still agree with the underlying transformative messages of each program and the framing of

fatness as a problem in need of management, ultimately interpreting those messages as

motivating and useful for the participants featured on the show and for themselves as viewers

(2008, 579). While this study of television reception does not demonstrate that we are resistant to

messages of self-discipline and dominant obesity epidemic discourses, it does remind us of how

audiences understand and interpret texts in numerous ways. Likewise, in an analysis of The

Oprah Winfrey Show (1986-2011), The Biggest Loser, and Big Medicine (2007-2008), Helene

Shugart (2011, 37) argues that we are seeing a shifting social narrative of obesity, from solely

blaming fat individuals for lacking personal responsibility to connecting the issue of obesity to

broader social issues, cultural understandings, and policies. Shugart’s analysis expands the

messages put forth by reality television scholars as she demonstrates the narratives and

representations on television go beyond the individual, still positioning participants as lacking

willpower, but also considering issues of emotional health, agency and addiction.

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Surveying all of these areas of scholarship is useful for determining how representations

and narratives of fatness negotiate various public health, medical, and fat acceptance discourses

within the context of the obesity epidemic and neoliberalism. However, and most importantly,

these representations and narratives need to be considered in relation to the industrial logics

behind their production and understood as extending and reflecting numerous regulatory debates

about communication and health. Additionally, any limited writing about fat bodies and

television primarily looks within the U.S. without consideration of the global health discourses

circulated by international NGOs and regulatory bodies, or the globalized nature of media

industries, and thus, media industry lore. While this project will include mostly examples from

the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia, as these countries are considered to have high rates of

obesity and produce and circulate most of the television programming on this subject matter,

international television industry practices, supranational health organization influences, and

different national policy initiatives will also be considered as they are inextricably linked to our

understandings of both fatness and television in the U.S.

Chapter Breakdown

I devote chapter two to mapping both historical and current communication policy

debates and regulations, as well as long-standing conceptualizations of the medium of television,

it’s social and cultural status, and it’s relationship with fatness. Additionally, the second chapter

examines the way different regulatory policies and discussions provide an important context for

understanding the circulation of fat television in the U.S. and abroad. Citizens, public health

officials, social scientists, and government regulators around the globe are increasingly

interrogating or renewing their focus on the way television and advertising content is regulated,

especially in regard to children’s programming, within the context of the obesity epidemic. As a

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result, the television industry is employing several strategies to position itself as both acting

within a kind of public interest and as a solution to the obesity epidemic instead of a cause.

Television concern over the health and body size of television viewers is especially evident in

relation to the cable channel BET and the BET Foundation’s efforts to end obesity, and

children’s television and its efforts to combat childhood obesity, but can be seen in television

texts and practices more generally across the industry. This chapter thus demonstrates the way

communication policies, or even regulatory debates and regulator expressions of concern,

continue to shape and constrain television industry practices as reported in trade and news

publications, discussed in press releases, and as found in various public service initiatives and

representations.

Chapters three, four, and five then explore overlapping yet distinct discourses of fatness

taken up by, negotiated, and recirculated on television. Erving Goffman (1974) contends that

conceptual frames help us organize our thoughts and experiences as well as guide our opinion

formations and actions. The particular frame used, or what ideas and details are both emphasized

and deemphasized, across television texts, policy documents, and news media reports, influences

the way individuals understand fatness, whether as something to celebrate or a problem in need

of intervention or treatment, and has important implications for what types of interventions,

treatments, or other solutions are considered necessary or appropriate, if any at all. In the context

of the obesity epidemic, these conceptual frames reflect (and of course continue to circulate)

various discourses of the body, influencing the kinds of representations appearing across

different television programs. Therefore, and like Herman Gray’s Watching Race (1995), each

chapter is organized by which broader discourses are privileged or dominant across different sets

of television texts, specifically public health discourses and weight-loss (chapter three),

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medicalized bodies in relation to disease and disability (chapter four), and body/fat positivity and

fat acceptance (chapter five).

More specifically, the third chapter explores the most prominent type of television about

fatness: weight-loss television. Programs, such as I Used to Be Fat (2009- ), Heavy (2009),

Extreme Weight Loss (2011- ), Canada’s X-Weighted (2006- ), Australia's Big: Extreme

Makeover (2011), the UK’s Supersize vs Superskinny (2008- ), and dozens of others, detail

individual journeys of body transformation, or attempts at transformation, through expert

interventions, changes in diet, and implementations of exercise regimens. These programs, then,

largely reflect dominant discourses of the obesity epidemic correlating body fat amounts and

health statuses while also simultaneously and contradictorily reinforcing the importance of

individualism and social welfare interventionism for weight-loss. This chapter thus explores

contradictions of the obesity epidemic and weight-loss television programs, and contextualizes

them with news reports about the obesity epidemic, the widespread adoption of public health

standards for obesity, largely established by the World Health Organization, and health policy

debates and initiatives. I then interrogate theorizations of reality television within the field of

television studies, showing how weight-loss programs problematize the efficacy of television’s

ability to govern at a distant and act as a surveillance appendage that encourages self-discipline,

self-control, and transformation.

Chapter four considers another area of fat television, namely programs that tell the story

of fat bodies framed and categorized as diseased, socially disabled, and physically impaired as

part of larger trends of both medicalizing and pathologizing the body, as well as the proliferation

of medical entertainment and information across television texts. Examples of medicalized

television programming include I Eat 33,000 Calories a Day (2008), Half-Ton Teen (2009), and

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My 600 Pound Life (2012- ), which all visually represent the materiality, lived experiences, and

health statuses of those who are medically considered super or morbidly obese. This chapter,

then, explores medicalized television in relation to the medicalized fat body, and connects those

programs to debates over the relationships between medical authority and individual agency over

the body as well as interconnections between policy and NGO discussions about disability and

disease. While chapter three examines the ways in which public health focuses primarily on

populations and groups in order to help individuals, this chapter looks at the medical discourses

and practices focusing on individual bodies without individual blame in the context of hospitals,

weight-loss clinics, and in patient homes.

Chapter five examines body and fat positivity articulated to discourses fat acceptance

across television texts like Big Sexy (2011), Curvy Girls (2011- ), Huge (2010), Mike and Molly

(2010- ), Drop Dead Diva (2009-2014) and Super Fun Night (2013). While there are still very

few shows fully dedicated to explicit messages of fat acceptance, fat bodies are becoming both

increasingly visible across the television landscape and a greater number reflect fat feminist

politics more commonly found on fashion blogs, in feminist zines, and on snarky news websites,

such as Jezebel, that typically target more niche audiences than even small cable channels. While

these resistant examples are still far from mainstream, messages of body and fat positivity are

appearing with increasing regularity across traditional media platforms, including national news

magazines and television programming. The growing presence of these texts across numerous

channels, as well as the popularity of some of them, indicate both an emerging industry lore and

shifting social narratives of fatness that push back against the public health and medical framing

of fatness as an epidemic. These programs generally avoid sustained discussions of weight-loss,

personal responsibility, discipline or control, disease, social disability, physical impairment, and

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the framing of fatness as abject, and actively work to represent fat characters and programs

participants as actual people as opposed bodies in need of public health intervention or medical

treatment.

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Chapter 2. Communication Policies, and Media Industries

“Is it any coincidence that the size of TV screens has grown in proportion with the size of the obesity epidemic?”

Andrew Korner, The Queensland Times, 2015.

Television is regularly and simultaneously considered to be a destructive social and

political force as well as a tool for education and the public good. Newton Minnow famously

lamented in his 1961 speech at the National Association of Broadcasters convention that

television was nothing more than a “vast wasteland” (further downgrading the TV landscape to

the status of “toxic dump” in a 2001 USA Today editorial). This sentiment reflects both popular

discourses denigrating TV, also evidenced by a popular nickname given to television in the late

1960s, the “boob tube,” and anxiety over the detrimental impact of mass communication on

political and public life (Schiller 1969; Lippmann 1982; Garnham 1987). This anxiety continued

especially in regards to commercial television programs and their audiences. For example, the

1988 PBS documentary The Promise of Television refers to commercial TV viewers as

“consumers addicted to ‘time-wasting’ amusements” (Ouellette 2002, 4). Yet even before

television became ubiquitous in American homes, many others viewed TV as a “wellspring from

which would flow great social, cultural, and intellectual benefits” (MacDonald 1992, xv). In this

sense, TV became a potential educator and was frequently framed as both a tool for social

benefit and mechanism for shifting public opinion in regard to international politics (Curtin

1995) or racial politics and civil rights (MacDonald 1992). This dual, contradictory framing of

TV, in terms of both critiques of content and discussions of television’s positive potential is

important for establishing the way TV is currently vilified in relation to fatness while also

viewed as a potential solution to it as a global health “problem.” More specifically, popular

assumptions about television watchers being couch potatoes with more sedentary lifestyles

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(evidenced even by the name of the first Zenith remote control made in 1950, “Lazy Bones”)

positions TV as a culprit in global weight gain necessitating both increased government

regulation, or discussions of regulation, and industry action working to reposition television to as

a positive force or a solution to global health issues.

Chapter Overview and Argument

These associations being drawn between television watching and fatness within the context of

the obesity epidemic impact the television industry in two key ways. Numerous citizens, public

health officials, and government regulators are renewing their focus on the way television and

advertising content is regulated (or more accurately, not regulated), especially during children’s

programming or programming targeting other “vulnerable populations.” Even though few

regulations are actually implemented within the U.S., specifically, this chapter demonstrates the

significance of “regulation by raised eyebrow,” which Thomas Streeter defines as “unfulfilled

regulatory threats that cajole industry members into slight modifications” (1996, 189). However,

in the context of the obesity epidemic, industry reactions extend beyond minor modifications to

programming and demonstrate regulation without actual regulation, particularly in the U.S. In

fact, the television industry is employing several strategies to position itself both as acting within

the public interest and as a solution to the obesity instead of a cause. Strategies include

exhibiting more programming about weight-loss, creating health campaigns and partnerships to

reduce fatness, and engaging in forms of self-regulation to prevent further governmental

attention and eyebrow-raising. Ultimately, both renewed regulation and critical attention from

outside the industry, and industry strategies and self-regulation, reflect lingering notions of

broadcast television’s capability and, to some, responsibility, of operating in the public interest,

and extends those ideas to cable and pay cable channels as well. Whether the television industry

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actually acts in the public interest (it’s probably fair to say that they generally do not) is not the

focus of this chapter, but rather how TV as a medium is perceived to both contribute to obesity

and counteract obesity through education, awareness campaigns, and interventions. This

reinforces television’s contradictory status as both serving the public interest and the corporate

interest of generating capital, as a tool for the public good and as a source of social concern,

influencing media industry activities and self-regulatory actions that invite viewers, critics, and

government officials to residually view them as, at the very least, responsive to public concerns.

Finally, these policy debates and raised eyebrows show that television is not necessarily

replacing government, or just exemplifying the privatization of the public good, but rather how

TV intensifies government’s role by dispersing its logics throughout a society of control.

Television Makes You Fat?

Beside TV’s position as a tool for education or as a medium for public service is its long

history of being denigrated for allegedly encouraging inactive or sedentary lifestyles. The

expression “couch potato” is often levied against watchers of TV, with the average American

viewing about 5 hours per day (“Americans Watching More TV Than Ever” 2009). A 2004

article in Broadcasting and Cable jokes that perhaps we’ve even transitioned from “couch

potato” to “couch burger, fries, and a shake” in the context of the obesity epidemic (Lowery

2004). This particular television discourse is so dominant that the Malaysian government decided

not to allow 24-hour television transmission (choosing to instead shut down its four channels for

a few hours each night) because of the belief that watching TV leads to obesity among viewers

(“Round-the-Clock TV” 1995).

With these expressions and fears circulating over television and its alleged effects on

people, it comes as no surprise that TV is positioned as especially problematic in terms of

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children and fatness. News reports lament that children spend more time watching television than

they do outside playing. For example, The Irish Times reported in 2007 that one-in-four Irish

girls and one-in-five Irish boys between the ages of eight and twelve can be classified as

overweight or obese according to the Body Mass Index. The article then attributes these statistics

to kids’ increased likelihood of obesity if their mothers are obese, and kids’ increased likelihood

of watching TV if their mothers do. Even though the article does not explicitly position TV as a

factor in obesity, the connection is assumed to be common sense (Cullen 2007). More evidence

of the common sense status of the “television makes you fat” discourse can be seen in numerous

articles, including one in the London newspaper, The Independent, which states without any

citation, “Sitting in front the television for multiple hours a day... is likely to make you fat”

(Blacker 2012). The Vancouver Sun reported in a 2011 issue: “Your television has an off switch

and chances are if you don’t use it, your children will grow up to be overweight or obese…

Simply turning the TV off makes children and adults more active” (Shore 2011). Lastly, the

Boston Globe reported in 2003:

The two prime culprits for this expanding obesity epidemic are inactivity and overeating, and TV watching is linked to both of them. This is an important take-home lesson, now that school’s ending and children can finally relax. Too often they relax- just like adults- by spending lazy hours in front of the TV, which can be hazardous to both age groups’ health and well-being. (Hellmich 2009)

These examples reach the status of general knowledge or “common sense” with the help of

numerous academic studies also positioning TV as a cause of fatness. In fact, according to one

study, just owning a television in lower income countries, such as India, Bangladesh, and

Zimbabwe, may quadruple your risk of obesity and diabetes (Lear et al. 2014). Another “obesity

expert,” Dr. Gary Egger, finds that metabolic rates are lower when individuals watch TV while

lying down, and watching TV makes us more tempted to snack (Pengelley 2003). Research

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published in Preventive Medicine concludes: “Women, but not men, with higher levels of TV-

viewing time had higher odds of reducing physical activity levels” and “abdominal obesity is

associated with prospective reductions in physical activity” (Lakerveld et al. 2011). Additionally,

an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association determines a positive

correlation between time spent watching TV and a “risk” of obesity, leading researchers to

recommend watching less TV as a method of obesity prevention (Hu 2012). Yet another a study

conducted by the John Hopkins University School of Medicine in conjunction with the CDC and

NIH finds that children, in particular, experience weight increases when television consumption

increases (Dich 2006). Similar studies connecting children’s “heavy television viewing” to an

increased risk of being classified as overweight or obese have been replicated across multiple

countries, including the U.S., Mexico, and New Zealand (Gortmaker et al. 1996; Andersen et al.

1998; Hernandez et al. 1999; Hancox and Poulton 2006).

Much of this research relies on existing popular discourses in their assumptions and

conclusions about the connection between television and fatness. For instance, an August 2012

article in Physiology & Behavior states:

While the causes of obesity are multifaceted, there is growing evidence that television viewing is a major contributor. Results of numerous studies indicate a direct association between time spent watching television and body weight. Possible explanations for this relationship include: 1) watching television acts as a sedentary replacement for physical activity; 2) food advertisements for nutrient-poor, high-calorie foods stimulate food intake; and 3) television viewing is associated with ‘mindless’ eating. (Buolos et al. 2012)

And one of the major conclusions from the article? “The simplest way to minimize the impact of

television on the obesity epidemic is to watch less of it.” Despite none of these studies being able

to establish causation (that TV causes fatness), all of them inevitably prescribe watching less

television in order to decrease the size of our bodies. Even through just these few examples, it’s

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clear how medical discourses create, reflect, and support popular discourses associating fatness

and television. Beyond the scope of this project, however, is whether fatness and TV watching

are actually related, or whether watching TV causes fatness, but rather to establish the ways in

which these kinds of television concerns and anxieties influence regulatory debates, media

industry actions, and fat television programming.

Television and the Public Interest

Throughout television’s history viewers have regularly been considered to be of low

culture, lazy, or childlike (Ouellette 2002, 39). Even regulatory institutions, such as the FCC,

have during some periods adopted paternalistic positions toward TV viewers, usually

infantilizing them and viewing them as homogenous masses in need of protection (Ouellette

2002, 33). Even though we no longer think, or ever really thought, that television’s primary role

is to serve the public interest or “protect” mass audiences allegedly in need of education and

guidance, television regulation and regulation by raised eyebrow reflect such a view. In this

respect, the same balance of trying to protect viewers in reflection of social welfare discourses,

yet influence and control viewers, both massifying them and attempting to individually shape

them, is present throughout television’s history, albeit perhaps most conspicuously in the context

of the obesity epidemic and neoliberal era.

Television’s role in serving the public interest in the U.S. extends back to the foundation

of early radio broadcasting. Even though the form of early radio broadcasting in the U.S. was

debated, specifically whether it would be a commercial system or a public system, defining the

airwaves as public or comparing them to “public waterways” (Streeter 1996, 97) still influences

the way we conceptualize television, even if only peripherally. Prior to the passing of the 1934

Communications Act, which established the Federal Communication Commission and primarily

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regulated radio, debates circulated over whether broadcasting as a commercial system could

operate in the public interest in terms of providing educational or culturally uplifting

programming (McChesney 1999, 200). The passage of the act settled the debate by answering in

the affirmative that a commercial system could still consider the public interest and social

welfare. This logic is also evident in the FCC being tasked by congress to not only regulate in

support of developing the broadcast industry, but to do so in a manner that “meets the

informational needs of the public” (Simshaw 2012, 2). Interestingly, these decisions

simultaneously downplay U.S. broadcasting’s public interest role by favoring the adoption of a

commercial system while connecting commercial television to it ideologically by “requiring”

that they partially fulfill what a non-profit system aspired to.

The development of broadcast television as a commercial system in the U.S. is unique, as

most other countries had public broadcasting systems with the explicit goal of public service;

meaning that they would be accessible and programs would be diverse, informational, and of

good quality. Public service television in Europe, according to Raymond Williams (1974), took

on a paternalistic role that had an explicit mandate of cultural uplift according to the standards,

tastes, and values set by political, social, and economic elites. According to Ian Ang (1991, 103),

television’s non-commercial purpose was often viewed in terms of reforming the public or

showing the public how to “better perform democratic rights and duties.” Even though many of

these public service systems have been replaced by commercial systems or exist concomitantly

with commercial systems today, many public channels around the globe are still associated with

similar public interest discourses.

The debate over what public interest or public service broadcasting actually means

depends completely on whom you are asking. Robert McChesney (1999, 226) partially defines

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public interest broadcasting as non-profit and “aimed at providing a service to the entire

population.” Conversely, according to Michael McCauley (2002, 229), industry rhetoric

positions the public interest as government supporting a marketplace that fosters business or

corporate growth and serves a variety of consumers. Further, in the context of the obesity

epidemic, not actively harming the public interest is positioned as analogous to serving the

public interest. Regardless of how the public interest is actually defined, as industries most likely

adopt the latter two definitions and frame their actions according to the former, discourses of the

public interest have been circulated and debated as long as contemporary electronic media have

existed.

While broadcast TV is most often connected to notions of the public interest, debates

over cable television’s expansion throughout cities in the U.S. echoed similar concerns and

goals. In 1972, the Federal Communications Commission stated that new cable systems “in the

100 largest television markets be required to provide channels for government, for educational

purposes, and most importantly, for public access” (Kellner 1987, 610). Even though the

Supreme Court struck down this mandate in 1979, many cities and municipalities negotiating

with cable systems were able to secure public access channels throughout the 1980s (Kellner

1987, 610). Additionally, the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 specifically encouraged

the growth of cable systems in order to provide “the widest possible diversity of information

sources and services to the public” (cited in Aufderheide 1992, 53). Even “must-carry” rules

originally governing the relationships between local network affiliates and cable operators

privilege access to information and the notion of the public interest. However, cable was framed

with public interest goals more than it actually served them in practice. According to Patricia

Aufderheide, rhetoric of the “public interest was universally invoked but rarely represented”

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(1992, 53).

For both broadcast and cable, appearing to act in the public interest, regardless of how it

is actually defined, works toward framing the television industry as responsive to public

concerns and helps them evade government intervention and lower the eyebrows of regulators. In

fact, even during broadcasting industry deregulation during the 1980s, public interest standards

were not rejected, just redefined. Trusting the market was viewed as the best way to serve the

public interest (Simshaw 2012, 407). Additionally, the FCC declared in its 1984 “Revision of

Programming and Commercialization Policies” report: “Commercial television broadcasters will

remain subject to an obligation to provide programming that is responsive to the issues

confronting the community… it will be able to address issues by whatever program mix it

believes is appropriate in order to be responsive to the needs of its community” (Simshaw 2012,

407).

While debates over the structure and control of television have been the primary focus of

the FCC historically, public debates, while often marginalized, have always persisted concerning

the content of television (Hendershot 1999, 65). Since the mid-1960s there has been a sustained

effort to use regulation in order to change programming watched by children because of the

effect content is believed to specifically have on them (Streeter 1996, 90). According to

Hendershot (1999, 5), “TV reformers see culture as something that is merely added onto an

inherently innocent child... Any writing on these youthful slates is potentially dangerous and

potentially indelible.” These types of content concerns and debates often remain outside the

concern of regulatory bodies, but these particular content debates corresponded with Newton

Minow’s “vast wasteland” speech, which emphasizes the broadcast industry’s public

responsibility to educate and enlighten viewers (Curtin 1995, 32), and the FCC reorienting itself

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toward the regulation of content and serving the public interest. This example of public concern

and regulatory responses aligning mirrors what is currently happening in terms of children’s

television, and more specifically, the “junk” food advertising that supports it. As early as 2004,

reports in Broadcasting and Cable show that television advertisers, in particular, were “getting

slammed for promoting bad habits” by regulators and health officials (McConnell 2004).

This time around, however, debates concerning children’s television and advertising in

the context of the obesity epidemic are inspiring regulatory action beyond the United States.

Numerous groups call for the banning of “junk” food during children’s television programming,

with one of the more recent calls in the U.S. coming from the American Academy of Pediatrics

in 2011 (“Docs Want TV” 2011). The logic underpinning this call can be seen in a study

conducted by the University of Liverpool connecting the viewing of commercials with children’s

appetites for sweet and high fat foods (Boyland et al. 2011). The findings were reported by a

Singapore newspaper, The Straits Times, in 2011: “Television advertisements for junk food

really do make children hunger for those treats, especially if they spend a lot of time watching

television programs” (“TV Ads Lure Kids” 2011).

This logic also underpins South Korea’s multi-strategy campaign against the obesity

epidemic. In 2010, the South Korean Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Family Affairs banned

snack and fast-food advertisements during daytime television programming in order to restrict

children’s exposure to them. Interestingly, this ban does not specifically target children’s

programming, but instead includes all programming that children may have access to during the

day. The Korea Times reports that the impetus behind this ban comes from increased warnings of

the “possible link between TV commercials encouraging consumption of these products and

increasing child obesity” by experts (Ji-Sook 2010). Countries, like South Korea, may also be

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more eager to regulate advertising to children after research conducted by the University of

Illinois Urbana-Champaign shows Quebec’s thirty-two year ban on fast-food advertising

potentially resulting in teens living there being thirty-eight percent less likely to buy fast-food in

comparison to teens in other parts of Canada. Additionally, it is estimated that Quebec kids

consumed two to four billion less fast-food calories during that time period than they would have

without the advertising ban (“Study: Quebec Ban” 2012).

These findings and their subsequent news reports, then, support numerous regulatory

discussions and moves toward banning “junk” food advertising to kids, and proposed or already

established bans exist the world over. The World Health Organization’s Global Strategy on Diet,

Physical Activity, and Health recommends limiting messages to children for “unhealthy foods”

and encouraging the consumption of “healthy foods,” while also calling for a reduction in the

total number of commercial advertisements for “junk” food (“Global Strategy” 2012). Many

countries seem to be following suit; for example, in Scotland, TV advertisements for any foods

that are determined to be high in fat, sugar, or salt may be restricted until 9pm (“Fat TV” 2012),

adding to a pre-existing ban of “fatty food” advertisements during children’s programming,

“children” being defined as those under sixteen years of age (Sweney 2006). Responding to

reports that one third of all children in the U.K. are classified as overweight or obese according

to the Body Mass Index, the U.K. became the first country to establish nutritional restrictions on

advertising content directed toward children (Patel and Farmery 2011).

Joining the U.K., a number of other countries also regulate food advertising. France

requires that healthy or balanced diet information must be provided along with any food

advertising (Hawkes 2004). Nigeria and Thailand both require that the government approve

advertisements for all foods. Australia and the Philippines both restrict “false advertising” in

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regard to the nutritional quality of foods. China, Denmark, Finland, and Malaysia each have

regulations in place prohibiting snacks with low nutritional qualities from being advertised as

meals as well as government recommendations encouraging advertisements for balanced diets

(Hawkes 2004). While there are still few examples of countries outright banning the advertising

of “junk” foods it is consistently debated in Australia, Canada, and elsewhere (Martin and

Swimburn 2009). These limited examples of international regulation are important because the

U.S. television industry acts with the global in mind not only in terms of what kinds of programs

are created (and where they are exported), but also the form programs take to potentially mitigate

the growing global regulatory concern over television advertising and programming in relation to

fatness.

Within the U.S. itself there is also a significant amount of regulatory debate concerning

the relationship between obesity, particularly childhood obesity, and television viewing. For

example, after Deborah Taylor Tate’s 2007 appointment to the FCC she set out to examine this

very relationship (Teinowitz 2007). Around the same time, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and

Senator Sam Brownback, in conjunction with Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate, formed the

“Media and Childhood Obesity: Today and Tomorrow Task Force.” This task force is comprised

of not only the FCC, but also media members (including representatives from Disney, Discovery,

Food Network, MTV, and Telemundo [Eggerton 2007a]) and advertising and food executives.

The task force’s goal, according to an article in Broadcasting and Cable, is both to determine

“TV’s Duty to Kids” (“TV’s Duty” 2007) and whether the food advertising industry and

television channels are doing enough self-regulation to ward off further governmental regulation

(Eggerton 2007b). Brownback spoke of its importance to the trade journal Broadcast

Engineering: “Judging by the sheer volume of media and advertising that children consume on a

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daily basis, and given alarming trends in childhood obesity, we’re facing a public health problem

that will only get worse unless we take action” (Eggerton 2007b). Of course, there are numerous

government initiatives focusing on childhood obesity, including Michelle Obama’s “Let’s

Move!” campaign, but this one is particularly important as it directly explores the relationship

between television and health to the point where the government is positioning television itself as

having a role in the obesity epidemic, providing further evidence that television is still

considered in relation to ideals of the public interest and the potential for education.

Currently, the Children’s Television Act of 1990 regulates broadcast networks, local

affiliates, and cable operators in regard to advertising and children’s programming. The FCC

enforces limits on the amount of advertising that can air during children's programming (targeted

to those under twelve years of age) to ten and a half minutes per hour on weekends and twelve

minutes per hour on weekdays (Hayes 1994). The FCC also limits “program-length

commercials,” which prohibits programs based on children’s products or toys from advertising

those products or toys during the show. Both Nickelodeon and ABC Family were fined a total

one and a half million dollars in October of 2004 for violating these limits (Shields 2004). While

updates to this Act include greater emphasis on and requirements for exhibiting educational

programming, it has not (yet) been updated to restrict the kinds of food products advertised to

children despite a few efforts. In 2004, a failed bill introduced by Sen. Tom Harken (D-Iowa)

proposed granting the Federal Trade Commission the ability to regulate advertising to children

(Ives 2004). In 2011, the FTC in conjunction with the Food and Drug Administration and

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report of suggestions, or “voluntary

principles,” on how food marketers and advertisers could respond to growing obesity epidemic

concerns. Ultimately, the voluntary principles simply asked marketers and advertisers to

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encourage children to eat healthy foods, including fruits, vegetables, and lean meats, during

thirty-second television spots and on product packaging (Newman 2011).

All of these regulatory examples operate under the assumption that there are direct

connections between what we see on TV and what we think and do. This model of media effects

is especially considered to be the case when it comes to children, who are positioned as more

susceptible and impressionable, and thus, in need of more protection. Regulatory discussions and

policies building off of these assumptions also support the idea that television industry practices,

and in this case their relationship to advertisers, at least cannot be counter to the interests of the

public, if not directly in the public interest, demonstrating television’s contradictory status as a

medium both in the public and corporate interests, and as both a tool for public and a source of

social concern.

Television’s Own “Battle of the Bulge”

In addition to regulation of the TV industry and food advertising practices in response to

associations between TV and fatness, especially heighted within the context of the obesity

epidemic, the television industry is also taking numerous steps to counter those associations,

including more content dealing with health and weight, and encouraging viewers, especially

children, to be more physically active. These examples along with other tactics show how the

television industry is preemptively engaging in a form of self-regulation that counters discourses

both connecting and blaming TV for obesity, which continues a long history of media industry

self-regulation aiming to prevent government regulation. Heather Hendershot states, “The free

market approach to regulation assumes that self-regulation of content is adequate, inevitable, and

benevolent because big business feels a sense of duty to consumers” (1998, 18). Furthermore,

Anna McCarthy (2010, 24) argues that the early broadcasting industry and corporate leaders

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positioned themselves as moral guardians over the interest of the nation. This status is a strategy

that encourages TV content to be seen as in the public interest, regardless of whether it actually

is, and obfuscates the notion that exercises of corporate power may not actually be in the public

interest (McCarthy 2010, 27). Further, current

This public interest strategy combined with television’s potential role in the obesity

epidemic, and the prevalence of fatness as a topic of concern, lead to the development of

programming appealing to large audiences. A 2010 article in the Australian newspaper, The

Sunday Mail, explains that television programs dealing with fatness is popular with viewers

because large numbers of people can relate to struggles over weight, and can vicariously lose

weight through the people they see on the small screen (Tucker-Evans 2010). One article in

Variety argues that television networks have discovered that “big weight equals big business,”

while further elaborating, “with so many TV viewers struggling with their weight, showcasing

more realistically sized people on reality TV would seem to be a no brainer” (Schneider 2009).

Of course large audiences identifying with the weight issues exhibited on the small screen are

also perfect for advertisers of diet plans, gym equipment, and health food. However, shifting the

focus away from profit, Variety also reports network executives and producers as saying that

they are not trying to exploit fat people, but are instead trying to inspire them, specifically

quoting an executive producer of The Biggest Loser, And Koops, as saying, “This is an absolute

epidemic and it’s a real issue we’re addressing” (Schneider 2009).

Additionally, The Biggest Loser, which is one of the foundational weight-loss programs,

is evidence of the popularity and global success of fat television. The Biggest Loser features

numerous contestants classified as obese who compete to lose the largest amount of weight for

monetary prizes. Even though the obesity epidemic is often framed as a primarily western

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phenomenon, the production of The Biggest Loser in twenty-five countries and regions proves

otherwise. The list of countries with formats of The Biggest Loser includes Mexico‘s ¿Cuánto

Quieres Perder? (“How much do you want to lose?”) and India‘s Biggest Loser Jeetega. Both

countries are viewed by WHO standards as having obesity rates not far behind the U.S., as is the

case in India (“Weight Loss TV” 2007), or higher than the U.S., as is the case in Mexico (Romo

2011). Even regions of the world that are generally not associated with fatness, such as countries

in the Caribbean region or throughout Africa, may also become markets for fat television

programming, evidenced further by news and health reports detailing the “problem” of obesity

becoming as prevalent as the problem of malnutrition (Hope 2010). For example, The New

Zealand Herald reports on rising obesity rates in Kenya in connection with a growing middle

class and the opening of several Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants.4 Additionally, several

advertisements airing on Kenyan satellite television now advise people to watch their weights

when not long ago advice centered on encouraging parents to feed their children more (“Kenya’s

Growing Middle Class” 2012).

Regardless, primarily western countries and regions, namely the U.S., U.K. Canada,

Australia, and New Zealand, produce the bulk of fat television. Some programs mimic the

competition format of The Biggest Loser, such as Australia’s Excess Baggage (2012- ) and the

U.K.’s Lorraine Kelly’s Big Fat Challenge (2010- ), but other programs focus on eliminating

childhood obesity, food in relation to fatness and health, medicalizations of fatness in connection

to disease and disability, or explore the obesity epidemic more generally. For example, ABC’s

Shaq’s Big Challenge (2007) features former NBA player Shaquille O’Neal trying to help six

“morbidly obese” children lose weight while simultaneously campaigning for mandatory

physical education classes throughout Florida’s public schools (Lowery 2007). The series only 4 This situation will be further discussed in chapter three.

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aired a few episodes, but was notable for featuring then Florida Governor Charlie Crist, which

helped to weave narratives of both the personal responsibility of children and their parents as

well as government responsibility within the school system as contributors to the health of

children. Additionally, Honey, We’re Killing the Kids! (2005-2007), a BBC series remade in the

United States, imagines the futures of children if they remain fat and continue to make poor

dietary choices. All of the children are shown gaining weight in their hypothetical futures,

necessitating a health overhaul for the entire family. Both of these examples illustrate potential

forms that fat TV can take beyond weight-loss competitions while still focusing on weight-loss,

and how television content can be interpreted as working toward a solution to the obesity

epidemic, in accordance with the public interest, as opposed to a cause.

The television series Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution (2010-2011) aired in the U.S., U.K.

and Greece, and serves as one of the best examples of television operating in a sense of the

public interest. JOFR focuses primarily on the nutritional quality of school lunches (or lack

thereof) and their impact on childhood obesity, but also examines the way families typically eat

at home. As indicted by the title of the program, the show both sought to teach families how to

cook healthy food instead of stopping at fast-food drive-thrus and to transform school lunch

programs from their usually processed and prepackaged offerings to foods made from fresh,

whole ingredients. While JOFR was not very successful at “revolutionizing” school lunches due

to resistance from public school systems, the show can be considered successful in terms of

educating the public, or publicizing particular discourses, about the sad state of children’s

lunches and nutritional problems inherent in and exacerbated by contemporary food regulation.

For example, “pink slime” became a hot topic after Jamie Oliver demonstrated to a room full of

parents and primary school children how meat scraps are treated with ammonia and added to

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ground hamburger. Many credit this segment with popularizing the “pink slime” debates within

public discourse, as the segment received over a million YouTube hits, and became an issue

across numerous news programs and talk shows. Following this television attention, multiple fast

food restaurants, including McDonalds, discontinued the use of “pink slime” in their hamburger

patties (Boffey 2012; Robertson 2012).

Another example of the television industry producing programming both framed as

responsive to the obesity epidemic and as operating in the public interest is HBO’s Weight of the

Nation (2012). For this documentary mini-series HBO partnered with several of the nation's

leading public health groups and agencies, including the Institute of Medicine, the Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institute of Health. The series explores socio-

economic or systemic factors contributing to fatness, the role of the food industry, and of course,

individual responsibilities over the size and health of our bodies. Yet the ultimate purpose of the

documentary is, at least according to Variety: “Like many HBO documentaries, this one seeks to

inform, inspire, and perhaps even anger, rousing a citizenry from its complacency and unhealthy

habits like drinking sugary beverages, from which average Americans derive nearly half their

calories” (Lowery 2011). Furthermore, producer of Weight of the Nation, John Hoffmann, states

in a Newsweek article that the purpose of the program is to “sound the alarm” and motivate the

nation to act (Taubes 2012). These stated goals continue a long history of political and corporate

leaders, as well as television creators, using documentaries to mobilize public opinion (Curtin

1995, 3). Regardless of whether these are HBO’s actual goals in producing and exhibiting

Weight of the Nation, the subject matter and tone of the documentary is perceived to be one of

education and awareness squarely within the public interest, and even activist, tradition.

Furthermore, twenty-minute Weight of the Nation episodes are also available for free on

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Amazon, iTunes, and other streaming services. This frames HBO as being more concerned about

getting information out to the public as opposed to keeping their content behind a paywall and

directly profiting from it.

Some television programs go beyond just engaging in issues of public interest and debate

by actively encouraging their viewers to participate in certain activities. Extreme Weight Loss

and The Biggest Loser frequently contain segments with healthy recipes for viewers to replicate

at home, then directing viewers to their respective websites for further health information or diet

advice. This practices is fairly common on other health-focused shows that go beyond topics of

weight, such as Dr. Oz (2009- ) and The Talk (2010- ). However, Extreme Weight Loss even goes

one step further by encouraging viewers in its first season exercises during commercial breaks.

The show thus becomes a way for viewers to squeeze in physical activity-- almost 20 minutes of

jumping jacks!-- while being informed and potentially inspired by the content of the show itself.

This commercial-break workout is similar to the “Couch Potato Workouts” frequently discussed

and recommended by Dr. Oz and across numerous lifestyle magazines, including Cosmopolitan,

Women’s Health, and Prevention.5

Beyond programming content encouraging diet, exercise, and weight-loss, channels

themselves are working toward making their audiences “healthier.” One instance of this includes

Discovery Fit and Health (formerly Discovery Health and FitTV) scheduling numerous programs

about physical fitness, including the BBC’s Are you Fitter Than a Pensioner? (2010), which is

retitled in the U.S. as Are You Fitter Than a Senior? (2011) because pensions are all but

nonexistent in the U.S. these days. In this series young, inactive kids with poor eating habits are

paired with senior citizens at an active living community in California so they can learn the

5 These workouts basically detail exercise routines that can be performed from the comfort of one’s own couch while watching television or during commercial breaks.

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benefits of adopting disciplined and healthy lifestyles. Most of the channel’s fitness and fat-

fighting efforts can be found on their website where blogs and videos provide information for

viewers from weight-loss tips to instructions for recovering from food poisoning. In conjunction

with programming and online content, the biggest Discovery Fit and Health initiative is their

National Body Challenge. Beginning as a TV mini-series in 2005, the National Body Challenge

became an annual event that incorporates interactive online profiles, twenty-four-hour support

and advice, customized meal plans, free thirty-day Bally Total Fitness memberships in many

communities, and of course, television programs featuring the weight-loss success of National

Body Challenge participants.

Similar to the National Body Challenge, the BBC aired a nine-part reality show, Fat

Nation: The Big Challenge (2004), which “took over” a neighborhood in Birmingham, England.

Fitness experts monitored neighborhood residents, taught them about nutrition and exercise, and

set weekly weight-loss challenges and goals. Viewers at home were also encouraged to complete

the weekly challenges and meet weekly goals, and the nation’s progress was reported during

each episode. Liz Cleaver, a representative of BBC Learning and Interactive spoke about the

impetus behind Fat Nation in a 2004 press release:

We know that lots of our viewers are worried about their weight and fitness and the health problems they could be storing up for the future. They want to do something about it, but the problem, as ever, is getting started. BBC Learning will take the sting out of it. We’re going to help viewers to take that all-important first step and--crucially-- keep it up.

In writing about the debut of Fat Nation, The Independent reinforced the BBC’s seemingly

altruistic goals: “After decades of turning people into couch potatoes, it is to embark on an

ambitious two-year campaign that is aimed at nothing less than reducing the collective weight of

the British public” (Burrell 2004). Along with the show itself, Fat Nation included interactive

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online services, including tips to complete weekly challenges, personalized diet and health

information, and a “personal locker area” where individuals can track their progress. Sport Packs

were also sold that included measuring cups for tracking calories and pedometers for measuring

distances walked. Of course, part of the interactive service also includes reminding viewers to

watch the show!

BET, or Black Entertainment Television, is another channel working toward “bettering”

the health of its viewers, but their efforts are simultaneously more comprehensive (in terms of

content and partnerships) and targeted (in terms of audience specificity). In 2003, BET

developed a foundation in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to

specifically address the health issues of greatest concern to its audience. Mostly, however, the

foundation focuses on obesity because of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

estimates that eighty percent of Black women are classified as overweight or obese (“Obesity

and African Americans” 2012), and Black women comprise a large segment of the BET

audience. Furthermore, BET’s audience is consistently labeled as especially “vulnerable” to this

“epidemic,” not only because of CDC body fat statistics, but also because 2011 Nielsen statics

reveal that African Americans watch more TV than any other constructed demographic group,

averaging seven hours per day. This sentiment is expressed in a BET Foundation press release:

“While the life expectancy and overall health of Americans has improved in recent years, the

burden of illness and death in African American communities remains disproportionately high.

We need to educate our community about the impact of some of our traditions and hopefully

inspire them to change” (“The BET Foundation” 2007). Thus, the combination of CDC obesity

statistics and Nielson television watching statics necessitates, at least in the eyes of BET and the

CDC, educational interventions to improve the “health” of BET’s audience.

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According to the CDC’s website: “These community members depend on BET to not

only bring them television entertainment, but to take the lead as a corporate citizen in providing

them essential information and resources to address the social concerns and health needs of its

community members” (“The BET Foundation Awards” 2009). The statement does a lot of work

in framing BET’s actions as within the public interest. By referring to audience members as

“community members” it downplays their commercially defined status, and the labeling of BET

as a corporate “citizen” emphasizes its concern over civic matters. BET also emphasizes its civic

role through several health campaigns and events held throughout the year. One campaign, in

partnership with General Mills, “A Healthy BET,” seeks to bring down the “obesity” rates,

particularly among Black women. In order to accomplish its goal “A Healthy BET” produced

public service announcements to be broadcast between programming, held seminars and public

forums in a few cities throughout the U.S., and created fitness challenges, programming

segments, a dedicated website, toll-free health hotline, and other brochures and information to

educate BET viewers (“The BET Foundation and General Mills” 2003).

An example of BET incorporating BET Foundation practices into its programming can be

seen in the show 106 & Park (2000-2014) a music video countdown show. The point of this

segment is to increase awareness among Black audiences that fatness is a “problem.” The

framing of awareness as a solution seems to assume that within African American communities

individuals have somehow evaded exposure to the deluge of obesity epidemic news reporting,

and that variations in body norms, specifically that Black women may be more satisfied with

their bodies overall (Annesi and Srinvassa 2010), need to change in order to comport with

medical and governmental recommendations. In one episode of 106 & Park, rapper Asher Roth

(who is, interestingly, white and rather slender) is shown rapping about obesity with the express

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goal of raising awareness. He raps:

Question: what are we feeding the kids? Man, they keep getting bigger like obesity is. Creeping up on us with each McDonalds, how wide are we going to let our pants legs get? It’s kind of good because I like fat chicks, but I feel bad watching the fat kids with their double chins flapping and underarm skin wiggling when clapping… Nothing is possible without good health.”

Even though this rap is offensive for a number of reasons, the hosts of 106 & Park praise Roth

for caring enough to intervene in such a “serious health issue” within Black communities.

Other rappers have testified to the importance of raising awareness and education on BET

as well. Before debuting his new music video Fat Joe took the opportunity to inform BET

viewers about his weight-loss journey:

I wasn’t educated. A Dr. never approached us and told us we needed to change. We didn’t realize we could be 27 and have a heart attack. That’s why we are trying to spread the knowledge right now. I am just a person who ate right and exercised. Get healthy, lose weight, save lives.

Both of these examples, which are characteristic of other BET segments about fatness, also

operate under several assumptions: one, individuals are unaware that certain actions or habits

may be unhealthy; two, if individuals do become aware they will want to change, that there

exists a direct connection between body size and health; three, fat bodies can simply be

transformed through behavioral change and personal choice; and four, individuals should want to

change their behaviors and bodies in the first place.

Many attempts to change personal behavior through these kinds of awareness-raising or

interventionist educations rely, according to Kathleen LeBesco, on the theory of reasoned action,

which assumes that “behavior intention is the immediate determinant of behavior and that all

other factors that influence behavior are mediated through intention...” (2004, 31). However,

knowledge that a particular food is “bad” does not automatically change our attitudes about it,

nor the long-term behavior of consuming it. These notions that education or awareness will lead

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to behavior change fail to account for the complexity of human behavior and assume that

knowledge about something should directly alter individual actions despite potential competing

desires, needs, or impulses (LeBesco 2004). This logic ultimately puts responsibility for health

or for comporting fat bodies into the hands of newly “enlightened” or “educated” individuals.

In addition to incorporating discussions of fatness into small segments of BET

programming, the network also created a special, Heart of the City: Dying to Eat in Jackson

(2009). This special tracks how the “killer” of “obesity” has been passed down from generation

to generation in the city of Jackson, Mississippi. Here there is a switch from educating people

about personal choices to blaming community and generational traditions, namely soul food and

consumption of fried foods at church gatherings for the high rates of obesity among African

Americans.

Adding to personal choice failings and problematic food traditions is also the idea that fat

and body acceptance within Black communities is a major contributor to higher rates of obesity

classification. This notion reflects popular discourses that frame Black women, in particular, as

being problematically complicit in their own fatness and unable—or unwilling—to “help”

themselves. In November of 2009, BET held a roundtable, called “The U.S. Obesity Epidemic:

African Americans at Risk,” in conjunction with health journalists and medical experts. One

medical expert on the panel, Dr. William Gibbs, who is medical director of the Department of

Rehabilitation Medicine and founder of the Pediatric Healthy Lifestyle Program at New York

Hospital, argues that issues of weight perception and lack of cultural stigma are major problems

in need of addressing by public health experts. As his evidence, Gibbs shares an anecdote about

one of his patients, saying, she did not “know she was obese until he told her that she was… she

didn’t realize there were certain body parameters where one’s health is in jeopardy.” Another

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panelist echoed a similar sentiment:

There is almost a reverse distortion of body image, thicker women fighting weight loss and slender women wanting to gain weight. This may account for the staggering statistic that four out of five African American women are overweight or obese. And what’s most alarming is that these women are making a choice to live at an unhealthy weight.

These expressions of concern over Black female bodies are rooted in a long history of

scholarship arguing that Black women are more likely to reject idealizations of slenderness and

view beauty as less connected to weight in comparison to white women (Collins 2000; Milkie

1999; Thomas et al. 2008). According to Andrea Shaw (2006, 6, 9), African diaspora cultures

have historically resisted notions of slenderness as an “ideal state of embodiment,” instead

favoring “robust female bodies.” Shaw continues that fat Black bodies can primarily be viewed

as resistant to the gendered and racialized ideals of the West, which often ideologically erase

Blackness and fatness in exchange for mainstream aesthetic acceptability. Regardless of the

validity of these claims, they are still popularly circulated and are influential to industry

practices, as is evidenced by both BET’s campaign and The Biggest Loser regularly citing fat

tolerance in Black communities as contributor to the obesity epidemic (Sender and Sullivan

2008).

Therefore, Black individuals are not necessarily positioned as at “fault” for fatness, but as

influenced by a culture that allegedly prefers larger female bodies and “a taste for fried food”

(Saguy 2013, 78). This then frames certain cultural beliefs, practices, and traditions as

problematic and as occurring at a “cost.” Black women, in particular, are understood to

underestimate the size and shape of their bodies (Schuler el al. 2008), which may cause them to

“deny health problems” (Lovejoy 2010). These “costs” are circulated in numerous academic

health studies. For example, the National Institute of Health: Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

views Black women’s generally positive attitude toward healthy, full-figured bodies as both

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troubling and a barrier to weight loss (Barturka, Hornsby, and Schorling 2000). The American

Diabetes Association through its weight-management group, Shaping America’s Health, and the

Obesity Society (a scientific society for the study obesity), released a joint statement about

variations in behavior and culture by ethnicity and race and their subsequent impacts on obesity.

The statement notes that Black individuals idealize larger body sizes, express less body

dissatisfaction, and have food traditions that increase the risk of obesity in children. The

statement also notes that African American children are exposed to more food advertising on

television and are less likely to be physically active or involved in organized sports (Caprio et al.

2008, 2570-2571). Similarly, a Kaiser Family Foundation study links increased sedentary

activity (including TV watching!) to low-income families, particularly African American

families (Rideout et al. 2006). Just as panels, studies, and statements like these examples

continue to identify different patterns in food consumption or physical activity they also tend to

conflate cultural, racial, and ethnic identity categories (and rarely address self-identification).

Moreover, medical anthropologist Alexandra A. Brewis notes argues that we “need to think in

more theoretically informed ways about how and why poverty, ethnicity, minority status, and so

on coalesce to create obesity risk” (2011, 77).

Ultimately, certain “populations,” namely Black women, are viewed as not making

“educated” personal choices about what to eat or how to feel about their bodies. While some

weight-loss programs, such as The Biggest Loser or I Used to Be Fat (2010), regularly position

fatness as a moral failing or the result of laziness,6 BET and the BET Foundation resist those

types of messages as they are inexplicably linked with long-standing racialized and racist

discourses of Black individuals within the United States. For instance, researchers find that

discussions of fatness in relation to race repeatedly parallel narratives of the “welfare queen” that 6 This will be further discussed in Chapter 3.

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position Black individuals as irresponsible “drains on public resources” (Saguy 2013, 19).

Furthermore, Abigail Saguy contends that fatness is differently framed throughout news media

when intersecting with particular races and classes. She finds that a “white, wealthy anorexic

girl” is usually considered a victim to illness outside of parental control while a “black, poor,

obese boy” is considered to have a health problem that “may be the result of parental neglect

(2013, 97). Deborah Lupton (2013, 47; citing Bell et al 2009; Boreo 2009) makes a similar claim

to Saguy:

Black mothers non-white ethnic or racial groups are positioned as particularly neglectful in allowing their children to become fat, and it is assumed that such mothers require special education so that they can more effectively perform their responsibilities in monitoring their children’s weight.

BET thus frames its audience as in need of awareness and education about the impact of

individual, parental and cultural food choices, and traditions or norms regarding body size

preferences. In this sense, BET’s actions somehow fit with Shaw’s understanding of fat Black

women not necessarily being incapable of complying with body ideals, but instead as being

unwilling to comply or as indifferent to those ideals. But while Shaw views these acts of “chosen

disobedience” and “disruptive behavior” as expressing a “lack of desire to ingest the alien

ideologies that have already rendered her beyond the periphery of dominant culture” (2006, 9),

BET and public health interventions seem to believe that if only they can convince Black women

that these behaviors and body-image-attitudes are actually detrimental to their health they may

be persuaded to change. This assumed ignorance, of course, is also insulting, but allows BET to

frame itself as a corporate citizen looking out for the health of its audience as opposed to

capitalizing on obesity epidemic notoriety the way other channels may be. Further, BET’s non-

TV health interventions do advocate community involvement and empowerment, particularly

localized public forums, fitness challenges, and cooking classes, which have the potential to

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more productively tap into the health concerns of individuals not automatically related to the

physical size of one’s body. However, BET’s television emphasis on awareness and education,

framed as an altruistic television industry intervention, and the assumptions about the

interconnections between fatness, health status, racial or ethnic identity, and cultural practices

remove from possibility individuals accepting their bodies and striving to be happy or healthy

across a spectrum of sizes.

Problematically, the other major television audience segment experiencing a similar level

of obesity epidemic intervention to Black women is children. In the U.S., children spend almost

twice as many hours watching television as they do in the classroom by the time they graduate

high school (Brody 2004), twenty-five percent of all children’s food consumption is estimated to

occur while they are watching TV (“Children Are TV-Tubbies” 2002), and children with

televisions in their bedrooms tend to get less sleep, thus becoming more obese (“Bedroom TVs”

2006). The group Active Health Kids Canada even laments that advocating for healthy diets will

not work well if kids continue watching two to four hours of television per day (Armstrong

2006). Findings like these undoubtedly inspired the American Academy of Pediatrics to release a

policy statement, titled “Children, Adolescents, Obesity, and the Media,” which expresses

concern over the way food advertisements increase children’s desires for junk foods, how staying

up late to watch TV may limit sleep, and how children have far too much daily “screen time.”

The policy statement further reads, “American society couldn’t do a worse job at the moment of

keeping children fit and healthy-- too much TV, too many food ads, not enough exercise, and not

enough sleep” (Hubbard 2011). However, some television programs actually align with some of

this sentiment! For example, a Western Virginia PBS station (WVSOM) airs Abracadabra

(2012- ) a magic show that teaches kids how to eat healthy and encourages them to be more

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physically active. Created by Michael Adelman, the president of the West Virginia School of

Osteopathic Medicine, the show serves as a compliment to West Virginia’s Rural Health

Initiative, which trains medical providers to better serve the citizens of rural West Virginia. The

director of administrative affairs for WVSOM, Marilea Butcher, specifically addresses the goal

of the show: “We wanted to show them ways they could get up and out and move a little bit.

There’s an obesity problem in West Virginia, and that doesn’t exclude children. This helps them

to be a healthier person” (Kuykendall 2011).

In accordance with public interest discourses still framing television, reform groups have

long been concerned about children’s physical and mental health (Hendershot 1998, 3). As a

result, television industry actions consistently attempt to mitigate these concerns. By censoring

children’s television in the past, networks hoped to quell fears, reduce complaints, and maintain

their “benevolent image” (Hendershot 1998, 24). In fact, even during deregulatory periods

Children’s Standards Departments were retained by cable channels because the industry felt the

public “would not tolerate unregulated children’s programming” (Hendershot 1998, 22). This

public relations move, which demonstrates even cable channels framing themselves as operating

in or at least considering the public interest, is particularly important as only broadcast networks

traditionally rely on standards and practices departments to review and censor content—or at

least appear to do so—transmitted over public airwaves. However, specific concerns over the

vulnerability of children to televised images lead many cable channels primarily targeting

children, such as The Cartoon Network, to develop their own Internal Standards Departments

(Hendershot 1998, 24).

Television channels are especially invested in creating content that appears to counter

childhood obesity in order to prevent not only content regulation and appease angry or concerned

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parents (McConnell 2004a), but also to prevent advertiser regulation, especially considering food

advertisers spend upwards of 3 billion dollars on TV marketing annually (McConnell 2004a). In

fact, Dan Jeffe, who is the executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers,

argues that food advertising essentially keeps children’s programming on the air (McConnell

2004b). By spearheading their own anti-obesity initiatives or committing a percentage of their

non-programmed airtime to health messages (Haugsted 2007), channels hope to show

government regulators they are doing enough (or more than enough) to protect their advertisers

(who are a major source of revenue) and themselves from government interference. An article in

Broadcasting and Cable sums up the whole situation nicely: “Like a kid caught with a hand in

the cookie jar, networks and advertisers are red-faced with guilt, even as they beg viewers and

Washington not to punish them. After all, they live off the fat of the land” (McConnell 2004a).

Yet television executives still frame their actions as less about generating capital and

their commercial interests, namely protecting their advertisers, and as being more about

protecting children. A Nickelodeon spokesperson, Dan Martinsen, spoke of industry concern

over children: “This is something we have to do, not from fear of government crackdowns, but

because kids programmers are obligated to safeguard their impressionable and vulnerable

audience” (McConnell 2004a). Nickelodeon President, Nick Zarghami, offers a similar

sentiment, “We’re doing a lot of work helping kids understand the value of a healthier lifestyle

and exercise” (McConnell 2004a). Additionally, a Cartoon Network executive, Stuart Snyder,

states, “Childhood obesity is an epidemic to our country, and that’s why for the past three years

we’ve done the Move It Movement Tour, which is all about getting kids to eat healthier and to

exercise more and to live a healthier lifestyle” (Saval 2012).

Mirroring prominent policy debates both in terms of problems and solutions to fatness,

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and correlations between obesity and television, a significant amount of children’s television

content now encourages physical activity, which directly counters discourses of TV as being

unhealthy and demonstrates industry responsiveness to widespread social concern over

childhood obesity. Disney’s JoJo’s Circus (2003-2007), PBS’s Poobah (2003- ), and

Nickelodeon's Dora the Explorer (2000-2015), among others, encourage kids to get off the

couch and move around or dance as they are watching the programs (Bauder 2004). This trend is

not just present in the U.S., but all over the globe. A similar children’s program, LazyTown

(2004-2014), is produced in both the U.S. and Iceland and airs in over one hundred countries,

and its content urges kids to choose “healthy lifestyles” and engage in physical activity (Turner

2011). Nick Jr. in the U.K. also exhibits a once-a-week program, referred to as “Toddlerobics,”

that is basically an exercise class “designed to improve children's co-ordination, concentration,

bone and muscle strength” (Burns 2007).

Several Canadian programs also specifically encourage kids to be physically active both

while watching TV and throughout other parts of their day. The increase in these types of

programs is a response to findings indicating that ninety-one percent of Canadian youths do not

get enough exercise (Dawson 2009). In anticipation of reports encouraging people to turn off

their children’s televisions in order to reduce rates of youth inactivity, TV turned itself into a

fitness activity. TV Ontario's I Dare You (2006-2008) challenges children to engage in three

physical exercises during the program. Other shows, such as Treehouse TV’s Roll Play (2006- )

and 4 Square (1996-2007), both feature segments asking viewers to mimic the dances and

actions depicted on the screen. The children’s program Bo on the Go! (2007), produced by DHS

Halifax and aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Company, also encourages physical activity,

broadcasts in seven different countries, and has been translated into multiple languages (Rushton

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2008). These examples directly contradict the sedentary, couch potato discourse often associated

with television, which is especially important to the television industry within the context of the

obesity epidemic. When messages circulating in the popular press urge people to turn off the TV

and be active (Reynolds 2012), these programs demonstrate that individuals should instead turn

on the TV to be active.

Physical activity is not the only element of health circulated by both dominant obesity

epidemic discourses and contemporary children’s television; healthy eating practices are also

increasingly addressed. For instance, Sesame Street’s (1969- ) Cookie Monster learns in a 2005

episode that cookies are “sometimes food” (“Cookie Monster” 2005), engaging directly with

concerns over children’s diets and childhood obesity. While careful to advocate for food variety

and moderation as opposed to traditional notions of dieting (especially in vein of commercial

diets intended for adults), the cookie monster moment marks a foray into children’s

programming becoming more conscious of health messages in accordance with growing public,

governmental, and medical concern. However, Cookie Monster including vegetables into his

daily diet is not an isolated incident on Sesame Street, but rather one part of a wider Sesame

Street initiative called “Healthy Habits for Healthy Life.” This initiative encourages kids to

increase their physical activity and teaches them about the importance of eating vegetables

through a multi-language, multi-media kit for families with tips on how to eat healthy foods on a

budget (“Battling the Obesity Crisis” 2012).

Beyond the content of programming the television industry is employing several other

strategies that work to shift the correlation from television causing high rates of obesity to

television contributing to the decline of obesity rates. Instead of creating fitness programs,

channels may opt for entirely stopping transmission during certain parts of the day. One instance

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of this practice is Nickelodeon New Zealand no longer playing its usual Sunday cartoon line-up

for two hours. Instead, the channel airs automated, rotating segments featuring games and

physical activities (Fitzsimmons 2007). This is particularly interesting as it prevents Nickelodeon

from receiving advertising revenue during that two-hour period of time, making the practice

seem specifically altruistic and establishing that the television industry’s business imperatives

are not out-of-sync with public concerns.

Advertisers themselves are also self-regulating and pushing more “kid-friendly” diets.

For example, Kraft Foods announced in 2005 that it would limit the kinds of advertisements

placed during television shows aimed at children. Lunchables and Oreo commercials were

largely suspended, and Kool-Aid Man began focusing more on the promotion of sugar-free

versions of Kool-Aid instead of the sugar-heavy original. A Kraft spokesperson, Mark Berlind,

explains these changes as in recognition of parental concern over the impact of advertisements

on children. Of course this frames even the food industry as being amenable to issues concerning

the obesity epidemic, although not so amenable as to stop using cartoon characters on product

packaging (Fenner 2005).

In an even bigger attempt to appear responsive to health and obesity concerns, Disney

independently decided not to air “junk” food commercials during any of its programs to

demonstrate their efforts to “combat childhood obesity” (Lee and Bower 2012). In determining

what foods are considered “junk” foods, Disney established its own nutritional guidelines

specifying that they would only allow advertisements for breakfast cereals if those cereals

contain less than one hundred and thirty calories and ten grams of sugar per serving.7 Items that

meet their nutritional standards will get the “Micky Check,” akin to the American Heart

Association’s logo on food products signaling to consumers that they are allegedly “Heart 7 These standards are the nutritional equivalent to eating half of a Snickers candy bar.

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Healthy” food options (Chmielewski 2005). Of course this form of self-regulation is quite self-

serving. The practice frames Disney as concerned about the public interest and the welfare of

children, which is particularly important amid debates concerning government regulation of

“junk” food advertising around the globe. In fact, the European Union released a white paper in

2005 warning the food industry to either make changes to the way food is advertised to children

or face legislation forcing them to make the necessary changes. The EU health and consumer

affairs commissioner, Markos Kyprianou, explains, “The signs from the industry are very

encouraging, very positive. But if this doesn’t produce satisfactory results, we will proceed to

legislation. I would like to see the industry not advertising directly to children any more” (Stow

2005). Thus, if content producers like Disney as well as food advertisers like Kraft demonstrate

self-regulation (even if it is according to their own arbitrary nutritional guidelines) then the

raised eyebrows and regulatory debates about advertising and content restriction can be deemed

unnecessary concerns.

Conclusion

In addition to television industry attempts to demonstrate that television content, and

advertisements supporting the creation and exhibition of that content, are operating with the

public interest and with the health and wellbeing of individuals in mind, TV industry executives

and advertisers are all critiquing the United States government to express that industry self-

regulation alone cannot be a solution to obesity, that the government cannot solely rely on

industries operating in the public interest. For example, Dan Jaffe points out a contradiction

between expressions of government concern and government inaction, arguing that while

industries are spending billions on education and healthy foods marketing, governments continue

to cut physical education and nutrition education programs from schools (Eggerton 2007a). Jaffe

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expresses similar dismay—whether real or feigned— in a 2005 opinion piece published by

Broadcasting and Cable: “But what concerns me most is that, despite all of this positive and

progressive action, the advertising industry continues to be targeted as a leading contributor of

this epidemic.”

As long as the obesity epidemic continues, fat television texts will continue to be

circulated, especially with the potential profit that can be gained from large audiences around the

world both identifying with the subject matter and finding the topic to be personally relevant or

interesting. In this sense, fat television clearly operates in the commercial interest. But beyond

the obvious imperative of profit is what these particular programs and channel actions achieve

during a time when the advertisements that fund television, and television itself, are frequently

cited as a reason for fatness in the first place. TV channel anti-obesity initiatives and educational

content, industry self-regulation in response to regulatory raised eyebrows, and actual policies

regulating advertising to children are based, firstly, on the premise that TV has effects, and those

effects are harmful. However, if television itself appears to mitigate those harmful effects, as fat

television texts and children’s programs that encourage physical activity do, then there is no

further need to regulate the industry as they are already operating with the public’s interest in

mind, and their impact will be of a positive nature. In the midst of fatness being considered a

huge social concern popular discourses connecting television to fatness, especially TV watched

by children and other “vulnerable populations,” are gaining enough traction to warrant

government debate or regulation and industry action. While the former attempts to fix the

problem caused by this possible correlation, the latter aims to prove that this connection no

longer stands, and maybe never did. Ultimately, the influence of policy debates and raised

eyebrows on the television industry, or the reflection of regulator concerns tapping into broader

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concerns about health and bodies across television content, demonstrate the continued influence

and extension of government within the neoliberal context.

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Chapter 3. Exercising Control: Public Health Discourses and the Globesity Epidemic

“The only person responsible for what goes into my mouth is me.”

Tony Abbott, Australian Prime Minister, 2006.

The 2012 opening of the first KFC location in Nairobi, Kenya, produced both a lot of

local hype and international concern. The opening was viewed by some as Kenya “catching up to

the rest of the world,” further evidenced by a growing middle class and increased consumer

spending, but others believe the effects of fast food consumption will prove detrimental to

Kenyans’ health. Like other sub-Saharan African countries, economic growth is transitioning the

country from experiencing a hunger crisis to an obesity “problem” (“Kenya’s Growing Middle

Class” 2012). In fact, 40 percent of Kenyans living in urban areas are considered overweight

according to the World Health Organization’s Body Mass Index, and another 15 percent are

considered obese (Christensen 2008). Similar statistics can be found in Nigeria and Botswana,

with one in eight men in Nigeria and more than half of all Botswana women categorized as

obese. South Africa is also a site of growing concern over the impact of globalization on our

bodies. For example, Ian Birrell, a journalist for The Guardian, detailed in September of 2014:

Fat is no longer just a developed world problem. Forget those tired old clichés beloved by the aid industry. Today more people in poorer countries go to bed each night having consumed too many calories than go to bed hungry -- a revelation that underlines the breakneck pace of change on our planet. Obesity prevalence in countries like Kenya, Nigeria, Botswana, and South Africa

exemplify why Lauren Berlant, among others, refers to fatness as simultaneously, and perhaps

paradoxically, “a predicament of privilege and of poverty” (2007, 756). Further, the inclusion of

countries that many would not suspect as part of the “obesity epidemic,” like Kenya,

demonstrates the way fatness has become an issue of global concern, influencing the

international proliferation of fat television programs documenting perceived bodily changes

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while also superficially working toward “solving” the current “crisis.”

Chapter Overview and Argument

The Biggest Loser (2003- ), a foundational weight-loss television program now in its

sixteenth season in the U.S., expanded to formats in twenty-eight different countries, including

Australia, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Ukraine, Turkey, Latvia, Brunei, the Philippines and the

Netherlands. There are also regional variations, such as The Biggest Loser Asia (2009-2010) and

The Biggest Loser Arab World or Ar Rabeh ElAkaba (2006-2009), and upcoming iterations are

being developed in Spain and Indonesia. In addition to The Biggest Loser format weight-loss

programs exist across numerous countries, such as Canada’s X-Weighted (2006- ) and Australia’s

Big: Extreme Makeover (2011), which both follow similar narrative structures as The Biggest

Loser, but instead focus on the personal and emotional journeys of just a few participants. And,

of course, there are several U.S. variations on a theme, including MTV’s I Used to Be Fat

(2010- ), A&E’s Heavy (2011) and ABC’s Extreme Weight Loss, formerly titled Extreme

Makeover: Weight Loss Edition (2011- ). Even though these shows reflect location-influenced

understandings of fat bodies, and frame fat bodies in varying ways, all of these programs

reinforce dominant discourses of “obesity” as not only being a major health problem requiring

intervention locally, nationally, and globally, but also a problem that is deeply intertwined with

individualized notions of personal responsibility, self-discipline, and self-control. In other words,

many of these shows reinforce governmental and public health metrics for constituting

populations based on body size for monitoring and weight reduction while also framing the

health and size of bodies as the result of individual choices.

This chapter, then, explores the massifying and individualizing aspects of both the

obesity epidemic and weight-loss reality television reflecting public health discourses.

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Internationally traded television programs, especially formats like The Biggest Loser, can reflect

increasingly “standardized” global, public health discourses as well as other topics or issues of

concern, creating a global as opposed to local “filling” (to use the reality TV pie metaphor

developed by Albert Moran) that connects wide and seemingly disparate audiences living in

countries like Mexico, Kenya, and Tonga. However, the dominant discourses circulated within

weight-loss programs are themselves always already terrains of struggle. Public health discourses

of the obesity epidemic demonstrate tensions and incongruities between governmental health

interventions or initiatives and discourses of personal responsibility in relation to social welfare

and neoliberalism. This chapter, then, will first discuss these discursive tensions as well as the

ways in which fatness became understood as a globesity epidemic, a neologism used to indicate

the spread of fatness around the world (Lupton 2013, 15), and major threat to public health. I will

then show how weight-loss reality television programs take up these increasingly standardized,

yet inconsistent discourses, both reinforcing and further destabilizing them as well as the way

television itself (in)effectively governs at a distance.

The Globesity Epidemic

While slender bodies, particularly for men, are generally associated with willpower,

restraint, and self-control, fat bodies are generally associated with moral failure, self-indulgence,

and a lack of impulse control (Hesse-Biber 1996). Similarly, fat individuals are more likely to be

viewed as stupid, ugly, and lacking willpower (Farrell 2011, 4), or as “insufficiently ‘working

on’ the body” (Brewis 2011, 112). These traits associated with fatness ultimately foster weight

stigma, which according to Alexandra Brewis, “produces a global devaluation of the individual

attached to the trait” (Brewis 2011, 116).

In addition to the tendency of ascribing these different “failings” and character traits to

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fat individuals, the amount of fat on our bodies is now positioned as being detrimental to

humanity on a much broader scale. Popular culture reflects these anxieties, exemplified by the

film Wall-E (2008) where fatness is shown to literally be the destroyer of human civilization.

However, this pessimistic view of fatness is not just held by Pixar animators; it is also held by

“experts” around the globe. Fatness is no longer just an issue of appearance or aesthetic

preference, if it ever really was, but is instead “a matter of life and death” (Saguy 2013, 13). For

example, an advisory panel for the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans declared obesity to be

this century’s greatest public health threat (Hellmich 2010), and the U.S. Department of

Agriculture considers obesity to be the United States’ foremost nutritional problem (Prentice

2006). A group of retired military chiefs expressed their concern over a fat citizenry in 2012 by

declaring that children were becoming “too fat to fight,” and that rampant obesity posed a serious

threat to national security (Suhay 2012). Others believe fatness will deplete the world’s natural

resources as our collective weight constitutes “242 million extra people of normal weight,” and

those bodies take more energy to live and move (Sifferlin 2012). Additionally, the WHO

considers obesity a global epidemic affecting millions of people (“Controlling the Global

Obesity Epidemic” 2003), and the International Obesity Task Force argues that obesity is an

“international scourge” resulting from a lack of willpower (Oliver and Lee 2005), which will

overwhelm medical systems around the world (Conroy 2006).

The U.S. does receive a majority of attention for perceived high levels of fat across its

citizenry, but increasingly, obesity is considered a top global health threat (West 2012). In fact,

World Health Organization data reveals that the U.S. was actually ranked 20th in terms of adult

obesity in 2006 (O’Hara 2006). Alternative or more recent data rankings are difficult to interpret

as they sometimes divide “industrialized” and “non-industrialized” countries into different lists.

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As a result, the U.S. is either number one in terms of obesity rates or somewhere in the top ten.

Other western countries like Australia and Canada rank thirty-fifth and thirty-seventh

respectively (O’Hara and Gregg, 2006). Fiji, Samoa, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Chile, Argentina,

Egypt, Mexico, and Jordan all have similar rates to the U.S., and most of Europe is just behind

the U.S. in terms of fatness (WHO 2008). Albania, Armenia, Algeria, and Lesotho all actually

have higher rates of obese children than the U.S., which ranks 20th overall (WHO 2006).

Additionally, many “developing” countries like Singapore and Malaysia are no longer exempt

from the globesity epidemic because they are simultaneously dealing with malnourishment and

fatness (Hellmich 1998). Regardless of whether the U.S. has the world’s fattest citizens the

country is regularly positioned as the source of spreading fatness. One example of this is North

Carolina University Nutrition Professor Barry Popkin’s belief that China's obesity problem is the

result of food marketers successfully convincing Chinese consumers to join Americans in their

fattening snack habits (Desmond 2013). Arab News reported in 2002 that the fifty-two percent

obesity rate among adults in Saudi Arabia is the result of Saudi citizens embracing the “trash of

American culture,” becoming “victims of the cruelest aspects of globalization” (Alkhereiji

2002). This sentiment is also expressed by the U.K. TV show Supersize vs. Superskinny (2008- ),

which refers to the U.S. as the “Fat Fatherland” or as being on the “frontlines” of the obesity

epidemic, and the show sends its participants to the U.S. in order for them to witness the health

problems experienced by those categorized as super morbidly obese (as if there are not people

categorized as super morbidly obese in the U.K).

The labeling of fatness as a global epidemic is significant because it standardizes ideas of

“classification, causality, responsibility, degeneracy,” and the imaginable and pragmatic logics of

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cure”8 across incredibly large and diverse groups of people. These globesity epidemic discourses

have likely become more uniform across nation-states because of non-governmental

organizations like the World Health Organization. The first WHO discussion of obesity took

place in 1997 and by the next year it began referring to obesity as a “public health crisis of the

greatest magnitude” (Saguay 47). In 2000, they released a report, entitled “Obesity: Preventing

and Managing a Global Epidemic,” which the International Association for the Study of Obesity

(IASO) views as a turning point in widespread governmental adoption of the WHO’s views on

fatness as “the biggest unrecognized public health problem in the world” (Saguay 47).

Prior to global standardization of weight metrics by the WHO, different systems to

categorize were used within and across countries. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the U.S.

Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services defined being overweight as having

a BMI between 24.9 and 27.1 (Flegal 2001). During the same time period, the National Institutes

of Health differently classified men as overweight if they were above a 27.8, or a 27.3 for

women (Oliver 2006, 40). Even though many nation-states now use the Body Mass Index others

believe it to be a problematic measurement of body fat levels, overall health, or both. For

example, in the United States, the BMI scale is the primary metric for categorizing bodies and

determining one’s health, but in Canada, health policy still reflects a skepticism over BMI as a

sign of one’s health and places greater emphasis on the dangers of extremely low weights

(Jennings 2009, 88).

In consideration of these international and intranational differences, the World Health

Organization released a study in 1998 arguing that individuals who are between a twenty-five

and twenty-nine on the Body Mass Index should be categorized as overweight, and those at a 8 Lauren Berlant argues in Cruel Optimism that the labeling of AIDS as an epidemic revealed the term to be part of an argument about classification, casualty, etc. rather than a neutral description (2007, 763).

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thirty or above as obese. Their recommendation came after they interpreted several studies

showing individuals with BMIs of greater than twenty-five as having “significantly higher

mortality” (“Obesity: Preventing and Managing” 1997).9 Shortly after the report the U.S.

National Institute of Health adopted the WHO’s lower recommendation, as did other health

agencies. This had the result of putting twenty-five more million Americans into the overweight

category even though they did not gain an ounce (“Who’s Fat?” 1998). Additionally, the U.S. is

not the only nation in which WHO BMI standardization recategorized large groups of people. In

2000, the World Health Organization readjusted its previous standards for “Asians” taking into

account their “different physiology” (Parry 2000). This lowered the weight and health threshold

even further for people classified within this group, automatically putting millions of people into

the obese category. In Hong Kong, for instance, this adjustment meant that the adult population

went from having a 30 percent obesity rate to a fifty percent obesity rate overnight (Parry 2000).

Regardless of the usefulness of BMI as a metric for health, or whether this data actually

indicates an increase in our waistlines the world over, these examples reveal the World Health

Organization as major influence on the framing of obesity, the construction of large populations

for monitoring, and ultimately, the shaping of norms guiding individual ideas and behaviors.

Discussing the power of the WHO in both legitimizing and spreading particular frames of

fatness, two Harvard Public Health nutritionists, Walter Willett and Mier Stampfer, argue that

there is a strong international contingent of scientists who believe that BMIs over 25 pose a 9 Strangely, the lowered threshold for considering body fat a problem was based on a 1996 meta-analysis of studies linking BMI and mortality that actually contradicts the efficacy of WHO’s body metric adjustment. The nutritionist who conducted the meta-analysis, Richard Troiano, determined that the highest rates of mortality were among the very thin and very fat, and found that until someone reaches a BMI of over forty, determining mortality rates is fraught with statistical uncertainty (Oliver 2006, 23). Other analyses also reveal those categorized as overweight as actually having the lowest rates of mortality (Flegal 2005). Yet the World Health Organization adjusted their metrics in the opposite direction of what Troiano found (Oliver 2006, 22).

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major health risk to individuals, and much of their findings are based on reports issued by the

WHO (Campos 2004, 44). Also, following WHO standardizations for children’s growth, 104

countries adopted their weight-for-age metrics, and thirty-six countries newly introduced BMI-

for-age classifications and monitoring (de Onis 2012).

In addition to establishing body-classification metrics to determine the health of

populations and individuals, the Noncommunicable Disease Surveillance (NCD) program, which

is controlled by the WHO, collects data about weights from across countries in order to construct

comparative profiles and rankings (Halse 2009, 55). According to Christine Halse, this

surveillance fosters the growth of numerous transnational organizations also devoted to tracking

weights and BMIs internationally. Additional NGOs engaged in global health surveillance

include the Latin American Societies for Obesity, World Health Assembly, International

Association for the Study of Obesity (and within that organization the International Obesity Task

Force), Global Prevention Alliance, and Health Promotion through Obesity Prevention in Europe

(2009, 55). Based on data collected through the monitoring of populations, many of these groups

then recommend different national body interventions. One stated goal of the International

Obesity Task Force, for example, is to create “evidence informed policy actions for the effective

prevention of obesity at national, regional, and global levels” (“Strategic Plan” 2010).

These types of supranational organizations institute globalized metrics for bodily norms

and health determinants by emphasizing both weight as a signifier of overall health and weight

reduction as inextricably linked to becoming healthier and avoiding “obesity-related” diseases.

These standardized global metrics then influence national or governmental actions and policies.

Bodies that exist outside of globalized norms thus constitute social, economic, and health

problems that, according to Christine Halse, legitimizes the “intervention, disciplining and

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control of individuals and populations by states and their surrogates” (2009, 55). Examples of

government intervention to encourage weight reduction can be found across a variety of

countries, including Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign in the U.S., ParticipACTION in

Canada, Mission in New Zealand, 2 and 5 in Australia, Venezuela’s “Get Informed, Eat

Healthy,” and many more. As the temptation to “eat more and do less” grew alongside the Indian

economy, India opened its first state-run obesity clinic at the Government General Hospital in

2011 (“Big Fat Battle” 2011). The Mexican government launched a campaign urging people to

exercise, drink water, and eat fruits and vegetables after statistics revealed the percentage of

overweight or obese Mexicans tripling since 1980 (Romo 2011). Furthermore, Bahrain’s

Ministry of Health established a task force to produce national “Obesity Clinical Guidelines”

based on the WHO guidelines for BMI in order to help citizens lose weight (“Nutrition Clinics”

2014).

All of these examples indicate how widespread and similar tales of the globesity

epidemic are across nation-states, and how much influence the World Health Organization has

over global conceptualizations of fatness because of the large amounts of data they continually

produce and circulate. Of course major health policies across many nations and localities still

reflect varying attitudes, approaches, negotiations, and contradictions concerning fatness and

obesity, but the topic is one that is nevertheless framed and surveilled by supranational

organizations.

Theses standardized discourses of fatness then impact the circulation of particular

television messages, which balance global, national, and local influences, found in shows like

The Biggest Loser Pinoy (2011-2014). Traditionally, heavier female bodies were generally

“preferred” (by women themselves and assumedly their romantic partners) throughout Southeast

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Asia and Pacific Island nations (Nancy Pollock 1995, 88; Jung and Forbes 2009, 177). In

Filipino culture, specifically, fat is associated with being healthy or eating properly (Farrales and

Chapman 1999). However, based on studies conducted by the University of the Philippines in

2009 and increased global attention to obesity rates across Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands

(the WHO classifies seven out of ten Filipino women as obese), the Filipino government

implemented national policies encouraging physical activity in order to fight obesity. Just two

years after the Filipino government began its anti-obesity initiatives in accordance with global

policies and prescriptions The Biggest Loser began televising its format there. In an interview

prior to The Biggest Loser Pinoy’s debut, host Sharon Cuneta explained that the show’s goal is to

teach Filipinos both at home and on the show how to lead healthier lives in order to build a

stronger nation. One of the show’s personal trainers, Chinggay Andrada, expressed a similar

sentiment; “It’s like a wake up call for a lot of people. And it’s a problem or an issue that needs

to be addressed as early as now here in the Philippines” (“Press Statement From ABS-CBN”

2011). Even the U.S. version of The Biggest Loser features two Tongan cousins in the eighth

season who discuss their fatness as being a result of the fat accepting attitudes characteristic of

Tongan culture. One of the Tongan participants, Sione, eventually travels to the Pacific Island

nation for a meeting with the Princess of Tonga to discuss strategies for making the country

“healthier” through weight-loss. Through these examples I am not trying to argue that global

influences necessarily “threaten” the integrity or autonomy of a kind of national identity or

cultural differences, but rather to emphasize that national identity can never “be isolated from the

global, transnational relations in which it takes shape” (Ang 1990, 252 and 255).

Media studies scholarship that examines television formats usually emphasizes the ways

in which local and national cultures are highlighted in television content to obscure the global

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nature of the format. Albert Moran uses the pie and crust model to demonstrate how the globally

standardized structure or blueprint of the format acts as the crust, while the pie filling reflects

local or national influences and adaptations (1998, 13). Sticking with food, Silvio Waisbord

establishes this through his “McTV” analogy that while global economics shape format

circulation practices, local and national cultural influences generally shape content (2004, 360).

These metaphors and analogies are useful for understanding the way a majority of

formatting works, or strategies behind formatting use, but I argue the global itself can function as

the “pie filling.” While I of course do not believe there exists a unified global culture, I think it’s

possible that there are also global cultural influences, or global issues, taken up in widely

circulated television texts that include television formats, such as global warming, global trade,

or, importantly for fat television, global health and the globesity epidemic. While the nation itself

is a construction based on multiple and layered levels of influence, and that very construction can

and should be contested, global issues are very much part of our understandings of the national.

While nations or regions may take up issues designated as globally important in similar or

differing ways, the discourses being reflected, negotiated, and challenged across TV exist on a

scale larger than the nation and “official” global discourses may influence national uptake.

Supporting the idea that television is created globally and inflected locally as well as

created globally while reflecting “global issues” is a study surveying hundreds of people from

multiple countries in which they interrogate how people conceptualize and often stigmatize

fatness (Brewis et al. 2011). They find that certain attitudes about fatness transcend national

boundaries, including the views that obesity is a health problem, that fatness is socially

undesirable, and that weight-gain and weight-loss are tied to personal responsibility (269-270).

While these findings exist on a continuum with some nations and regions being more fat positive

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than others, the researchers ultimately argue that these distinctions seem to be blurring and

negative attitudes toward fatness seem to be spreading (274).

These shifting understandings of fatness give credence to Christine Halse’s claim that the

World Health Organization acts as a kind of modern panopticon due to its maintenance of

disciplinary regimes in the name of public health (Halse 2009, 55). The WHO can be thought of

as dispersing management over this “problem of living” across nation-states and cities through

the development of “complex apparatuses” that promote various “techniques of advice and

guidance, medics, clinics, guides, and counselors” (Rose 2008, 37). Although not developed by

the WHO, reality television is one such apparatus through which particular forms of knowledge

about health and weight-loss are disseminated. In fact, reality television compliments the global

health surveillance of the WHO, which brings “local populations into global systems of

knowledge” and legitimizes “the importance of bodily surveillance and control” (Ostherr 204,

300-302). Further, information gathering and intervention across all of these sites act to not only

measure and control, but also to directly regulate and discipline individuals in numerous ways

(Rich and Evans 2009, 163). Constructions of the obesity epidemic and the power deployed

through such constructions by the WHO, governments around the world, and television programs

with large audiences certainly massify, as this section attests. However, they also individualize

by defining normative body weights for individual comparison and by promoting self-discipline

or self-control to comport one’s body to these normative, “healthy” standards.

Globalizing Personal Responsibility

Numerous studies hypothesize reasons behind weight gain; some examples include

marriage, office snacking, clutter in the home, carbon dioxide levels, snooping, household

chemicals, wearing body shape wear, drinking diet soda, or even just being a highly organized,

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emotional, and disciplined person (Hyzell 2013). While all of these examples are positively

correlated to having a body with more visible fat, the explanation for fatness regularly used by

news media outlets and public health officials is usually personal responsibility, or rather, a lack

of personal responsibility. One U.S. study illustrates this notion by detailing in an analysis of

self-control and food consumption that obese individuals simply have less self-control than

“normal” weight individuals (Fan and Jin 2013). Another U.S. study finds that half of all obese

patients are labeled as “awkward, ugly, and noncompliant” by physicians, another a third of

obese patients are considered “weak, sloppy, and lazy,” and most patients’ obesity is attributed to

their personal behaviors (Brewis 2011, 117). This attitude is not only present in the U.S.,

however; similar studies conducted in France, the U.K. Australia, and Israel also reveal that

physicians more commonly think of fat patients as lazy or lacking willpower in comparison to

thin patients (Campbell et al. 2000; Harvey and Hill 2001; Fogelman, Vinker, and Lachter 2002;

Bocquier, Verger, and Basdevant 2005).

These attitudes are then reinforced by academic studies attempting to prove these

perceptions and attributed personality traits to be accurate. For instance, a 2013 study concludes

that obese individuals have less self-control than “normal” weight individuals (Fan and Jin

2013). Elsewhere studies show that individuals who are obese or struggle with addiction

demonstrate impaired self-control (Li and Sinha, 2008; Feil et al., 2010). Similarly, a 2014 study

finds a positive correlation between “evening chronotypes” and high BMIs, but argues that this

relationship can be mitigated through greater self-control (Wang 1996). These examples thus

illuminate how our cultural ideas and associations between personal responsibility and fatness

are implicit in our medical, scientific, and scholarly understandings of fatness, which only further

stigmatizes fat bodies, legitimizes the importance of weight-loss, and reinforces the connection

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between body size and level of health. Given all of this it’s not surprising that citizens of the U.S.

alone spend about nineteen billion dollars a year on gym memberships and sixty billion dollars a

year on weight-loss products and services (Kwan and Graves 2013, 37).

While personal responsibility is not the only frame for understanding fatness, its

dominance encourages focus on some issues, events, problems, and solutions as opposed to

others (Saguy 2013, 5). Competing fat frames vary in their commonality with aesthetic and

beauty frames and health frames being more prominent than social justice or fat acceptance

frames (Kwan and Graves 2013, 21). Of course health frames, beauty frames, and personal

responsibility frames often overlap. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

does consider environmental, biological, cultural, and socioeconomic factors in the way it frames

fatness as a matter of health, but these considerations are largely about removing barriers for

individuals to make their own choices and changes (Kwan and Graves 2013, 45). In other words,

larger social and environmental forces are discussed only in terms of the way they shape, enable,

or constrain individual choices (Lawrence 2004). When systemic or broader issues, such as the

role of the globalized food industry or the potential impact of American suburbanization, are

actually debated or addressed as problems in news reports, personal responsibility and

individualism are usually maintained as primary factors in one’s level of body fat. Reality

television formats reflect these logics as well. Many programs position the prevalence of “junk”

foods as a problem in contemporary society, but according to Gareth Palmer (2014, 313), instead

of further politicizing or critiquing the role of food industries, programs focus on the individual’s

responsibility to consume “good” foods as opposed to “junk” foods.

According to several analyses of U.S. news media, the personal responsibility frame is

most commonly used, meaning that fatness is typically discussed in terms of individual causes

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and solutions (Lawrence 2004; Kim and Willis 2007). In fact, food selection and overeating are

the most often identified as the personal choices we make that may lead to fat accumulation

(Costa et al. 2012; Dressler 2013). For example, The Bulletin an editorial in response to the city

of Norwich, Connecticut, debating a soda tax in August of 2014:

What is needed is better public awareness of the dangers of poor eating habits and a greater emphasis on educating the public about the importance of adopting healthier eating habits. But even more important is the need for personal responsibility.

The Philadelphia Inquirer similarly reported in 2012: “We need to usher in an era of personal

responsibility in health care, and obesity should be our highest priority” (Atlas 2012). And

Delaware Online also informed its readers: “Maintaining good health is a personal responsibility

that involves things like preventative screenings, regularly, physical activity, healthy food

choices, and moderate alcohol consumption.”

Like numerous other aspects of the obesity epidemic, this news media emphasis on

personal responsibility or individual lifestyle choices is not limited to the United States. A 2013

United Nations report ranks citizens of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain among the

world’s fattest. When a medical doctor in Dubai was asked to explain the high levels of body fat

in the region, he replied, “A penchant for fast and fatty food and a lifestyle of late nights and no

exercise… Life gets easier but people tend to get busier and not take care of their own bodies”

(Carter 2014). Similarly, concern over obesity rates in Egypt lead to this claim in a 2014 article

in Cairo Scene: “Egyptians are now fatter than ever before and the nation is facing an obesity

epidemic with millions overweight thanks to unhealthy lifestyle choices and junk food diets.”

Discourses of personal responsibility have reached such a level of common sense, from

the U.S. and U.K. to the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, that alternative explanations for

fatness, such as issues of consumer choice or lack of food regulation, or even proposed

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government and public health initiatives to “solve” fatness, are sometimes met with hostility. For

example, a columnist for London’s The Daily Mail writes:

So now we live in a country where obesity is, apparently, the fault of everyone except those who stuff themselves with food and take little exercise… The so-called 'obesity epidemic' is due entirely to a profound lack of self-discipline. To use a word like 'epidemic' implies that fatness is an illness and its sufferers are victims. They are not. (Heffer 2004)

In 2011, a writer for The Telegraph echoes a similar sentiment:

In our mad, Government-dependent world, special interests insist that politicians must intervene between a man and his cream cake. Have we really lost our free will to this extent? Is there anyone in the country over the age of five, who doesn't know what foods are bad for you? Is there any greedy person who will start eating bean shoots just because double chocolate milkshakes are taxed and Big Mac adverts are banned? This extraordinary attitude – that obesity should be solved by the Government, advertisers and food manufacturers – only makes some fat people fatter. The more personal responsibility is removed from the direct relationship between eating and putting on weight, the more people can go on stuffing their faces, free of guilt – a crucial weapon for everyone in staying in OK shape. (Mount 2011)

Even though these views can be considered extreme or polemic they nevertheless demonstrate

resistance to alternative narratives of the obesity epidemic, particularly ones that focus more on

environmental, industrial, or genetic factors. This kind of rhetoric is not reserved for newspaper

op-eds, however, as it’s also found within examples of the U.S. government attempts to insulate

different industries from blame for the current “obesity epidemic.” Although the U.S.

standardized BMI metrics in accordance with the World Health Organization in 1998, by 2004

George W. Bush’s Administration began pushing back against the WHO’s outlined obesity

epidemic “solutions.” The Bush Administration did not disagree with obesity being considered a

major, global health problem, but believed that instead of increased government regulation the

government should emphasize and encourage personal responsibility among its citizenry (Stein

2004). Even after increased pressure from consumer groups to fight childhood obesity in 2007,

President Bush maintained, “It is an individual’s responsibility to maintain a healthful diet, not

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the government’s” (Abramowitz 2007).

Despite abdications of government responsibility, numerous policies, initiatives, and

practices simultaneously demonstrate continued government concern, paralleling the corporate

versus public interest debates over television discussed in Chapter 2. However, government

actions, initiatives, and interventions generally work toward fostering individual responsibility,

balancing discourses of neoliberalism and social welfare. Embodying Bush’s notion of personal

responsibility, Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, and

Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee all implemented campaigns to encourage diet and exercise

among their respective state’s citizens. Cornett challenged citizens of Oklahoma City to

collectively lose one million pounds, with Cornett contributing forty of his own pounds toward

the goal. The city also began investing more in pedestrian-friendly city infrastructure to

encourage physical activity. Daniels’ plan, “Ten in Ten,” set a goal for each citizen to lose ten

pounds in ten weeks. News spots for “Ten in Ten” depict Daniels running during his lunchtime

workouts while promotional materials for the initiative depict him exercising with an Indiana

resident, Pam Smith, who is also a former contestant on The Biggest Loser. Even though

Governor Huckabee similarly to Cornett positions himself as an example of personal

responsibility, himself losing around one hundred pounds, his “Healthy Arkansas” initiative

focuses more on schools reporting BMI statistics to parents, “incentivizing” employees to take

walking breaks or allowing them to turn unused sick days into vacation days. Similarly,

Nashville encouraged its citizens to “Walk 100 Miles With the Mayor.” Fort Worth, Texas

developed “FitWorth,” which holds races and family fitness challenges, and Somerville,

Massachusetts now has the “Mayor’s Fitness Challenge,” which culminates in prizes and a

citywide party.

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These city and state initiatives, as well as various localized calls for banning certain foods

in lunch rooms or mandating “weight report cards” to be sent home to parents (Zernike 2003),

exist concomitantly with the introduction of one hundred and fifty bills across state legislatures

and the federal government that insulate the food industry from liability while reinforcing the

centrality of personal responsibility in “fighting” the obesity epidemic. In 2004 and 2005, the

U.S. House of Representatives tried to codify this idea into law when it passed the Personal

Responsibility in Food Consumption Act, which earned the nickname “Cheeseburger Bill” in

popular press reports (Johnston 2004). This bill intended to prevent food marketers, advertisers,

distributors, sellers, and numerous other roles within the food industry from being held liable for

“claims of injury relating to a person's weight gain, obesity, or any health condition associated

with weight gain or obesity.” The bill went on to state that weight gain is caused by a multitude

of factors, but only lists genetics in addition to individual lifestyle choices and physical fitness

habits. Section 2 of the bill continues:

…fostering a culture of acceptance of personal responsibility is one of the most important ways to promote a healthier society, lawsuits seeking to blame individual food and beverage providers for a person's weight gain, obesity, or a health condition associated with a person's weight gain or obesity are not only legally frivolous and economically damaging, but also harmful to a healthy America.

Representative John Schwarz (2005) spoke in favor of the bill before Congress, saying:

The most important step we can take to curb obesity is to impart to everyone in this country that obesity can be controlled when we take personal responsibility. A healthy and consistent diet, with an adequate amount of exercise, will work wonders. That’s the simple truth… Allowing consumers to sue their local restaurant, to sue half the food industry, means that we are telling our citizens, “It’s not your fault that you are obese.” I support this legislation because it sends the message to everyone in the United States, young and old, that taking control of your weight is your responsibility, and taking personal responsibility is the only way that weight control can be achieved.

Although this bill did not pass a majority vote in the Senate in either 2004 or 2005, it inspired

several successful attempts to insulate the food industry at the state level. In fact, twenty-five

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states passed “Cheeseburger Bills” or “Commonsense Consumption Acts” that prevent the food

industry from implication in lawsuits in regard to obesity (Wilkings 2013, 230). One example is

Minnesota Representative Dean Urdhal’s 2011 Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption

Act. Urdahl concomitantly issued a press release stating, “My bill is about common sense and

personal responsibility because, as citizens, we ultimately must be accountable for what we

consume. If you eat too many cheeseburgers and get fat, don’t sue food retailers” (Urdahl 2011).

Although Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton ultimately vetoed the bill, he issued a statement

supporting its general goal of holing “individuals responsible for their own dietary choices”

(“Letter From Gov. Mark Dayton” 2011). Similarly, Colorado’s 2012 Commonsense

Consumption Act states: “... The health and well being of individuals are frequently long-term

manifestations of poor choices that are habitually made by those individuals. Despite commercial

influences, individuals remain ultimately responsible for the choices they make regarding their

body” (Wilkings 2013, 231).

The logics of Cheeseburger Bills can also be found in several other governmental

“punishments,” or examples of discipline, being debated and implemented with the goal of

encouraging individuals to make “personally responsible” choices. For example, there are

frequent calls to increase taxes, often referred to as “Twinkie Taxes” (Leigh 2004), on the

purchase of “junk” foods or sugary sodas (Huehnergarth 2012), with seventeen states passing

such legislation (Stagg Elliott 2008). Even more extreme proposals to “encourage” personal

responsibility include fining fat individuals. Alabama now charges fat government employees

twenty five dollars more a month for insurance if they are not actively trying to lose weight, and

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer pushed for fat individuals to pay fifty dollars a year in fees for

failing to meet particular health goals. Other proposals include New Mexico’s legislature

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debating whether to add a one percent tax to television sets and video game consoles (the tax

would then fund an outdoor education program called “No Child Left Inside”) and Mississippi

considered banning obese diners from restaurants (Stagg Elliott 2008). Taking bodily

punishment to its logical extreme, Josh Barro polemically proposed jailing fat individuals as a

“scare tactic” in a 2014 Business Insider article: “Fat is an ideal menace to be targeted with a

criminal law. To some extent, it's a subjective matter who is lazy or stupid, but it's pretty easy to

figure out who's guilty of being fat. A law against fat would scare people into losing weight.”

Similarly, numerous states, including Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Mexico, are

now classifying childhood obesity as medical neglect, which can lead to the jailing of parents

and limitations on custodial rights (Barnett 2009).

Government actions “encouraging” personal responsibility through specific disciplinary

actions or through taxes that “punish” the consumption of particular goods, which are framed as

attempts to make it “easier” for people to be personally responsible, are not limited to the U.S.

The World Health Organization backed a report incentivizing farmers to sell healthy, fresh

foods, while simultaneously encouraging tax increases on the purchase of “ultra-processed”

foods (Richards 2014). The Tongan Ministry of Health is considering, at least according to one

Australian News Network Headline, a “beefed up anti-fat tax” (“Tonga Considers” 2014).

Additionally, in 2008, Japan passed a law setting maximum waist sizes for people over forty

years of age. Japanese companies and city governments are then subject to financial penalties if

workers exceed the size limitation (Lohan 2009). At the same time, other countries are instead

“incentivizing” weight-loss as opposed to punishing fatness. Dubai began giving people a gram

of gold per kilogram of lost weight (“Gold for Gulf” 2014). And in the U.K., employers are

encouraged (through potential government tax deductions and funding) to hold weight-loss

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competitions where individuals can earn money and other rewards (Smith 2008).

The causes and solutions frequently talked about in relation to fatness, namely personal

responsibility or individual choice, seem as increasingly globalized as fatness itself being

categorized as a global problem. However, despite the dominance of the personal responsibility

frame for understanding fatness both within the U.S. and throughout the world, it is crucial to

acknowledge that there are alternative frames and discourses amending and challenging notions

of personal responsibility. In other words, while discourses of personal responsibility sediment

into a kind of common sense there are simultaneous complications of that discourse. For

instance, The Guardian reported in a 2013 article titled “Obesity Cannot Be Controlled By

Personal Responsibility Alone”:

Policymakers have invested in the exhausted, glib explanation that maintaining nutritional health is a matter of personal and parental responsibility – a corporate defense strategy adapted from the tobacco and alcohol industries… It is a neat and digestible expression of the basic obesity problem, but it lazily defers some crucial questions. Consumption is the half of the obesity equation which has the greatest effect, and over which we have the most control. But governments have been caught up in the food politics of “energy-in-energy-out” without asking why 10 percent of the Australian population visits McDonald’s every day despite school curriculums saturated in dietary education, why Indigenous communities suffer disproportionately high rates of obesity and diabetes, or why ultra-processed foods are cheaper than healthy alternatives.

Further, and corresponding with the neoliberal intensification of personal responsibility rhetoric

over the last thirty years, obesity statistics frame the “problem” of fatness as not just getting

“worse,” but also as turning into a “global crisis”! Is it possible that citizens around the world

collectively and actively decided to shirk personal responsibility in regard to eating and exercise

habits? Probably not. While individualized logics may be increasingly more extensive and

intensive, obvious flaws are simultaneously being recognized, at least implicitly, through calls

for various forms of government action and intervention. For example, Dr. Carissa F. Etienne,

Director of the Pan American Health Organization and World Health Organization stated at the

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2014 International Conference on Food Labeling and Fiscal Policies on Healthy Food and

Obesity Prevention in Quito, Ecuador:

Measures directed only at education and action that is directed only at promoting healthy individual behaviors are necessary, but they are not sufficient...The great challenge is to promote public policies that aim to transform the environment, encourage healthy behavior, and inhibit those unhealthy behaviors that are increasing exponentially and that promote harmful and unhealthy patterns of consumption.

While this statement ultimately still positions individual action as necessary for “fighting” the

obesity epidemic, the policy changes that Etienne has in mind would likely be the opposite of the

personal-responsibility-reinforcing Cheeseburger Bills popular in the United States. These

interventionist calls thus emphasize the continued “need” for traditional sites of discipline in a

global society of control.

In summary, the dominance of neoliberal discourses emphasizing personal responsibility

and individualism are evident across news reports, academic research, and government

regulations and laws. However, public health initiatives, government programs, and critiques

over personal responsibility being necessary but insufficient to alone reverse the obesity

epidemic reflect seemingly incompatible yet coexist discourses of social welfare and

interventionism that both have a massifying and an individualizing impact on people. These

incompatibilities are also present throughout fat television programs reflecting globally dominant

discourses of obesity. Numerous weight-loss shows reinforce both individualism and the

necessity of intervention, the importance and the difficulty of transformation, and submitting to

and internalizing discipline as well as resisting or complicating disciplinary logics.

Televising Globesity

Concern and anxiety surrounding the obesity epidemic, an issue legitimized and

surveilled by supranational non-governmental organizations and numerous national weight-loss

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policies, is reflected throughout the media landscape. Weight of the Nation (U.S., 2012), Weight

of the World (Canada, 2009), Globesity: Fat’s New Frontier (Australia, 2012), Muito Além do

Peso (Way Beyond Weight, Brazil, 2013), and The Obesity Clinic (Ireland, 2012), among others,

all document and lament the collectively expanding waists of the world. For instance, National

Geographic’s Half Ton World (2013) travels internationally to document the ways in which

individuals are, according to the show’s narrator, “fighting for their livelihoods, freedoms, and

even their lives.” The show follows individuals in Mexico, India, and the U.S. in order to detail

everyday experiences of fatness and document broad population changes, specifically Mexico

being influenced by the U.S. and the impact of economic prosperity on India’s overall health.

Most of these programs directly reference World Health Organization statistics, and all of them

use the Body Mass Index and frame weight-loss as the route to improving overall health.

In addition to these made-for-TV documentaries numerous TV series detail the everyday

lives of fat individuals on their journeys to lose weight. Beyond The Biggest Loser, the U.S. is

also home to MTV’s I Used to Be Fat, A&E’s Heavy, Bravo’s Thintervention (2010- ), VH1’s

Celebrity Fit Club (2005- ), Oxygen’s Dance Your Ass Off (2009- ), and My Big Fat Revenge

(2013- ), and ABC’s Extreme Weight-Loss. But the U.S. is not alone in producing programs

specifically detailing and encouraging individual weight-loss narratives or weight-loss

competitions. The U.K. has Obese: A Year to Save My Life USA (2012), Fat: The Fight of My

Life, The Fat Fighters (2013-), Lorraine Kelly’s Big Fat Challenge (2010- ), You Are What You

Eat (2004-2007), and Supersize vs. Superskinny. Likewise, Australia’s Channel 9 developed Big:

Extreme Makeover, which follows individuals as they lose weight in order to “save their lives,”

“reinvent themselves,” and “regain their former selves,” as well as Excess Baggage (2012-),

which pairs Australian citizens and celebrities into teams competing to lose weight for money.

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Similarly, Canada has Bulging Brides (2008- ) as well as Last Ten Pounds Bootcamp (2007- ).

Also, Canada’s Life Network program, Taking It Off (2002) portrays five Calgarians in a

competition to lose more weight than five citizen-dieters in Halifax. As part of a multi-platform

initiative to help Canadians lose weight, called “Canada Weighs-In,” the Canadian Broadcasting

Company began airing Village on a Diet (2011), which follows the weight-loss of a small British

Columbian town with a sixty percent obesity rate.

There is also Brazil’s Medida Certa (One Measure, 2012), Germany’s The Big Diet

(2001-2002), and New Zealand’s Downsize Me! (2005-2007), all of which focus on and track

bodies as they lose or attempt to lose weight. Not only are there numerous iterations of weight-

loss programs, as all of these examples attest, many of them also circulate internationally. For

instance, Canada’s X-Weighted, which was commissioned and is broadcast by the Canadian

lifestyle channel Slice, is also shown on Sky UK, Turner Latin America, Foxtel, SBS (Belgium

and Netherlands), TVNZ (New Zealand), TV4 (Sweden), Évasion (France), TV2 (Hungary), and

TV5 (Finland). In addition to airing in the U.S. on MTV, I Used to Be Fat is also exhibited in the

U.K., Germany, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands, among other countries, on VIVA (a

channel owned by MTV) and across MTV Latin America feeds covering Mexico, Colombia,

Costa Rica, Chile, and Argentina. Weight-Loss television texts also circulate widely on the

internet as exemplified by the availability of full episodes of Supersize vs. Superskinny, Obese: A

Year to Save My Life, and Big: Extreme Makeover on YouTube and European media websites,

such as Couch Tuner.

While I will be primarily discussing the U.S. version of The Biggest Loser in this chapter,

there are some minor differences in formats in other countries in regions. For example, reflecting

stricter norms in regard to dress is the Loser format circulating throughout fourteen countries in

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the “Arab World,” Ar-Rabeh Al-Akabar, which features fully clothed weekly weigh-ins instead

of the flesh-revealing weigh-ins in the U.S. version. Additionally, Australia’s less-confessional

and less aggressively individualistic cultural norms in comparison to the U.S. can be seen in the

Australian version of The Biggest Loser (2006- ), with most Australian makeover shows being

less concerned with humiliation and individualism and more concerned with creating a familiar,

“neighborly” address and emphasizing weight-loss for the good of families and communities

(Lewsis 2008). Despite these format variations, common themes can be found across all

international or internationally circulated programs reflective of globally dominant discourses of

the obesity epidemic. Their references to WHO data further massifies, or constructs populations

for comparison, monitoring, and intervention, and individualizes both by directly intervening

with show participants and by (potentially) reinforcing body and aesthetic norms for viewers.

Many of them also rely on similar aesthetic choices and narrative trajectories to reinforce both

the “problems” of fatness and “freedoms” afforded through thinness. Series usually begin by

detailing both the potential reasons why participants consider themselves fat and the ways in

which they believe fatness impedes their lifestyles, interpersonal relationships, goal

achievements, or self-esteems. Programs then have participants “confront’ their bodies and body-

associated “problems” by facing themselves in the mirror, public weigh-ins, boot camp style

workouts, or consultations with health personnel. Like most television programming weight-loss

journeys then become increasingly complicated as participants experience both weight-loss

plateaus and weight-gains, workout fatigue or injury, or a returning of previous “bad habits,” all

of which undermine the idea that transformation or learning and maintaining steadfast self-

discipline to particular dieting and exercise regimens are straightforward even under “expert”

supervision. Finally, most programs do end by showcasing (to varying degrees) “successful” fat

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to thin transformations, which work toward inspiring viewers at home to do the same. However,

reunion episodes and “Where are they now?” news articles and blog posts demonstrate that there

is never really an “After.” Prevalent across all of these programming segments are discourses of

personal responsibility and the necessity of bodily intervention, both of which reflect the obesity

epidemic discourses discussed previously in this chapter. But when highlighting this reflection

it’s also important to remember that “...our current makeover culture is dialectical, marked by

incessant border skirmishes over questions of elitism and populism, power and subordination,

knowledge and exclusion, resistance and consent” (Heller 2009, 78).

The global positioning of fatness as an epidemic limits critiques of government

intervention and surveillance, as well as on the multi-cited television interventions and

encouragements of self-surveillance. Because obesity epidemic rhetoric is common across not

only international NGOs and government debates, policies, and interventions, but also news

reports, viewers of weight loss TV may be more likely to agree with the framing of fat bodies as

in need of intervention and change in comparison to the necessity of making over a car on Pimp

My Ride (2004-2007) or a wardrobe on What Not to Wear (2003-2013). Even though the

desirability of making over the body through weight-loss fuels a multi-billion dollar diet industry

(and provides plenty of advertising space and product placement opportunities within the shows

themselves), weight-loss transformations are arguably less overtly commercialized than other

types of reality makeovers. In fact, there is almost a commercially counterproductive element to

these kinds of fat TV programs because consumer goods (in the form of “junk” food and

sometimes televisions and video consoles) are disposed of and consumerist habits, such as

television watching, are critiqued for their inactivity. Ultimately, since weight-loss reality shows

are about losing pounds in the name of health instead of good acquisition in the name of style

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they may be viewed as a more legitimate and perhaps more important kind of transformation.

Viewers may also have more complicated relationships with the examples they see across

weight-loss shows because of the centrality of the body in understandings of the self or

individual. While some television series purposely select bodies believed to be “excessive,”10

other programs select bodies that likely look similar to viewers’ bodies at home or that can be

categorized as being lower on the Body Mass Index. The Biggest Loser and Extreme Weight Loss

make it a point to always include “one of the biggest contestants ever!” with many participants

desiring to lose, or are told by trainers and medical personnel on the show that they need to lose,

between one to two hundred pounds or more. Alternatively, X-Weighted, I Used to Be Fat and

Thintervention generally depict individuals desiring to lose between thirty and ninety pounds.

This range is still a considerable amount of weight to lose, for sure, but moderate in comparison

to other dramatic television transformations.

Explaining Fatness

Almost all fat television programs that specifically follow narratives of weight-loss,

whether by telling the story of one or two individuals losing weight or a dozen individuals

competing to lose the most weight, begin by detailing each participant’s fat history. June Deery

notes that makeover programs usually offer only limited and depoliticized personal histories in

an attempt to achieve broader viewer identification (2006, 168). However, weight-loss

transformations tend to be different in this regard as a great deal of time is normally spent

describing individual situations and discussing both past and present familial and social lives. 10 Programs normally rationalize the exhibition of large bodies in one of two ways. Firstly, extremely large participants demonstrate to viewers at home that if someone of such a large size can exercise to lose weight viewers can, too. Secondly, those individuals are framed as being in need of the most help or as being close to death due to their sizes. Extremely large bodies also add drama to transformations, which is undoubtedly believed by producers to be good for ratings.

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Greater attention to individual histories is perhaps possible because the body itself (everyone has

a body!) and the desire for weight-loss already achieve a kind of broad identification. The

categorization of two-thirds of individuals, at least in the U.S., as having a BMI outside of the

normative range, along with a long history of representational homogeneity across media texts as

well as advertising and marketing strategies that work to make people feel “less than,” likely

leads to these all-too-common feelings of individual discontent and desire for weight-loss. Thus,

while viewers may not necessarily identify with the “bizarre” or “dated” wardrobes and styles

featured on Ambush Makeover (2003-2005) or the cluttered living rooms appearing on Clean

House (2003- ) a wide range of viewers can identify, unfortunately, with feelings of discontent--

and even outright hatred!-- toward the composition and appearance of their own bodies.

According to Melissa Crawley, these personal histories are normally set up in order to be

disavowed in the sense that through makeovers individuals can be “emancipated from [their]

history” or from any past emotional or physical “damage” (2006, 62). This is also true in weight-

loss programs as participants are encouraged to first confront and then move on from their pasts

in order to move on from a body that is framed as holding them back in various capacities.

Gareth Palmer contends that a common assumption across these shows is that the “real self” is

always slim and that any bodily “excess is both superfluous and grotesque” (2014, 38). Thus, in

order to truly be themselves, or become themselves, they must look, be, and desire the way

others do (Heller 2006, 1), or model their individual identities based on normative constructions

of the larger social body. More specifically in relation to the obesity epidemic, participants must

look, be, and desire according to normative health and beauty body standards.

Concerns over the aesthetic appearance and health of the body are frequently conflated

across weight-loss TV programs. This is not particularly surprising considering Samantha Kwan

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and Jennifer Grave’s argument that health and beauty frames are the most promoted fat frames

because their messages not only “ring loud and far,” but also because both frames reinforce body

conformity (2013, 13). The aesthetic frame, which positions fat as ugly and as something that

should be “feared, hated, and to be avoided at all costs,” can be found throughout both consumer

culture, particularly fashion, cosmetic, and weight-loss industries, and televised texts and

advertisements (2013, 22-23). Numerous feminist scholars argue that this pervasive emphasis on

thinness has a serious impact on the way individuals view their bodies and their overall physical,

social, and psychological well-being (Spitzack 1990; Bordo 2003; Bartky 2010).

Correspondingly, the health frame, which positions fat as a significant public health concern,

permeates television texts and news media, and governmental agencies, including the Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention and WHO. The health frame also emphasizes thinness as

evidenced by the frequent use of BMI to indicate one’s overall health despite only actually

detailing a height to weight ratio. Since both frames support idealizations of thinness they often

exist concomitantly across weight-loss reality shows and provide participants and “experts”

different justifications for either desiring a body intervention or engaging in the body

intervention of participants.

While a number of participants across weight-loss shows discuss the appearance of their

bodies, most programs focus on the health of the body, which is a legitimized, “necessary” and

“urgent” intervention in the context of the obesity epidemic. In other words, while appearance

and vanity may be greater motivators for some participants, the show’s “experts” typically cite

participant health and trying to inspire viewers (or populations) at home to think about their own

health statuses, as the rationale behind television interventions. However, emphases do vary

across different series. The Biggest Loser, Heavy, and Big: Extreme Makeover are more likely to

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depict participants discussing current or future “obesity related” health concerns as motivators

for weight-loss, whereas I Used to Be Fat and Extreme Weight Loss, among others, often spend

greater narrative attention to participants describing the ways in which they dislike the

appearance of their bodies. Ultimately, trainers and health “experts,” again, focus almost entirely

on transformation as being necessary for good health because “scientific” judgments are more

likely to be accepted by viewers than television trainers hatefully describing participant bodies as

ugly or grotesque.

In addition to body aesthetics and health, participants offer numerous other reasons for

desiring to lose weight during opening segments across weight-loss TV. These reasons include

clothing limitations, travel discomfort, physical impairment (like becoming tired while dancing),

wanting to be a better mother or father, making friends, or having sex, whether more often or for

the first time. For example, McKenzie, who appears on a first season episode of I Used to Be

Fat, identifies her fat body as the reason why she as a high school senior has yet to have a

boyfriend. McKenzie’s father reinforces this logic by saying, “She’s got a beautiful face. She’s

got a beautiful personality. But the first thing that attracts a guy is a nice figure. Girls have to be

thin and shapely. I want you to be happy and a have a storybook romance and to do that you’re

going to need to lose weight and fit that image.” Similarly, Debbie, a participant on Heavy,

laments her forty-four year old virgin status, saying, “It’s a thin world out there. I sit on the

sidelines, but I just want to be a part of everything.” Debbie then articulates the heartbreaking

reason behind her desire to lose weight: to feel worthy enough to have another person love her.

Even though men and women across these programs discuss an array of romantic

relationship difficulties, women like McKenzie and Debbie more regularly discuss thinness as

necessary for attracting a partner. As discussed in the first chapter, there is considerable evidence

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that women experience fatness differently than men, or that the pressures of thinness are more

strongly felt by women in a heterosexist, patriarchal society. Messages about fat as sexually

undesirable or unattractive, and images of thinness in relation to beauty and power are widely

circulated throughout the media landscape, but especially in texts targeting women. These

messages and images construct expectations for the way women’s bodies “should look,” and

undoubtedly influence many people to not only be dissatisfied with their bodies, but also to work

toward changing them through diet and/or exercise. Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber (2007, 18)

argues that this common “pursuit of thinness” is a primary or fundamental concern for many

women because they are encouraged from a young age to connect the idea of self-worth to the

ability to attract a partner, and body weight is seen as an important component of physical

attraction.

In addition to detailing why weight-loss television participants want to lose weight, these

programs also identify potential reasons behind weight-gain in the first place. The two most

common “causes” of fatness are, firstly, individuals making poor dietary choices and being

inactive, which reflects dominant obesity epidemic rhetoric positioning fatness as the result of

“bad personal lifestyles” (Saguy 2013, 6), and secondly, traumatic events that lead to individuals

making poor dietary choices or being inactive. One of the ways in which these poor dietary

choices are visually conveyed is through camera shots cataloging refrigerator, cupboard, and

employee break room contents, or shots of the participants consuming stereotypical “junk foods”

or engaging in (in)activities, such as playing video games or watching television. On X-

Weighted, one participant, Carrie, has a refrigerator full of processed meatballs, cookies, chicken

nuggets, and french fries, while another, Andrea, has a large chocolate stash in her freezer. They

are both then made by their weight-loss coaches to throw all of this food away. On Supersize vs.

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Superskinny, Ellen’s eight to ten energy drinks-a-day habit is visually documented by her

finishing a can and adding it to a growing pile of empty cans in her car. This is similar to

Extreme Weight Loss’ Bruce who is depicted drinking over one hundred ounces of Mountain

Dew for breakfast. Also on Extreme Weight Loss, Ty is shown not only eating from a bucket of

Kentucky Fried Chicken (the horror!), but also dumping loose pieces of fried batter into his

mouth and then drinking a liter of Coca-Cola. Depicting both inactivity and food consumption,

the EWL episode featuring Cassie portrays her eating fast food and watching television while her

husband watches a different television on the opposite wall. Many participants are also shown

eating fast food in their vehicles, including Christy (EWL) going to McDonalds after a night of

drinking and Tom (Heavy) ordering six junior bacon cheeseburgers and three spicy nuggets at

Wendy’s. All of these are examples of the “bad habits” participants must disavow according to

each weight-loss program’s “experts,” and they support the “necessity” or legitimacy of the

televised weight-loss intervention.

Some of these visuals correspond with participants explaining their food choices or

physical inactivity through narration. Many cite a lack of time and subsequent reliance on

convenient food, or the tendency to focus more on their family’s wellbeing rather than their own.

For example, Gina, who appears on the sixteenth season of The Biggest Loser, explains that the

duties and responsibilities of motherhood caused her weight gain, and the show itself describes

her through narration as someone “who thinks about everyone else before she thinks about

herself.” Likewise, Georganna, a season four participant on Extreme Weight-Loss, says to the

camera during her introduction, “I got caught up in being a Mom and forgot who Georgeanna

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is.”11

Most participants also say they eat for emotional reasons or in search of comfort. Extreme

Weight Loss focuses more than any other weight-loss series on traumatic events triggering

weight gain in order to add dramatic tension to narratives. Traumatic events include the death of

a loved one, divorce, illness, and even experiences of childhood abuse. On the first episode of the

fourth season, Ty explains that he is fat for two reasons: “gorging on food” after baseball

practices and using food to fill the void caused by his absent alcoholic mother. On the same

episode, Charita tearfully talks about having an abortion as a young girl, which made her feel

like a failure and turn toward food for comfort. In a later episode, Bruce gains weight after his

father is sent to prison for sexually abusing both him and several of his football teammates.

Another episode follows Melissa who gains one hundred and fifty pounds following the suicide

of her husband (he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after his return from service in

Afghanistan). Sara says she gained weight trying to cope with being bullied because of her short

stature caused by achondroplasia, and Alyssa believes she gained almost three hundred pounds

dealing with her mother’s death following a car accident. However, David details one of the

most dramatic stories of weight gain in the sixth episode of the fourth season. David describes

himself as two hundred and twenty-five pounds overweight because he feels responsible for the

death of his younger sister, whom he forgot to give her seizure medication, and the death of his

younger brother, who was accidently shot while under David’s supervision. David blames

himself for these events, and the perpetual and overwhelming guilt he feels causes him to hide

from his past with food to the point of eating most of his meals in secrecy. All of these examples

are interesting because while they do represent the “bad lifestyle decisions” so often discussed in 11 These television tales of sacrificial motherhood resemble Susan Douglas’ concept of “new momism,” which is the idealization of an “intensive motherhood” that makes it difficult for women to focus on their own needs and desires.

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relation to fatness, the events detailed make those decisions understandable. Instead of just being

“lazy,” they are victims, sufferers, or experiencers of undeniably traumatic life events that would

be difficult to cope with for anyone.

These “extreme” examples, in addition to adding dramatic tension to television

narratives, humanize participants and potentially foster feelings of empathy or sympathy among

viewers. These examples also complicate Gareth Palmer’s assertion that reality shows about

“large people” (to use his terminology) frame the “failure to lose weight [as] symptomatic of a

faulty self and nothing else” (2014, 302). Instead, the extended histories of individuals on these

shows position the “faulty self” as not being a fault from within the self. Through access to

discussions between one participant, Sharon, and her therapist on Heavy it is revealed and

reframed as understandable that Sharon gained over one hundred pounds after the death of her

mother and the suicide of her son within a short period of time. As many of these narrative

examples illustrate, the televisual components that reinforce messages of individualized fault or

the need for self-discipline also simultaneously contradict or at least trouble those messages with

more complex narratives and elaborate contextual details of each person’s journey. Even less

dramatic reasons behind weight-gain on I Used to Be Fat, such as having an overprotective

mother, divorced parents, or a large Italian family that expresses love through food, exemplify

that fatness is more complex than a faulty self, or fault is at least partially attributed to external

influences or actors outside of the self.

Bodies on Display

Brenda Weber notes that negative emotionalism, a state of mind characterized by

pessimism, unhappiness, or helplessness, among other feelings and perspectives, is common

across makeover television. Negative emotionalism is primarily reserved for and connected to

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the “Before-state” of bodies, or bodies prior to weight loss, and this bodily status is depicted as

“pathologically downcast, depressed, insecure, and morose” (2009, 87). One of the ways in

which this negative emotionalism is conveyed, and probably exacerbated, is by having

participants talk about their pain while looking at their nude or near-nude bodies in a mirror.

Mirror scenes are present in I Used to Be Fat, Extreme Weight Loss, and Heavy. Weber argues

that makeover programs spend a considerable amount of time displaying the “shameful pre-

made-over body” to provide evidence of the necessity and desirability of the makeover (2009,

83). Weber elaborates, “These moments when the body’s flaws are put on display cast makeover

subjects as not only shameful, but grotesque; a conceit of degradation that similarly positions the

makeover intervention as nothing short of miraculous” (92). Palmer similarly argues that the

extreme close-ups depicting participants as “shameful,” and also as submitting themselves for

“treatment,” are a ritualized part of reality TV transformations. Participants and viewers at home

are supposed to reject the body by facing the reading of it as a deformity and then committing to

change (2014, 305). The individuals’ histories and mirror examination scenes of pre-bodies

frame fatness as the effect of dealing with “problems” as well as the cause of other “problems,”

such as negative emotionalism. In other words, Katherine Sender and Margaret Sullivan argue

that fatness is both the “cause and effect of the candidates’ low-self-esteem” (2008, 580).

These mirror scenes generally depict the participants standing by themselves in either

their bathrooms or bedrooms while facing a mirror and talking about the feelings they have

toward their bodies. Many of them touch or lift isolated parts of the body, typically the stomach,

to display to viewers what they dislike the most. Kathie on EWL exemplifies this process. While

tearfully looking in the mirror she lifts her stomach and sighs, “I fed my pain.” David (EWL) also

lifts his stomach while saying, “This is the reason I avoid going to places. I’m huge, sloppy. I’m

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an embarrassment to [my girlfriend].” Similarly, Flor (Heavy) holds her bare stomach as she

says, “This is what it looks like when you allow food to take over your life,” and Lindy (Heavy)

pats her stomach as she cries, “This is my fat, fat, fat, fat, fat stomach. I really want this to go

away. When I look in the mirror now I just want to say ‘What the fuck happened to you? How

did you let this happen?’” This negative emotionalism is especially present when EWL’s Charita

cannot even look in the mirror at her body because she either does not want to see herself or does

not want viewers at home to see her body. Instead, she begins crying and shuts the door on the

camera crew filming her. These moments that work to produce shame, at least according to

Weber, Palmer, and Martin Roberts (2007), also undoubtedly work to produce compassion and

understanding. The pain expressed by participants as they discuss their perceived bodily flaws

humanizes them in tension with the surveilling and objectifying camera that instead works

toward producing feelings of revulsion or embarrassment.

Much like Lindy on Heavy, many participants either explicitly or implicitly discuss the

ways in which their bodies are not actually their bodies, that parts of their bodies do not belong,

or that what they see in the mirror does not actually reflect who they are as individuals.

Additional examples of this include Jordan (I Used to Be Fat) saying, “I see someone that isn’t

who I am inside. I see the outwardly figure and the inwardly person as two different people;”

Josh (EWL), “I hate it. I hate it all. I’m not supposed to be this person;” Rod (EWL), “This is not

me;” and Cassie (EWL) crying, “Last time I looked at myself was two decades ago. I can see

why my husband doesn’t want to have sex with me. I wouldn’t want to have sex with this. There

is nothing I like about this body.” Marci similarly distances on I Used to Be Fat, saying about her

stomach, “It’s the ugliest part of me. I hate it so much. It’s so ugly. It’s not normal. It’s not

supposed to be there,” as does McKenzie when discussing her stomach: “I’m just disgusting,

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ugly. Why would anyone want to look at this? I’m sick of not being able to just look in the

mirror and know that what I’m seeing is pretty.”

By referring to themselves as “this,” or offering statements like “this body,” participants

actively construct a distinction between “themselves” and their bodies. None of the participants

want “it,” the identified source of their troubles, to be a part of “them.” This positions fatness as

something encasing the self or as something to be rejected by those “trapped” inside. The

transformation from fat to thin is then not only considered progress, but also necessary for being

or becoming a complete or whole person, or for “insides” and “outsides” to be consistent or

compatible in presenting the “self” to the world. Thus, when participants look in the mirror

during these scenes they are neither fully subjects nor reduced to objects. Their body talk instead

parallels the broader social and cultural positioning of fat bodies as abject, to use Julia Kristeva’s

framework, giving them a liminal status between subjectivity and objectivity, as once a subject,

but now rejected, cast-off, or marginalized in society. According to Kristeva, what is determined

to be abject must be rejected lest it “ends up engulfing us” (1982, 4), just as stomachs surround

or “overwhelm” participants. The way many participants talk about their bodies also parallels the

way anorectics, who have bodies categorized as underweight, or as on the opposite end of fat

bodies on the body size continuum, talk about their bodies as being “out of place” “disgusting”

“diseased” or as “inherently abject” (Warin 2010, 137). Megan Warin’s research interviewing

anorectics reveals that many of them experience a disconnection or alienation from their own

bodies, evidenced by one interviewee referring to herself as “me and my disgusting body” (2010,

143). Fatness is thus rejected or as in need of being rejected by both anorectics and fat TV

participants, although anorectics view their bodies as abject because they believe them to be fat

or do not want to become fat as opposed to actually being categorized as fat according to public

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health standards. Although not including those medically diagnosed as anorexic, the U.K.

program Supersize vs. Superskinny explores the bodily connections between those categorized as

obese and underweight, pairing individuals in a food lab so they can help each other confront

their “extreme” behaviors and work toward achieve moderation in their food intake. A great deal

of time is spent on examining both the appearance of obese and underweight bodies, especially

signs of malnourishment with underweight bodies, and discussing the way both kinds of bodies

result from a disordered relationship with food.

Susan Bordo argues that the coexistence of anorexia and obesity as “epidemics”

exemplify the difficultly of finding stability between the consuming and producing sides of the

self. Like Berlant, she attributes this to the contradictory demands of advanced consumer

capitalism, which tears the “self” in two mutually incompatible directions by requiring

individuals to simultaneously resist immediate gratification and indulge their desires (1993, 199).

Advertisements and magazine articles for the dieting and weight-loss industry frequently

promise to reconcile this incompatibility. We can indulge food, but appear as if we haven’t by

following “effortless” regimens that say we can lose “85 Pounds Without Dieting,” complete

“3,000 Sit-Ups Without Moving an Inch,” and go “From Fat to Fabulous in 21 Days” (Bordo

1993, 199). However, weight-loss reality television programs stand out because they do not

make the same promises of “effortless” transformation. Instead they depict their own

incompatibilities: that weight-loss can be achieved by submitting oneself to “expert” intervention

and surveillance as well as working hard and internalizing discipline, yet the process is difficult,

filled with complications, and the desired amount of weight-loss is not always achieved in the

“end.” In this sense, weight-loss programs must balance depicting themselves as effective

interventionist agents within the obesity epidemic (and tools of surveillance in a global society of

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control) while also exhibiting a dramatic, suspenseful, and engaging television narrative that is

more likely to be enjoyed by viewers and subsequently translate into higher ratings and

advertising revenue.

Going back to weight-loss TV content, Weber discusses the way makeover programs

often involve friends and family who “out’ individuals as needing makeovers. Friends and

family, strangers passing on the street, the program’s “experts,” or all of these groups together,

then offer detailed and likely hurtful critiques of the participants. Weber argues that this destroys

the “palliative that the ugly person is his or her own worst critic” and that his or her “internalized

invective pales in comparison to what others think of them” (84). However, weight-loss

programs tend to do the opposite as demonstrated by the previously discussed mirror scenes.

Instead of friends, family, or “experts” critiquing each participant’s body, participants primarily

critique their bodies themselves (of course what they say about their bodies is likely influenced

by producer or “expert” questions and statements off camera). When program “experts,” such

medical doctors and trainers, do critique the body it is almost always in terms of health. Science-

focused critiques as opposed to aesthetic judgments reflect dominant discourses of fatness as

being a major health problem. Even though the appearance of fat may be reason enough to

warrant a body intervention to some, health reasons are legitimized in the context of the obesity

epidemic. This is not to say that some shows do not insult their participants’ appearances or

actions. In fact, the host of the U.K.’s Fat Families (2010) refers to participants as “dumpy

donuts,” and tells them to stop putting food into their “cake holes” and to get off their “wobbly

bums,” but even these examples are not directly critiquing the appearance of participants’ bodies

and the host’s comments are justified because, as the host explains, he is a “former fatty.”

Focusing less on bodily appearance, X-Weighted introduces each episode’s two fully

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clothed participants by having them talk about their families and their lives. One episode

featuring Andrea and Carrie, who are best friends and next door neighbors, depicts busy

mornings of trying to get kids ready for school while making breakfast, making time in the day

to bake cookies with their children, and eating fast food or processed foods together as families.

While some scenes work toward establishing their “bad habits,” like Andrea and Carrie’s snack

food nights or Carrie dipping her chicken nugget in ice cream, the participants are otherwise

represented as average, easily identifiable people who “only” want to lose around fifty pounds.

While participants on X-Weighted do not tearfully describe the appearance of their bodies, they,

or their families, do talk about how their weight makes them feel. In an interview Carrie’s

husband says of her, “I think Carrie’s weight makes her feel insecure and not very confident of

herself. I’m going to love her either way, but if I had the choice between a fat Carrie or a skinny

Carrie, it’s pretty obvious I’d choose the skinny one.” Carrie agrees that she would also choose a

“Skinny Carrie,” which is why she’s on the show. Carrie continues by saying that the reason she

wants to lose the weight is not because she feels horrible about herself or necessarily hates her

body, but rather because she no longer has “excuses for not losing her baby weight.” Andrea

instead touches on possible future health complications from being overweight as the reason for

her TV participation, saying, “It’s not just my life, I have other lives to be responsible for.”

Also less focused on emotional pain over the appearance of the body is A&E’s Heavy.

However, instead of depicting “average” participants who want to lose around fifty pounds the

way X-Weighted does, Heavy intensifies its focus on health and only features participants who

“need” to lose upwards of two hundred pounds. In place of a tearful mirror scene, Heavy follows

participants during their initial medical exams as well as their everyday lives, and shows

participants sleeping with the aid of breathing masks, injecting themselves with insulin, or

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managing wounds. These examples shift the focus from aesthetic concerns of the body to

“obesity-related” health complications; specifically sleep apnea, diabetes, and lymphedema

(swelling and water retention in the limbs). Despite the focus on health the camera remains

similarly objectifying or abjectifying in comparison to the mirror scenes. Low camera angles are

regularly used to make participants appear larger. An example of this practice can be seen in the

Heavy episode featuring Tom as he attempts, and ultimately fails, to ride an exercise bike for his

stress test.

Like Heavy, Australia’s Big: Extreme Makeover visually and narratively represents the

fat body in relation to ill health. The opening camera sequence scans up each participant’s almost

nude body, documenting their appearance. The show then follows participants as they go about

their lives (especially during meal and snack times) and documents any difficulties they may

have completing banal tasks like putting on socks or cleaning themselves after defecating. Big

then elaborates on the health issues each participant may face, such as Mick learning that his

resting heart rate is over one hundred and thirty beats per minute or Wayne finding out that he is

at risk for blood clots returning to his lungs. These scenes work to demonstrate the importance of

weight-loss for health and life, reflecting dominant discourses of the obesity epidemic.12 In fact,

just prior to Mick’s first workout his trainer refer refers to him as “walking death” because he

cannot personally comprehend someone as fat as Mick can still be alive and somewhat

physically mobile.

Focusing on the health of the fat body often leads to discussions of life and death.

According to Le’a Kent (2001, 134-135) abjection often corresponds with reactions of revulsion

or fear of contamination resulting in fat bodies being associated with “death,” which is

12 Although the programs rarely say that each participant’s weight causes the identified health issue, the discussion of the issue itself implies that it is connected to weight.

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oppositional to thinness and its associations with “health,” and thus, “life.” An example

illustrating Kent’s assertion is when Dr. Huizenga, the medical consultant on The Biggest Loser,

labels one contestant, Jerry, the “sickest contestant” ever appearing on the show. Dr. Huizenga

estimates Jerry’s biological age to be seventy-six because of his weight despite only being fifty-

one years old. Huizenga then explains after Jerry’s weight-loss, “That was literally like seeing

someone in the grave and pulling them out.” Jillian Michaels, an infamous trainer on The Biggest

Loser, even evokes Jerry’s health as a motivation for his daughter to increase the intensity of her

workouts, telling her, “Every time you want to quit, think about your dad dropping dead on the

treadmill.”

Fatness being related to death instead of life can also be found in Obese: A Year to Save

My Life when the narrator introduces a participant by saying, “For Bev this really could be last

chance saloon. She is fifty now, but in such bad shape her metabolic age registers at sixty-five. I

know she likes to put on a brave face, but the truth is, she’s reached a pretty scary place.” In

another episode of Obese: A Year to Save My Life, a different participant, Sandy, explains that he

desires to lose weight because he does not want to die at a young age, stating into the camera,

“There is definitely a sociable person in here dying to come out. I just can’t wait for that person

to burst out and say ‘I’m alive! I’m here.’” Later in the episode and after gaining thirteen pounds

in one week, Sandy’s trainer too reminds him of the “life or death” reason he is part of the

television program, explaining, “You’ve got liver disease. You’ve got metabolic disease. You’ve

got things popping up that will kill you. They’ll kill you!”

The programs that specifically highlight the health of participants reflect globally

dominant discourses of obesity that link large body size to poor health regardless of actual poor

health, and position fatness as a necessary and legitimate reason for intervention. Furthermore,

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reality weight-loss television programs espouse similar public health statistics emphasizing that

the obesity epidemic is, indeed, a dire situation. The World Health organization reported in its

2010 “Global Status Report on NonCommunicable Diseases” that almost three million people

die around the world as a result of being overweight or obese, and further estimates that about

thirty-six percent of all DALYs (disability adjusted life years)13 around the globe are due to

individuals being overweight or obese. The Biggest Loser’s Dr. Huizenga offers his own

“frightening,” uncited statistic similar to the WHO’s: “Worst case estimates put obesity as killing

twenty-five thousand Americans a month.” Dr. Huizenga then uses these statistics to commend

The Biggest Loser for intervening in the obesity epidemic. He says:

We are seeing incredible results that we heretofore thought impossible. And as far as I’m concerned, Nobel peace prize here we come. We have a solution to a deadly disease. We try to use what we’ve learned here to help everyone in this country, everyone around the world. And to think that this is part of reality TV, which people sneer [at] and look down upon.

Thus, TBL is not only intervening and massifying—regardless of its “success”-- with large

populations across international television markets, but also individualizing due to its operation

of specific sites of discipline that “save lives,” such as TBL ranches in the U.S., Germany, and

Brunei.

Another standard scene across weight-loss programs is the initial weigh-in, although both

the structure and purpose of weigh-in scenes vary. Participants on I Used to Be Fat weigh

themselves in their own homes with their trainers and family members present. Similarly,

participants on Heavy are weighed-in privately (as private as can be with a camera crew present)

either in a doctor’s office or workout area once they arrive to the Hilton Head Island fitness

resort. These kinds of weigh-ins are framed as necessary for participants learning the “severity”

of their bodily situations. These weigh-ins may produce tears, but they are not overly dramatized 13 The WHO views a DALY as one year lost of “healthy” life due to disability and/or disease.

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like the ones on TBL, meaning there is no giant scale-like apparatus with flashing lights and

displays of numbers moving up and down to slowly zero in on the contestant’s weight.

While makeover logics, according to Weber and Palmer, use these scenes to induce

shame, they also can be read as over-the-top or unnecessary, such as the ones found on Extreme

Weight Loss. Across the first three seasons participants are weighed-in using a freight scale on

the loading dock of the California Health and Longevity Institute. This practice occurs under the

guise of the facility—a facility specifically designed for health and weight-loss!-- not having a

scale capable of handling the size of participants. Like the other ways in which individuals are

sometimes positioned as less-than-human across weight-loss programs, the use of a loading dock

freight scale positions these bodies as beyond the size of human possibility and more like an

object, specifically a wood pallet stacked full of consumer goods. However, starting in the fourth

season of Extreme Weight Loss weigh-ins occur more often in public spaces. For instance,

Charita is weighed-in at a heavily populated outside mall in downtown Denver, Colorado.

Charita’s trainer, Chris Powell, tells her to remove her shirt and shoes and step on the scale.

When Charita hesitates in front of the large crowd gathered around her, Powell urges, “This

process is about not hiding anymore.” In a similar vein, another of the show’s participants,

Brandi, is forced to weigh-in on an auditorium stage following a beauty pageant. When Brandi

hesitates after Powell also tells her to take off her shirt and step on the scale, he reassures her,

“It’s all about letting go.” Regardless of these questionable, television-drama-enhancing

justifications for the practice, the scenes can be empathy-inducing as much as they are shame-

inducing.

Competition programs, such as Shedding for the Wedding (2011), The Biggest Loser, and

Celebrity Fit Club (and non-competition, but multi-membered shows like Thintervention) also

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dramatize their weigh-in scenes by having each participant take a shirtless turn on the scale while

other participants watch. Brenda Weber (2009) argues that makeover programs, which many

weight-loss programs can be categorized as, reinforce a surveilling gaze and rely on shame and

affective domination (a kind of disciplinary “love-power”) to encourage TV participants and

viewers at home to accept the (il)logics of transformation and convince them to govern

themselves (89). In many of these weight-loss reality programs the “disciplinary gaze” or

“censorious gaze” is reproduced through scenes like the weigh-in because they maximize each

contestant’s vulnerability and discomfort by requiring them to fully submit to both “expert” and

audience scrutiny.

For example, on Shedding for the Wedding, a show where couples compete to lose weight

in order to win their dream wedding, women are displayed in their sports bras while men are

depicted shirtless. Many of the women stand with their hands joined in front of their stomachs

partially hiding their bodies from the camera, which pans back and forth across the midsection of

each person. These moments of exposure and vulnerability are when the camera concentrates on

participant bodies most intensely. As many of the couples step on the scale, which is elevated on

a stage in front of the other contestants, the camera zooms in on their thighs and slowly moves

up their bodies, leaving no stretch mark, bump, bulge, or other “aesthetic deformity”

undocumented. Instead of close-up reactions shots to capture disappointment when the scale fails

to reflect progress, or elation if the scale instead reflects their “hard work,” the camera never

moves in beyond a medium shot, always keeping each contestant’s midsection present on the

screen. This visual documentation of fat bodies, according to Palmer, reinforce fat as signifying a

“loss of control” or an “absence of will,” while providing “license to increase surveillance and

hypervigilance for well-being” (2014, 313).

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However, despite programs visually reinforcing the disciplinary or censorious gaze

characteristic of numerous makeover or weight-loss reality TV, these programs also counter

those same persuasive visual messages in two ways. Firstly, narratives and personal contexts are

emphasized, which make participants relatable or identifiable as opposed to mere objects for

critique or derision. Secondly, numerous weight-loss programs inadvertently prove that

submitting oneself to the surveilling gaze of the camera, viewers at home, and each show’s

“experts,” is not necessarily effective for sustained weight-loss, weight maintenance, or

developing self-control over one’s body. In fact, shows like Heavy and I Used to Be Fat focus

more on how challenging it is to lose weight and sustain that weight loss long-term. Even if

participants submit to constant surveillance in a controlled environment like those found on The

Biggest Loser ranch and Heavy’s Hilton Head Island resort, or allow a personal trainer take

control over their lives for three months like on I Used to Be Fat, losing weight-- if weight is lost

at all-- is often shown to be a slow, difficult, and on-going process.

According to many weight-loss program trainers, initial workouts are designed to show

individuals just how “out of shape” they may be, but they can also undermine the rhetoric of

health as actually being the goal of these programs. On The Biggest Loser contestants are

regularly shown becoming physically ill due to the strenuous physical demands placed on them

by TV trainers. For example, the first work out from the eighth season premiere results in two

contestants, Tracey and Mozziz, requiring hospitalization. Tracey’s hospital stay lasted ten days!

Similarly, the first episode of the thirteenth season depicts several participants vomiting into

buckets while others are sprawled out on the gym floor trying to breathe, and another receives

medical attention because he can no longer remember his name or his location. I Used to Be Fat

and Extreme Weight-Loss also show numerous contestants vomiting, passing out, and crying as

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their trainers push them. Marci, a participant on I Used to Be Fat, says “I’m going to pass out,”

and later, “I think I’m going to throw up.” To these statements her trainer responds, “Alright, go

throw up. You better throw up otherwise we’re running,” and as the camera shows Marci lying

on the bathroom floor next to the toilet, he adds, “Marci if you don’t get up out of that stall, I’m

leaving and you can stay fat!” Alyssa, a season three participant on Extreme Weight-Loss, also

collapses during her first work out, crying, “Everything hurts!” Forty days in to the program she

still either fights the urge to vomit or actually vomits during her morning workouts. Her trainer,

Chris Powell, attributes this to her body detoxing (for forty days?!) from her former diet of

primarily fast-food. To “prove” to Alyssa the harm of her former diet Chris decides to consume

nothing but McDonalds and donuts until he himself vomits.

While examples like these across weight-loss programs are intended to also prove the

“necessity” of a bodily intervention for each individual on the show, this logic does not

necessarily translate into audiences internalizing the need for their own weight-loss or being

inspired to start exercising to comport their bodies. In fact, one study looking at audience

interpretation of exercise segments on The Biggest Loser, specifically, finds that these excessive

workout depictions are more likely to dissuade viewers from exercising than inspire them to

exercise (Berry, McLeod, Pankratow, and Walker 2012). Tanya Berry, the lead author of the

study, argues, “People are screaming and crying and throwing up, and if you’re not a regular

exerciser you might think this is what exercise is -- that it’s this horrible experience where you

have to push yourself to the extremes and the limits, which is completely wrong” (Alary 2012).

The study also concludes that these televised portrayals can actually be considered

counterproductive to obesity epidemic public health campaigns despite the way these programs

often frame themselves as operating in the public interest.

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Weight-Loss Worries (Or Disciplinary Discrepancy Across Television)

There are numerous other weight-loss complications experienced by participants across

these programs, including food temptations, exercise burnout, juggling careers and families with

their exercise demands, lingering or developing emotional and mental health issues, or lacking

familial support, all of which regularly result in weight-loss plateaus or weight-gain. According

to Brenda Weber, makeover programs situate participants’ “roller coaster of emotions” as

something that must be contained in order to maintain progress (2009, 104). Looking at

contestants of The Swan (2004-2005), specifically, Weber argues that the ones who are

“ungrateful, recalcitrant, resistant, or just negative are relentlessly portrayed as difficult” (111-

112). Yet she also notes that these television narratives are used to create dramatic tension and

“introduce the possibility that the makeover might fail” (113). This dramatic tension across

narratives, and the fact that progress is indeed regularly derailed across weight-loss programs,

ultimately challenge the efficacy of surveillance logics characteristic of disciplinary and control

societies. Further, the possibility of “failure” isn’t just introduced by these shows; degrees of

“failure” are regularly experienced by participants and exhibited on the television screen. These

“failures” are productive, whether deliberate or unconsciously embodied, in the sense that they

protest or resist the disciplinary techniques used by weight-loss programs.

Deliberate or unconsciously embodied examples of resistance can be found on Heavy and

Extreme Weight Loss. On more than one episode of Heavy, after three months of constant

surveillance at a fitness facility (where participants lose all of their phone and television

privileges and are limited in which personal belongings they have access to), participants, such

as Tom and Rickywayne, are still unable to sustain their weight-loss goals at home or choose to

discontinue working out and dieting. This then necessitates participants’ return to an

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environment of constant surveillance and discipline at the weight-loss facility. This “failure”

means that they did not internalize the surveilling gaze, or that surveilling gaze was quickly

“forgotten” once it was (partially) removed. Even under surveillance participant behavior does

not always match “expert” expectations or directions. On Extreme Weight Loss cameras are

installed in all of the participants’ homes, yet that does not prevent many of them from straying

from their diet and exercise plans. A fairly common scene on EWL is the depiction of

participants sitting on their exercise equipment while eating and/or watching television. This

scene as well as negative reports back from local trainers or private investigation teams are used

to create suspense over whether the weight-loss transformation will be successful during the

second and third phases of the program.

Across numerous episodes of I Used to Be Fat participants also fail to lose weight despite

the help of “experts” and constant surveillance and monitoring. One person featured on the show,

Daria, only loses a few pounds after a summer’s worth of six-hour-a-day workouts. Even though

Daria is monitored and held “accountable” by both her personal trainer and MTV viewers, her

progress is disrupted by her mother who continues to buy “junk” foods for the rest of the family,

and repeatedly tells Daria both that she does not have a “weight problem” and needs to work out

less in order to contribute to the family financially. Daria’s mother is clearly positioned as an

adversary to the trainer, but at the same time, this situation complicates the efficiency or realistic

possibility of entirely submitting oneself to the constant effort required by these TV programs,

and at times almost frames such intense focus on the self as selfish.

Despite having a trainer to themselves every day for about ninety days, many of the

participants on I Used to Be Fat struggle to meet their weight-loss goals. For instance, Latrice

only loses a couple pounds in the first two weeks of her training routine because she eats more

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than the trainer’s recommendations. At one point, dejected, Latrice says to her trainer, “I haven’t

met any of my goals. I suck.” Her trainer responds that it’s a matter of effort and that he is trying

to teach her self-discipline and accountability, but instead feels like he is just wasting his time.

After thirty days of training with minimal “success,” Latrice starts seeing a counselor to work

through why she might be “self-sabotaging” her weight-loss through her eating habits. With the

help of two “expert” interventions, Latrice loses thirty-seven pounds out of the one hundred

pounds she intended to lose in the span of one hundred and five days. However, neither her

trainer nor the show’s informational cards, which normally detail the progress of participant

weight-loss journeys by showing their original weights, goal weights, and the amount of weight-

loss since the last weigh-in, specify her total loss amount. Instead, I Used to Be Fat depicts the

happiness of her family while narrating that Latrice now weighs two hundred and twenty six

pounds and is “happy,” which deemphasizes her minimal weight-loss and the “failure” of the

show itself. When the cameras catch up with her two months later at a poetry reading and

audition she still has not lost more weight despite learning the “tools” to do so from her trainer,

counselor, and MTV.

Furthermore, on the season one reunion episode of I Used to Be Fat, several of the

participants are shown having gained weight back, including Gabriella and McKenzie.

McKenzie even says about “maintaining”: “I’m not going to lie, it’s really hard.” In addition to

the almost expected post-show weight gain, other participants barely finish, quit, or are “fired”

from weight-loss programs. Tanner on I Used to Be Fat loses thirty-seven pounds of his one-

hundred-pound goal, but gradually becomes unmotivated to lose more because he no longer

wants to spend all of his free time working out. Ty on Extreme Weight Loss ultimately quits the

program after a failed baseball deal, and turns down an offer of “living” with Chris Powell in

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Arizona to instead stay near his family and go back to his pre-show life. A few episodes later in

the fourth season of Extreme Weight Loss, Chris Powell actually dismisses another participant,

Christy, from his program due to her weight gain and his frustration with Christy’s excuses for

her weight gain as well as her “always wanting to be a victim.” When confronting Christy, Chris

Powell says to her, “We all invested so much in you, but you cheated yourself.” Chris’ wife,

Heidi, adds, “Everyone wants this for you, except for you. You need to go home.” Ultimately,

Chris and Heidi hand Christy a plane ticket home and she does not resist. In fact, she wants to go

home. While these examples can be interpreted as personal failures for the participants, they can

also be seen as failures of the shows themselves to effectively surveil and implement a body

intervention.

A major weight-loss “failure” can also be seen in The Biggest Loser episode where all of

the contestants join the Marines. When the contestants are first told they will be training with the

Marines, Biggest Loser host, Alison Sweeney, explains to them: “You are halfway through the

season, and you should be proud of how far you’ve come, but if you thought the first six weeks

were a battle, this next week is going to be an all out war.” While highlighting the strenuous and

difficult nature of the week ahead, this statement also implicitly downplays the effectiveness of

The Biggest Loser’s intervention and training practices. One contestant, Jesse, similarly and

unintentionally downplays his first six weeks at Biggest Loser ranch while privileging the power

of the military: “We all still have the mindset of ‘Hey, I’m the fat guy. I can’t cut it with the

Marines.’ This might be kind of the kick start we need.” This statement implies that The Biggest

Loser’s initial boot camp-style workout was perhaps inefficient at maintaining discipline or

garnering big weight-loss numbers long-term.

The Marine episode also features contestants simultaneously engaging in strenuous

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physical activity and making “poor” food decisions during the week they are living on the base,

which shows that the discipline they experienced the first six weeks on the show did not translate

into self-disciplined eating decisions. Furthermore, the Marine base as a disciplinary site is also

framed as not conducive for weight-loss. Contestant Jesse even states, “Here at the mess hall the

options are not the options we would have at the ranch. Sausage. French toast. I anticipate a very

grueling workout today and I decided I need the calories.” Later, during the usual end-of-episode

weigh-in, another contestant, Lisa, complains, “Eating in the mess hall… high sodium food. It

hinders weight loss. We just had very little control over the food that we ate this week,” and

another, Elizabeth, laments, “I don’t know what happened because I did put in the work. I gave it

my all. The only thing I can say is we had no control over our own food. We couldn’t measure

things and that’s the only thing I can think of.” In fact, many of contestants failed to lose weight

as temporary Marines, and several actually gain weight, including Frado the former Marine who

gained four pounds over the course of the week. As the end of the week’s weigh-in scene plays

out, all of the trainers and contestants seem baffled as to how their experience as Marines did not

translate into big weight-loss numbers.

Palmer contends that surveillance on weight-loss programs offer proof that an “increase

in surveillance is effective in that nearly everyone loses weight and becomes happier,” adding

that this “recommends the technology as valuable in modern life” (2014, 313). Yet all of the

examples discussed thus far emphasize that neither everyone loses weight nor becomes happier.

Palmer acknowledges a second, contradictory aspect of surveillance extension, namely that it

“cannot be present all the time and thus leaves the contestants potentially susceptible to slipping

back into old ways” (313). Instead of “potentially susceptible” many weight-loss shows instead

portray participants as “likely susceptible.” For example, Ryan, a seventh season participant of

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The Biggest Loser, returns the eighth season, still weighing 454 pounds, in order to “finish what

he started.” Additionally, “Where are they now?” and “Reunion” episodes demonstrate that

surveillance logics are not necessarily internalized and expert “interventions” may not have long-

lasting impacts. And even when surveillance is always present, like in Extreme Weight-Loss

where participants know they are being monitored by cameras installed in their homes, some

participants still do not exercise or eat as directed, turning treadmills into seats for television

watching.

An eighth season episode of The Biggest Loser features the first reunion episode of the

series and visits forty contestants from the first seven seasons of the show to see, according to

trainer Jillian Michaels, “who is struggling, who kept it off, and who gained it all back… No one

said it would be easy!” Of course, a majority of the former contestants featured on this episode

are success stories because it would be contrary to TBL’s interests otherwise. However, the

inclusion of unsuccessful past contestants of TBL illustrates the tension between the show

needing to frame itself as an effective weight-loss intervention in the name of public health and

its need to create dramatic or suspenseful narratives that draw viewers to the show. The inclusion

of past participants who regain weight is also likely necessary because of increased criticism

over the series’ health practices across numerous news reports and blog posts, which I will

discuss shortly. Defending the show, Mallory, who became a health trainer following her

participation, says into the camera, “I just want to tell everybody that The Biggest Loser works!”

Yet Matt and Suzy, who met each other while contestants and later married, both gained a

considerable amount of weight back. Matt says to the camera during their interview, “You can

tell by seeing us that we’ve gained some weight back.” Suzy says, “You have to work at it and

we’re no different.” They both say they are trying to get the weight off again and are still happier

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with their bodies and their lives following their experiences on The Biggest Loser.

Also documented on this episode as well as another reunion episode in the show’s tenth

season are past contest winners who regain all of their lost weight. Erik gains one hundred and

seventy-five pounds after being on the show, returning within forty pounds of his pre-Loser

weight of four hundred and seven pounds (his experience even inspired on Discovery Health and

Fitness’ Confessions of a Reality Show Loser [2010]). When Bob, a Biggest Loser trainer, visits

him and asks what happened, Erik replies, “I got really low... and I started to just say fuck it.”

Erik says his plan is to get back to the strict life like he did on The Biggest Loser, but Bob

interestingly responds to him, “You can’t go back to the strict life. You have to find balance to

live the rest of your life. You can’t do the extreme. You have to find a day-to-day life, what is

going to work for you.” After Bob basically undermines the logics of The Biggest Loser, Erik

asks him, “But how will I see results?” Similarly, Ryan, who regains almost all of the weight he

lost while on The Biggest Loser ranch besides pounds, explains, “Being on the ranch is like

living in a bubble.” He believes that his weight gain was the result of not translating his habits

from the ranch to his post-ranch life, but does not elaborate on whether he just did not want to or

could not pragmatically continue working out for several hours each day. These examples attest

to the (il)logics of the surveilling gaze in a society of discipline and control. Even though

contestants are willing to submit themselves to the trainers’ and viewers’ constant monitoring

and are taught by “experts” how to self-discipline, “success” is never guaranteed and

infrequently achieved.

These reunion episodes of The Biggest Loser, which aired in the fall of 2009 and fall of

2010, are also possibly a response to increased criticism over the show’s promotion of unrealistic

and dangerous methods of weight-loss. Analyzing reality programs in the Canadian context,

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Zuzanna Blaszkiewicz argues (2009), “As with many things American, TBL has the mentality of

‘go big or go home’; it depicts extreme weight, extreme weight-loss, and extreme consumption

in order to achieve this goal.” Furthermore, TBL regularly features people losing fifteen, or even

thirty pounds, in one week, which is neither healthy nor realistic. These shows also defy “real

life experts,” such as doctors, trainers, and nutritionists, who recommend losing a pound a week

or up to two pounds a week. An Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa,

Yoni Freedhoff, refers to TBL as an “emotionally and physically abusive, misinformative, horror

show” (2013). Additionally, he critiques the show’s practices as undermining any chance of

participants maintaining long-term weight-loss because their high intensity, endurance workouts

combined with a restrictive diet “decimates” their metabolisms (slowing down upwards of five

hundred calories a day). Freedhoff adds that this makes participants more likely to gain weight

after the show, which substantiates claims made by three alumni of TBL who say eight-five to

ninety percent participants on the show regain their weight. However, JD Roth, the executive

producer of TBL, says that statistic is more around fifty percent, adding, “Getting one hundred

percent to keep the weight off has never been the goal.” Continuing, “The goal is can we inspire

people in America to make a change in their life. In that, we’re batting a thousand” (Wyatt

2009).

The Biggest Loser is also repeatedly critiqued for the health problems participants endure

both while participating on the show and afterward. In the fall of 2009 TBL drew heavy criticism

after a former contestant admitted to dropping weight by fasting and dehydrating himself to the

point of urinating blood, while another admitted to fasting and working out in multiple layers of

clothing when the cameras were off (Wyatt 2009). Kai Hibbard, a finalist on the third season of

The Biggest Loser, contends that contestants were forced against doctor’s orders to work out

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through injuries and were advised to dehydrate themselves before weigh-ins in order to achieve

bigger numbers. Hibbard also says she developed disordered eating practices14 while

participating on the show, which continued for years afterward (Poretsky 2010). However, The

Biggest Loser is not alone in receiving criticism. A participant on the first season of Extreme

Weight Loss, James Garrison, posted on his personal blog (since removed) that he experienced

numerous medical problems while on the show and following the show due to losing a large

amount of body weight in such a limited amount of time. Garrison says that he asked EWL for

help paying his medical bills, but after receiving cease and desist letters from ABC’s legal

department instead of help, he decided to “blow the whistle” on the show’s practices. Garrison

wrote on his blog that he was instructed to dehydrate himself prior to weigh-ins and take diet

pills, adding that he only saw the show’s host and trainer, Chris Powell, a few times that entire

year (countering the show’s assertion that Chris Powell moves in with each participant the first

three months).

Even after the circulation of these criticisms as well as multiple reunion episodes

showing that weight-loss transformations never lead to a final “After,” all weight-loss shows end

with a scene revealing the “After-Body.” Normally, the reveal scene is when participants earn

the privilege of being clothed; even if they do not make it to their goal weights, they are

portrayed as now being fully human and having outside selves compatible with their inside

selves. Like the initial weigh-ins, reveal scenes are often public and in front of large audiences.

Weber explains the logic of these scenes: “Structuring the reveals in ways that require external

validation (as corroborated by enthusiastic doctors, supportive friends, self-evaluations in a

mirror, or interpellated viewer approval) confers a ratifying power in spectatorial surveillance,

14 Similar eating issues are addressed with Alyssa on Extreme Weight Loss and Shay on Thintervention.

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affirming the rightness…” of the transformation (2009, 99). Yet as I am arguing here and as

Martin Roberts also points out (2009, 245): “to date lifestyle television has produced little

evidence that its transformative magic lasts any longer than the day on which it takes place.”

Additionally, a “successful” reveal itself can backfire in terms of undermining program

logics. After fifteen seasons of “helping” contestants lose weight, controversial aspects of The

Biggest Loser are getting even more attention. Rapid weight-loss, low-calorie diets, and rumors

of diuretic use or fasting before weigh-ins undermine claims made by both the show’s fitness

trainers and contestants, who frame their actions and participations as being primarily in service

of health. The conclusion of the fifteenth season, in particular, gave these issues broader

attention as the winner, Rachel Fredrickson, lost one hundred and fifty pounds in seven months.

Her transformation reclassified her, according to the BMI, from super or morbidly obese to being

underweight, raising not only questions regarding the show’s tactics and motives, but also the

parameters for what types of bodies are deemed healthy.

During her body reveal and final weigh-in, trainer Jillian Michaels’ jaw literally dropped

upon seeing Rachel’s new, small frame, which was described in news reports as “emaciated”

(Dockterman 2014). Headlines the following day read, “‘Biggest Loser Winner’ Too Thin?”

(Wilson and Hayes 2014), “Shamed for Being Fat, Then for Being Thin” (Edwards 2014), and

“‘Biggest Loser’ Winner Rachel Fredrickson Says She May Have Gone Too Far” (‘Biggest

Loser’ 2014). While thinness is undoubtedly still aesthetically idealized and often medically

prescribed, this example of bodies being problematic if they are perceived as either too fat or too

thin, which connects back to the earlier parallels between anorectics (or this case perceived

anorectics) and those considered obese, simultaneously illustrates the bodily constraints and

pressures that women in particular face, and also a potential turning point in the way thin bodies

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tend to be uncritically praised and automatically linked with conceptualizations of good health.

Yet while these narratives may be shifting, or exposing flaws in weight-loss programming logics,

the premise that weight-loss is desirable and necessary for health is still globally supported and

legitimized by medical experts, governments, and supranational health organizations like the

World Health Organization.

Viewer Internalization, Negotiation, and Rejection

Katherine Sender and Margaret Sullivan find that viewers and fans of The Biggest Loser

often critique the representations they see as being narrow, unkind, inadequate, or full of bad

advice despite agreeing with contestants needing to lose weight (2008, 573). Instead of

effectively convincing viewers at home to self-discipline their bodies and adopt the “healthy”

lifestyles depicted on the show, Sender and Sullivan find that viewers distance themselves from

the representations and instructions present on these types of programs (582). In a similar

analysis of Australian viewers of The Biggest Loser, specifically, self-identified fat viewers are

also found to distance themselves from messages of humiliation and shame present on the show,

but again accept the underlying premise that weight-loss is necessary and good for health

(Holland et al. 2010, 6-7). Even though The Biggest Loser largely reflects dominant global health

discourses about fatness (despite framing those discourses in potentially dangerous ways) those

are not the only discourses present. And even if viewers do identify with aspects of those

dominant obesity epidemic discourses they may resist other aspects in favor of alternatives.

John Fiske argues that television viewers implicate and explicate themselves while

watching, simultaneously identifying with and distancing themselves from the characters and

people they see (Fiske 1987, 74). Consequently, Fiske argues, viewers like and dislike, or find

pleasure and displeasure as their readings of the text activate contradictions within the text and

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allow viewers to see people or characters as carriers of social values, meanings, and discourses,

and understand them in relation to their own social and psychological contexts. The multiple and

contradicting social and televisual discourses are thus matched by just as many audience

interpretations. Brenda Weber (2009, 110) outlines three types of viewer identification with

makeover TV: one, TV contestants are viewed as extreme, which makes viewers feel “not that

bad”; two, contestants are viewed as “cautionary tales” or “before bodies” that must be avoided;

and three, home viewers see their bodies as worse than those on television, which makes them

want to change. However, these three points of identification only begin to cover the reactions

and interpretations discussed by viewers on messages boards about weight-loss reality TV.

While not intending to take the place of a comprehensive reception study, it is important to

note some of the ways in which viewers respond to reality weight-loss programs. One viewer of

The Biggest Loser argues on the Television Without Pity message boards: “But for those who are

just fat and say, ‘I let myself go,’ I get a little angry at them (which is most of them).15 Mainly

because it just shows laziness and reflects on that person as a whole.” Another viewer wrote in

the online comments for a Co-Ed online magazine article, titled “The Biggest Loser: Fat People

Cry A Lot,” “I laughed my silly ass off… I watched 2 hours of fat people working out, sweating

and crying; while skinny people yell at them!” Even though a lot of the interpretations of weight-

loss programming may be about applying the tools or lessons learned from TV to one’s own life

or demonstrate viewers taking pleasure in participant sadness or shame, others watch weight-loss

programming and find joy in the dramatic and emotional elements weaved throughout the

narratives even if they do not identify with weight or body issues. In this case, viewers are not

necessarily learning “lessons” to avoid becoming “deviant” bodies themselves, but instead hope

for show participants to feel as good as the viewer at home may feel: 15 Television Without Pity, The Biggest Loser Forum, Post 17. September 13, 2007.

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The fact is, [sic] I love fitness and how it makes me feel strong, like I can take on the world and do anything. I tuned in to this episode (and will continue to watch this show) for inspiration and education. I feel compassion for the participants and while I admit to being taken aback by their sheer mass at the weigh-in, I want to learn about and understand their struggles. I want to see them succeed, because I want them to feel that same sense of power and confidence I feel when I exercise.16

Another message board commenter finds The Biggest Loser motivational. Again, not because the

contestants are shameful or perceived as lazy, but because she identifies with them beyond their

bodies, instead as individuals with struggles and emotions who are attempting to change their

lives: “I do love watching The Biggest Loser because I feel a real connection to the contestants

and love to watch them transform and feel stronger and better about themselves.”17

Interestingly and conversely, a significant number of viewers report having negative

reactions to watching shows like The Biggest Loser or I Used to Be Fat. Some viewers say they

feel dejected because they are not attaining the same results that they see on the screen even

though they feel they are working just as hard for even longer periods of time. Other viewers

express more extreme feelings of dejection, making them want to binge eat or causing them to

struggle with their own eating disorders:

I'm pretty obsessed with weight, which is why I watch BL (among other weight loss shows). Sometimes it triggers me in bad ways. I'm familiar with all of the quick weight loss tricks- I've used them! Wearing sweatsuits and working out really hard to cut weight, dehydrating myself, diuretics, you name it, I've probably done it. I wonder if shows like this have ever triggered any of the contestants down the path of disordered eating and weight obsession and really unhealthy behaviors to try to maintain the weight loss once they've left the compound?18

Likewise, another viewer asks fellow fans on a message board, “Does anyone else have an

inexplicable urge to eat the most fattening, calorie laden food possible while watching the BL?”

To which another forum participant responds: “While I haven’t been tempted to eat during the

16 Television Without Pity, The Biggest Loser forum, Post 18, September 13, 2007. 17 Television Without Pity, The Biggest Loser forums, Post 150, November 14, 2007. 18 The Biggest Loser message boards. Post 13, September 13, 2007.

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show, I haven’t been tempted to run the treadmill during the show either.”19

Besides feelings of motivation or dejection, other viewers may watch and resist the

extreme television depictions of weight-loss, but still approve of the overall message that bodily

intervention and personal responsibility over one’s diet and exercise practices are necessary to

improve population health. This reception recognizes that few individuals in “real life” can or

should exercise intensely six-to-eight hours a day while having their food intake severely

restricted and closely monitored. One viewer even states, “More and more I find this show

analogous to a wrestler trying to make weight; it's not about becoming healthy, it's about losing

weight to make a number to put you ahead in a competition.”20

These variations in reception ultimately illustrate how images of the body and neoliberal

messages of self-control, self-discipline, self-dependence, self-governance and every other

iteration of the self or individual are troubled maybe as much as they are reinforced. Overly

controlling, surveilling weight-loss techniques prove, in the long run, to be inefficient at

maintaining or achieving an aesthetically idealized body or healthy body. Furthermore, these

messages may influence viewer response in ways that are “extreme” in opposition to the show’s

intention, also undermining television’s efficacy as a surveillance appendage in a global society

of control. While television as a medium may reinforce dominant discourses of beauty and health

with ease, it is perhaps less skilled at intervening or disciplining bodies deviating from those

dominant aesthetic and health ideals.

Conclusion

Ultimately, television plays a substantial role in the circulation of public health

discourses of the obesity epidemic, legitimizing globally standardized policy goals and public 19 The Biggest Loser message boards. Post 59, September 21, 2007. 20 The Biggest Loser message boards, Post 26, September, 14, 2007.

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health interventions determined largely by transnational health organizations. Of course, even

with these seemingly straightforward messages of weight-loss that frame fatness as a major risk

to overall global health, TV shows produced in different locations have subtle differences in

messages that need to be further teased out. Further, even though programs like The Biggest

Loser focalize particular discourses of fatness because of various industrial, regulatory, and

aesthetic forces that influence the way stories are told and how people are represented on the

small screen, TV often undermines the very discourses it articulates and recirculates. Television

programs, then, simultaneously reflect and reinforce, as well as negotiate and challenge, global

discourses of neoliberalism and social welfare in the context of the obesity epidemic. While this

chapter focuses on the public health discourses of fatness, which include widespread intervention

(discipline) and emphasis on individual and personal responsibility (control), the next chapter

will explore the medicalized discourses of fatness that frame fat bodies as diseased and/or

disabled.

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Chapter 4. The Reciprocal Medicalizing of Television and Fatness

“I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.”

Chris Robinson (1984, Vicks 44 Cough Syrup Commercial).

Governor Chris Christie underwent a Lap-Band procedure in order to shrink his stomach

and decrease the amount of fat on his body after years of yo-yo dieting. Christie claims the

procedure was done for his health, which is the generically vocalized justification for most

weight-loss procedures even if the goals are actually more aesthetic, but political junkies are

more interested in speculating as to whether the surgery is in anticipation of Christie eyeing the

oval office. Just a handful of U.S. presidents are thought of as fat, but only one, William Howard

Taft, was so large as to inspire rumors that he became stuck in his own bathtub. Regardless of

Christie’s motives, his body fat mediates a lot about him as a person and as a politician. To his

critics, being fat means that he is undisciplined and a bully (Zernike 2013), but to his supporters,

it signals that he is relatable, an Average Joe, just like the seventy percent of Americans currently

medically categorized as overweight or obese. But, perhaps strangely, what also makes Christie

an average Joe is his choice to undergo weight-loss surgery. Weight-loss surgeries are an

increasingly common option for “treating” fatness, and not just for those who experience fatness

as socially disabling, physically impairing, or as a chronic disease, but also for anyone who is

displeased—for whatever reason-- with the large size of their body. The prevalence of weight-

loss surgery as a treatment for fatness reflects the rise of medicalizing rhetoric in regard to the

body (Metzl 2010, 5), and demonstrates that in addition to fatness being considered a major

threat to public health, fatness itself is now considered a disease potentially leading to other

“obesity-related” diseases, disability, or impairment, all of which may require medical treatment

and compliance with medical authority.

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Medicalization Versus Public Health on TV

Reflecting the increasing medicalization of bodies, and medicalization of fatness

specifically, many fat television programs, including segments on day-time talk shows like The

Today Show (1952- ), The View (1997- ), and The Doctors (2008- ), or reality programs like I Eat

33,000 Calories a Day (2008), Channel 4’s Body Shock (2003- ), and My 600 Pound Life

(2012- ), frame obesity as a medical condition in need of treatment. This medical categorization

refers to individuals above a fifty on the Body Mass Index, meaning that their weights are at least

two hundred and twenty-five percent higher than the normative weight-to-height ratio. These

medicalized fat television programs documenting the health statuses and lived experiences of the

super obese generally depict those individuals as immobile, unable to care for themselves

without assistance from family members or medical providers, and unable to leave their homes.

Additionally, individuals across these programs typically require hospitalization or around-the-

clock care, and many of them are medically determined to be near death with hospitalization or

weight-loss surgery positioned as the “only” options for both living a healthy life and for just

staying alive.

Even though just fifty thousand individuals are considered super obese in the U.S.

(compared to the roughly two hundred million Americans categorized as overweight or obese),

medicalized fat television programs almost exclusively depict bodies with a BMI above fifty.

The ubiquity of super obese individuals across these kinds of television texts, as well as across

news reports, magazines, and diet advertisements discussing the obesity epidemic or weight-loss,

may construct a false sense of this body type as being not only far more common than it actually

is, but also as being a major cause for widespread medical concern. In a way, super obese bodies

are more synonymous or visually associated with the obesity epidemic than bodies categorized

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as overweight or obese. As a result of this body ubiquity and depiction of super obese bodies as

inherently unhealthy, diseased, disabled, or impaired, many fat bodies are either generalized to

currently be the same or as having the potential to be the same in the future, leading to greater

reliance on medical treatments, including surgery, hospitalization, and pharmaceutical drugs.

In comparison to the weight-loss programs discussed in chapter three, medicalized fat

television specifically reinforces a medical frame of fatness, which Abigail Saguy explains as a

frame that primarily pathologizes fat bodies (2013, 5). The medical frame represents fat bodies

as needing medical treatment as opposed to needing intervention to learn self-discipline and self-

control in relation to diet and exercise from physical trainers, nutritionists, and other health

“experts.” Both public health frames and medical frames represent fatness as a serious health

problem in need of a solution; however, public health frames and medicalized frames of fatness

do position bodies in differing ways, especially in terms of the emphasized solutions. Whereas

public health frames navigate a discursive terrain characterized by both neoliberal and social

welfare discourses that promote self-discipline and self-control over the body as well as public

health and government interventions, medical frames, on the other hand, position fat bodies as

diseased, disabled, and so unhealthy as to instead require medical treatment and authority over

the body. In a sense, the medical frame then reduces or removes discourses of personal

responsibility or individual blame for being fat (LeBesco 2010, 76), potentially, albeit perhaps

inadvertently, undermining public health discourses. However, while this may mitigate

assumptions about fatness signifying a lack of self-discipline or self-control, does it also reduce

feelings of agency or contribute to feelings of powerlessness over one’s body? Just as we

attribute certain characteristics or personality traits to certain types of bodies, Susan Sontag

(1979) argues that disease is linked to one’s personality and way of life, including one’s diet.

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Regardless, this medical frame is common throughout representations of super obese individuals

who may be physically impaired and unable to engage in individualized weight-loss

recommendations like diet and exercise. Since those kinds of public health interventions may

already have “proven” to be ineffective for weight-loss, medical treatments, particularly

surgeries, become the “last hope” for weight-loss. Yet, paradoxically, weight-loss surgery can

only be “successful” if patients still substantially alter their diets. Like the public health frame,

then, medical treatments remain concerned with removing barriers for personal or individual

action. By surgically shrinking the stomach individuals are supposed to feel satiated after eating

minimal amounts of food, allegedly making it easier for individuals to make “healthier” food

choices. And if individuals do overeat or eat certain kinds of “junk” foods after undergoing

weight-loss surgery they may experience painful acid reflux, vomiting, and a gradual expansion

of the stomach to its pre-surgery size. Here, individuals are not obligated to diet and exercise,

necessarily, but they are “obligated” to follow medical authority and prescribed weight-loss

treatments. Like the public health frame, the medical frame is dually characterized by neoliberal

and social welfare discourses, relying on both on individual change and the medical treatment of

people categorized as obese. But how does this negotiation over bodily power, or assertions of

individual agency in the face of medicalized claims to authority, work in both a medicalized and

hyper-mediated environment? How are sites of discipline and systems of control reinforced,

negotiated, or resisted in the contexts of body and media medicalization as well as media

convergence?

Chapter Overview and Argument

This chapter will first discuss the medicalization of the body and framing of fatness as a

disease as well as the way this conceptualization supports notions of fatness as a disability.

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Representations across medicalized television act as important sites for understanding

negotiations between medical authority and individual agency over the body. For example,

critiques of medicalization historically cited the tendency of practitioners in the field to treat

patients as populations or masses instead of individuals. Nicholas Jewson (1976) even wrote

about the “disappearance of the sick man” throughout the 1800s because individuals deemed sick

or diseased were treated as objects instead of subjects. In addition to individuals being

objectified by medicine, medical knowledge has also been traditionally inaccessible to the

public. But in a medical-media saturated environment discourses of individualism are more

prevalent, especially in consideration of the turn toward “patient-centered care,” both generally

and in relation to media concerning the body, and the fact that individuals today have

“unparalleled access” to medical information on the internet (Friedman 2010, 1; McLellan 2010,

373). Greater individual or patient access to medical information via new media and TV, in

particular, may invert or at least partially reduce the power hierarchy that has existed for the last

two centuries positioning doctors as above patients (Armstrong 1998, 19), and may mitigate the

“disappearance of the sick man.” Yet, paradoxically, while medicalization simultaneously asserts

individualization it also rejects individualization. Individuals have greater access to medical

knowledge, perhaps allowing for greater control over bodily decisions, and the individual is

emphasized amid populations and masses for monitoring and treatment, but the medicalization

and pathologization of fatness lessens the notion that fatness is merely the result of individual

lifestyle choices per public health frames.

However, greater access to medical knowledge on TV and elsewhere may also make us

more likely to believe we need “treatment” (regardless of whether we actually do), and therefore

submit to medical monitoring or authority. This is perhaps further the case considering a major

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source of medical information is in the form of advertisements, whether for pharmaceuticals,

private medical practices, or managed care organizations, that are scattered across television

spots, magazines, and roadside billboards (Goldfield 2010). Due to the media saturation of

obesity epidemic news reports, documentaries, weight-loss advertisements, and numerous other

texts related to fatness and reducing fatness, Lauren Berlant (2010, 31) says, “one thing the

obesity is, is a media effect.” This chapter will similarly demonstrate that the intensified

medicalization of the body, or perhaps the hypermedicalization of the body within our hyper-

mediated era, can also be considered a type of media effect. This ultimately creates a kind of

mutually reinforcing relationship between television/new media and medicine. Not only does the

prevalence of medicalized media encourage viewing the body in terms of its medical status, but

also as the field of medicine and amount of accessible medical knowledge grows there are a

greater number of medical reports on the news, stories of experimental drugs in magazines,

forums dedicated to dealing with particular ailments, and television texts detailing obesity as a

medical disease in need of treatment. Thus, medicalized media reinforces medical authority and

the necessity of medical treatment, but it also simultaneously challenges traditional notions of

medical authority and hierarchical power over the body by democratizing medical knowledge

and hailing patients and potential patients as agentic subjects as opposed to massified and

anonymous objects. In other words, while medicalized media circulate and reinforce discourses

of bodies as medicalized, or bodies as diseased and in need of treatment, medicalized media also

allows individuals to comprehensively study ailments, search for alternative treatments, research

medical professionals and institutions providing care, and share medical experiences and

knowledge with others. Pessimistically, watchers of Dr. Oz on TV, or readers of pharmaceutical

advertisements found between the pages of magazines, may be more likely to view themselves as

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medicalized and inquire about and pay for unnecessary treatments and drugs to fix perceived

problems, but optimistically, others may encounter those same messages and learn about

potentially needed, beneficial treatments or options for care.

Fat Bodies as Diseased Bodies

Fat is a necessity of life, but too much fat, some say, can lead to death. Not just a bodily

death, but also a social, cultural, or emotional death. One such assumption attached to the

amount of fat visible on one’s body is that the person carrying fat is a victim of their own

excessive appetite, and therefore, the embodiment of “death” (Levy Navarro 2010).

Paradoxically, then, something that sustains us-- provides us with heat insulation, cushioning,

and energy-- is also a sign of mortality, a source of scorn, a problem that needs to be managed,

and inspiring of shame. Fat is fundamentally biological, a bodily infrastructure that we both can’t

live without and cannot seem to live with.

Fat has always been a condition of embodiment, one that gives visible form to our ideas,

feelings, and anxieties concerning what bodies “should” look like, and what our bodies say about

who we are as individuals. Aristotle believed that the appearance of the body communicated its

inner moral dispositions, the relationship between the physical body and one’s soul (Hill 2011,

63). Before the obesity epidemic, fat was not automatically considered to be tangible evidence of

a medical problem. Although health concerns over the amount of fat on one’s body have been

expressed for hundreds and even thousands of years, excess fat was more commonly

stigmatized-- if it was at all-- due to moral, cultural, social, and personal implications (Navarro

2010, 5; Saguy 2013, 41). Yet even early Greek and Roman medicine often delinked the

appearance of fat from the behavior of gluttony, recognizing that fatness could not be

intrinsically connected to greedy behavior, immorality, or bad character (Hill 2011, 63). While

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having “too much” fat on the body was still regularly positioned as less desirable for not

embodying the ideals of moderation (per Pythagoras: “No man, who values his health, ought to

trespass on the bounds of moderation, either in labor, diet or concubinage”), fat bodies were

simultaneously seen as potentially natural and could therefore still be healthy (Hill 2011, 80).

Since fatness was not a widespread medical concern throughout the early 1900s, social

and cultural anxiety surrounding fatness lead to the development of the dieting or “reducing”

industry. In fact, medical involvement in the early dieting industry primarily worked to expose

reducing promises as false and unnecessary, typically arguing that fat was harmless and a sign of

proper nutrition (Schwartz 1986). This skepticism and resistance to the dieting industry

continued for decades, as is evident by a New York Times report in the 1950s about the American

Medical Association declaring the United States’ obsession with dieting culture to be a national

neurosis and that dieting schemes do not have lasting effects on fat reduction (Walker 1959).

Some early fat-reduction schemes include consuming Corpu-Lean’s industrial toxin,

dinitrophenol, to speed up the metabolism, and Kellogg’s Safe Fat Reducer, a serum made of

thyroid extract (Schwartz 1986). Throughout the 1900s, people also ingested tapeworms

(Winterman 2013) did somersaults (Sumney 2012), and “Fletcherized,” which necessitated

chewing every bite of food exactly thirty-two times and then letting it slide down the throat.

Whatever food did not easily slide down was then to be spit out (“Medicine: Fletcherizing”

1928). While these past fat reduction techniques may seem strange in retrospect, the industry has

not actually evolved as much as we may think. As Pat Lyons (2009) points out, the dieting

industry has been able to increase its presence and profits without showing any increase in

effectiveness. Further, dieting and fat reduction techniques are arguably more dangerous today or

more damaging to our otherwise healthy bodies and biological processes. Now people undergo

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invasive surgeries, take amphetamines, smoke cigarettes, drink diet soda, ingest cotton balls, eat

only cabbage and grapefruit, or limit themselves to only a fraction of the necessary caloric

intake, all while receiving hormone injections to suppress the appetite (Hartocollis 2011).

Paradoxically, dieting to reduce body fat usually leads to the acquisition of more body fat in the

long-term, which continues to feed the both dieting industry and reliance on medical treatments

to reduce fatness, all the while dieting itself is linked to cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes,

and impaired immune functioning (Wolpert 2007).

Just as strategies for fat reduction change over time, medical understandings of fatness

shift in response to various contexts. When U.S. medical doctors began paying more attention to

fatness in the latter half of the 20th century it was more common to consider extra adipose tissue

a sign or symptom of something else rather than a problem itself.21 But as fatness became

increasingly medicalized due to the development of weight-loss medications and surgeries, along

with various scientific “discoveries” of genetic and hormonal components to weight-gain and

cozier relationships between dieting companies and medical practitioners, fatness itself gradually

became a condition requiring monitoring and treatment (Brewis 2009, 28-29). In the summer of

2013, the American Medical Association, which is the United States’ largest physician group,

started officially categorizing obesity as a disease in addition to considering it a major public

health problem. While groups like the AMA, CDC, and WHO sometimes referred to obesity as a

disease in the past, still implying that fatness is abnormal or a sign of the body functioning

incorrectly, only recently is the impact of such a label being debated or purposefully used to

denote a particular kind of ill health. 21 For a more detailed history about the changing social and medical understandings of fat, see Peter N. Stearns’, Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West (2002), Amy Erdman Farrell’s Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture (2011), Sander L. Gilman’s Fat: A Cultural History (2013), or Georges Vigarello and C. Jon Delogu’s The Metamorphoses of Fat: A History of Obesity (2013).

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The labeling of fat as a disease reinforces normative bodily parameters that position the

appearance of thinness as a sign of health and the appearance of fatness as a sign of disease. In

fact, disciplinary power within the field of medicine is partially derived from the observation,

examination, measurement, and comparison of individuals to population norms (Murray 2009).

Physicians regularly use visual observation or assessment to evaluate patient health and make

diagnostic determinations (Jutel 2001, 3), reinforcing the visual appearance of fat on the body as

an important indicator of one’s overall health. As a result, “fat people can’t avoid lines of

medical questions because of the visibility of their fatness to doctors” (Lupton 2013, 74). The fat

body is “always already seen” (Murray 2009, 78), making it “always already pathological by

virtue of its hypervisibility” (Jutel 2001, 84). Of course this problem is compounded on

television where the only diagnostic tool viewers at home have is visual observation! Annemarie

Jutel argues that visual assessment is fundamental to the diagnosis of disease, and the diagnosis

of disease both legitimizes what society identifies as problematic as well as medical authority

over the disease (2001, 65-71). Moreover, the ability to quantify fat through body composition

testing in a BodPod or DXA Scanner, and the comparing of body fat percentages and height-to-

weight ratios through BMI, further legitimizes the appearance of fat as a diagnostic tool while

simultaneously framing the medical practice as more “objective.” But as Annemarie Jutel (2009,

67) argues, “cultural values are just as deeply ingrained in medicine as they are in other settings,”

so assuming greater objectivity is specious.

Additionally, fatness now has its own “risk factors, typologies, outcomes, treatment, and

prevention” (Jutel 2009, 63), yet it remains a sign of or risk factor for future illness. Thus, fatness

is now both a medical disease and a risk factor for other diseases, making fatness somehow,

according to Abigail Saguy, simultaneously akin to cancer and the act of smoking. In the words

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of The Biggest Loser’s Dr. Huizenga (2011), “morbid obesity is like cancer and requires equally

aggressive treatment,” yet not one news article about the obesity epidemic seems to exist without

it including a list of the medical risks associated with fatness, especially diabetes and

cardiovascular diseases. Proponents of labeling obesity a disease hope that it will reduce fat

stigma and lead to greater insurance coverage of weight-loss medications and surgeries. Those

arguing against the classification worry that defining one-third of Americans as diseased may

actually increase fat stigmatization and reduce control over one’s own health (Kabat 2013) or

encourage greater reliance on those now-covered weight-loss medications and surgeries instead

of traditionally recommended diet, exercise, and other “lifestyle changes” (Pollack 2013). In fact,

at least one study supports this fear, finding that individuals are more likely to choose high

calorie foods after reading about fatness as a disease (Hoyt 2014).

Classifying fat bodies as diseased is indicative of a broader trend toward medicalizing all

conditions and aspects of the body, from weight-gain, sadness, bad breath, baldness, and the

inability for some men to become erect when sexually aroused to normal functions of the body

like puberty, pregnancy, or menopause. Similarly, we are encouraged to take more medication

for more illnesses or perceived illnesses than we ever have in human history (Moynihan and

Cassels 2005). Deborah Lupton (2013, 9) applies the anthropological term “culture-bound

syndrome” to describe the ways in which diseases are socially and culturally constructed, or how

medicine brings certain “bodily phenomena or social problems under its aegis,” according to the

belief systems present during different contexts. Lupton (2013, 77) further argues, “The

pathologizing of gay and fat bodies springs ultimately from the same cultural source: the desire

to ground moral and aesthetic disapproval in the supposedly objective discourse of science and

health.”

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According to David Armstrong (1998), medicalization started in the mid-to-late 20th

century due to the medical field becoming more professionalized, technologically advanced, and

knowledgeable about human anatomy and pathology. In some ways, medicalization can be

viewed as progress or advancement toward achieving greater overall health for people (or finally

recognizing and mitigating conditions that have long existed), but in other ways, medicalization

can be seen as just another means by which people are constituted and controlled. Irving Zola

(1972) defines medicalization as the process by which medical authority expands to cover and

control multiple aspects of everyday life as well as all aspects of the body. Zola (1983) argues

that medicine exerts a tremendous amount of political power throughout our everyday lives

because of its status as a “repository of truth.” Zola further contends as part of his

medicalization critique that the classification of bodies as diseased only “intensifies stress,

defines incapacity, imposes inactivity, and focuses apprehension on non-recovery, on

uncertainty, and on one’s dependence upon future medical findings” (1976, 104). Along with

Zola, Eliot Freidson (1970), Ivan Illich (1970), and other medical anthropologists argue that the

medicalization of society both obliges individuals to follow medical authority and reduces

individual autonomy over one’s own body. For Illich (1976, 127) the medicalization of life

undermines the “human capacity to cope with the reality of suffering and death” and

simultaneously turns too many ordinary or healthy people into medical patients.

In both The Birth of the Clinic (1963) and Discipline and Punish (1979), Foucault

discusses hospitals and clinics as sites of disciplinary power or sites for the emergence of

“general disciplinary technologies” (cited in Osbourne 1998, 31). However, the medicalization

of society allows medical authority to transcend the institutional spaces of the hospital or the

clinic to discipline society at large (Armstrong 1998, 11-12). Nikolas Rose (1998 64) argues that

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medicine is now a matter of assemblages or combinations of spaces, persons, and techniques.

These assemblages include what Rose refers to as “five apparatuses of health,” which are

intertwined with and shaping of our daily lives in numerous ways, including the “medical

administration of public spaces” and “hygienic regulations of domestic life.” Medicalized

television acts as another apparatus of health, or another part of the broader social “medical

assemblage” (Rose 1998, 51), because it further expands medical authority and medical

knowledge through content. In addition to providing information about potential conditions and

treatments for those conditions to a large number of viewers, TV may also extend the boundaries

for who is considered sick or diseased in the first place, perhaps pathologizing “healthy”

indivdiauls. Not only is the authority of the hospital or clinic as a site of discipline dispersed

throughout a society of control via television and Rose’s other apparatuses of health, that

dispersal reinforces the authority and disciplinary status of those institutions. Considering the

fact that medicalization within the context of the obesity epidemic seems to be expanding in

scope and intensifying in impact (Conrad 2010), to the point where Ray Moynihan and Alan

Cassels contend that now just being at “risk” for illness is an illness itself (2005), perhaps we are

more accurately experiencing as an effect of media saturation a kind of hypermedicalization of

everyday life.

Medical Institutions and Health Policies

Just like the proliferation of surveilling NGOs, government organizations, and regulatory

bodies addressing fatness as a public health threat, the medicalization of fatness and the labeling

of fatness as a disease correlate with an influx of entities dedicated to treating fatness. Groups

like the Weight-Control Information Network, American Society of Bariatric Physicians, Obesity

Action Coalition, and Obesity Society now monitor, report on, and offer medical

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recommendations and treatments for fatness. In addition to new organizations, the disease label

in also inspiring of pre-existing government organizations shifting their health focus, or in other

words, entities traditionally unconcerned with obesity began monitoring and treating bodies

because of their weights. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed

a Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity to research the causes of and solutions to

fatness. The CDC previously only concerned itself with infectious diseases, its original acronym

standing for Communicable Diseases Center, so it’s unsurprising that CDC materials about

fatness use a medicalized and pathologized frame that talks about adipose tissue in terms of

infection and transmission.

In fact, the CDC’s first report on obesity draws many parallels between fatness and

traditional definitions of disease. Instead of a “patient zero” who carries dangerous microbes and

infects people while he or she travels or interacts with others (Wald 2009), obesity has a “Doctor

Zero,” Dr. William Dietz. “Doctor Zero” is a pediatrician who joined the CDC specifically

because he believed obesity to be a problem not caused by individual lifestyle choices, contrary

to public health discourses, but instead something that both happens to people and spreads at an

alarming rate. The CDC’s widely circulated maps showing “Obesity Trends Among U.S.

Adults,” created by “Doctor Zero,” compare BMI statistics across time, but organized by state,

and depicts fatness “spreading” across the U.S. in a manner visually similar to the way

contagious, hemorrhagic fevers spread through populations (Campos 2004). For example, the

1985 map depicts obesity in the U.S. limited mostly to southern and midwestern states; then, the

1994 map shows higher rates within those states and a “spreading” of obesity to the west and

east coasts. The 1999 map shows several states dramatically switching from blue to red,

indicating an increase in obesity rates, and portraying almost the entire U.S. as impacted by the

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spreading “infection” of fatness. This map anecdote, even if not the sole inspirer of the obesity

epidemic or labeling of fatness as a disease, is important because it frames fatness as something

that can spread not just like a disease, but as a disease. These maps are now commonly used

throughout news broadcasts, obesity epidemic documentaries, and fat television shows to

demonstrate the speed and severity of spreading fatness throughout the U.S. and the world,

reinforcing the necessity of groups like the CDC for monitoring and treating fatness. Thus, this

disease rhetoric not only medicalized fatness, but also legitimizes medical authority over bodies,

especially fat bodies, in the name of preventing the spread of fatness.

In addition to representations of fatness as a spreading infection, there are other ways in

which medical discourses frame fatness in relation to disease. The obesity vaccine currently

being developed, commonly referred to as the “Flab Jab,” will hypothetically inoculate people

against gaining weight much like people inoculate themselves from diseases like chicken pox,

tuberculosis, or influenza. Our interpersonal and social networks are also increasingly identified

as important for understanding how fatness “spreads” from person to person. A 2007 New York

Times article discussing the contagious aspects of fatness starts by saying, “Obesity can spread

from person to person, much like a virus… When a person gains weight, close friends tend to

gain weight, too” (Kolata 2007). In fact, individuals are fifty-seven percent more likely to

become obese if one of their friends becomes obese (Christakis 2007). Even obesity epidemic

rhetoric employs disease language in framing fatness as a public health threat. For instance, the

“rapid” global spread of the “disease” of fatness is often linked to the proliferation of fast food

establishments “infecting” people across countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Mexico, and China

(Landers 2013).

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The impact of the disease label extends beyond how we think about fatness and fat bodies

to how fat bodies are medically treated as well as positioned as sources of profit for

pharmaceutical companies. Annemarie Jutel argues that the disease label “provides an efficient

and effective mechanism to exploit lay fear of fat and obesity for commercial ends” (2009,

61). Comparable concern over the commercial impetus behind the disease label is offered by

Paul Campos (2004), who is especially critical of the International Obesity Task Force’s labeling

of fatness as a disease, considering the organization is partially funded by pharmaceutical

companies that sell weight-loss drugs. This commercial aspect of the disease label actually

extends beyond fatness to medicalization more generally. In fact, Abigail Saguy partially

attributes medicalization itself and the development and recognition of new medical conditions

to the Food and Drug Administration deregulating the pharmaceutical industry during the 1980s

while simultaneously relaxing restrictions on marketing prescription drugs directly to consumers

(2013, 42). Following deregulation, advertisements for surgical and pharmaceutical options

proliferated across media platforms and were marketed in the same way as other banal consumer

products and services. For example, a series of billboard advertisements across South California

promised passersby: “Lose Weight with the Lap-Band! Safe 1 Hour, FDA Approved; 1-800-Get-

Thin.” Similarly, a television advertisement for Sensa, which is a weight-loss system that

allegedly works by sprinkling special Sensa flakes onto food just prior to consumption, claims

that individuals can lose weight by using the product without altering their diets or adding

exercise routines. The spokesperson then mitigates potential and understandable consumer

concern by saying, “It sounds too good to be true, right? I thought so, too, until I tried Sensa for

myself and lost twenty pounds.”

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Together the disease label and deregulation of the pharmaceutical industry create a

context in which insurance companies may be more likely to cover weight-loss products and

treatments, just like the AMA’s stated impetus behind labeling fatness a disease, and individual

desires for those products and treatments, partially fueled by the influx of medical, surgical, or

pharmaceutical advertisements, may legitimize or transform desires into health needs. In this

sense, opting for weight-loss surgery, regardless of actual “need,” can be framed as a medical

necessity to treat disease, as bodies at risk for disease may already be considered diseased, or to

prevent future diseases from developing. This parallels the articulated desires for weight-loss

perpetuated by public health discourses and across corresponding weight-loss television

programs. While the health of the body is regularly cited as the reason for weight-loss by TV

programs and health “experts,” many individuals instead express aesthetic concerns for desiring

bodily transformation, as discussed in chapter three. Thus, both public health concern over the

obesity epidemic and medicalized concern over fat bodies as diseased bodies legitimize medical

and health authority over intervention or treatment as well as individual desire for those bodily

interventions or treatments. Furthermore, while the disease label and accompanying medical and

pharmaceutical treatments may be beneficial for some, they may also bring “great

inconvenience, enormous costs, and the very real danger of sometimes deadly side effects” to a

“global marketplace of potential patients” (Moynihan and Cassels 2005, x).

TV is of course complicit in the reproduction of medical authority as it spreads medical

knowledge, but frequently (even if inadvertently) TV also challenges that authority, and its

circulation of medical knowledge may provide viewers with a greater sense of medical

understanding and agency over their own bodies. Just like all of television and popular culture

texts, then, hegemonic medical discourses are reinforced, negotiated, and challenged by

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medicalized television. Along these lines, Deborah Lupton updates the 1970s medicalization

critique by noting that not all medicine is “bad” and that relationships between doctors and

patients can be just as cooperative as they are controlling. Lupton continues (1997, 102), “the

existence of strategies of power does not necessarily correspond with the successful exertion of

power, and… intended outcomes often fail to materialize because disciplinary strategies break

down and fail.” Foucault himself encourages us to think about the ways in which power is

productive as opposed to simply confining (1984a), also stating, “power, after investing itself in

the body, finds itself exposed to a counter-attack in the same body” (1980, 56). Like Lupton,

Nikolas Rose maintains that we must make sure to recognize medicine as heterogeneous, as

comprised of multiple complex and often contradictory views and actors (1998, 49-50).

Therefore, medicalized television is as inherently contradictory as the weight-loss television

discussed in chapter three. Fat bodies are repeatedly represented as diseased and disabled, but the

medicalized treatments featured across numerous television programs rarely prove to be

“successful.” Medicalized television texts reinforce the medical labeling of fatness as a disease,

but they also inherently complicate the infallibility of medical advice as well as the legitimacy of

medical authority over the body.

Diseased Bodies as Disabled Bodies?

Fatness is also frequently discussed in relation to disability because it may become

socially disabling and/or physically impairing for some people. While activist and academic

conceptualizations of disability attempt to move away from medicalizing or pathologizing

bodies, fat bodies are increasingly framed in such ways, as the disease label attests, regardless. In

addition to fat bodies being framed by both discourses of disease and disability, those discourses

are reciprocally influential. Morbid obesity, in particular, is duly framed by both discourses of

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disease and disability, prompting its classification as an impairment protected from

discrimination. The Americans with Disabilities Act defines disability as a physical or mental

impairment that either substantially limits or is perceived (even by others) as limiting major life

activities or major bodily functions. Obesity is similarly protected as a disability in the

Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The European Union also recently determined “severe obesity” to be

a disability, protecting fat individuals from discrimination (Bowcott 2014). But some worry

about what this classification will mean for the obesity epidemic, exemplified by one headline in

The Japan Times: “Making Obesity a Disability Will Only Fuel the Problem” (Bershidsky 2014).

All of these instances of fatness as a disability came about before the proliferation of fatness

being labeled a medical disease or a public health epidemic, but increased medical and public

health attention and use of classifications like “super morbidly obese” foster more frequent

connections between fatness and disability. Mainstream medical literature, evidenced by articles

in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine and Journal of the American Medical

Association, also consistently link fatness to disability. For example, Katherine Froelich-Grobe

(2011) argues that many people who “suffer” from obesity become disabled, and those with

disabilities are a population particularly “vulnerable” to obesity. Additionally, Dawn Alley and

V.W. Chang (2007) contend that many obese patients experience physical impairment in the

sense of both functional limitations (walking, stooping, lifting) and daily living limitations

(eating and dressing) due to their sizes. They further argue, “the obese population may be living

longer with better-controlled risk factors, but are paradoxically experiencing more disability”

(Alley and Chang 2007). These research findings, then, show that experiences of fatness and

disability can be mutually reinforcing “problems.”

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Despite fatness generally being excluded from social conceptualizations of disability,

many of the ways in which fat people are oppressed are ideologically similar to the ways that

disabled people are oppressed (Aphramor 2009, 897). Deborah Lupton further explains the

overlap between fatness and disability, saying, “both fat bodies and bodies with disabilities have

difficulties moving around and being accommodated” (Lupton 2013, 77). Similarly, Charlotte

Cooper discusses the differences and similarities between experiences of fatness and disability,

saying:

“I consider the experience of being fat in a fat-hating culture to be disabling which, in addition to my impairment (she views aspects of her fatness as impairing) and the similarities I share with other disabled people, such as medicalization and restricted civil rights, suggest to me that I am disabled” (1997, 39).

On the other hand, she questions what her desire to self-define as disabled-- and her feeling like

it’s not “allowed”-- means for defining, medicalizing, and politically identifying as fat, disabled,

or both.

Whether fatness is actually a “condition” or whether people have “control” over their

bodies is what ultimately complicates both political advantages and disadvantages of linking

fatness and disability in terms of preventing fat discrimination. Sondra Solovay (2000, 135)

contends that disagreements about whether weight should be viewed as a disability stem from

disagreement over whether fatness constitutes a problem with an impaired individual, even

though disability does not necessarily constitute “a problem with an impaired individual.” Since

the pathologization and medicalization of fatness is far newer than fatness itself, aligning fatness

and disability may only strengthen connections between fatness and disease within the context of

the obesity epidemic.

April Hendron argues that resistance to fatness being considered a disability represents a

“pervasive and perverse fatphobia in our culture” (2002, 249) and supports the notion that fat

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people are “eating up” more than their “fair share” (250). Herndon acknowledges that another

aspect of resistance to the labeling fatness as a disability is concerned with the idea that the

medicalization of fatness strips away the people who are fat, focusing attention solely on the

“condition” (250). For example, medical providers give all fat individuals the same standardized

list of possible “conditions” and “complications” resulting from their fat bodies, even if other

normatively accepted indicators of health are fine (252).

While both disease and disability may reduce experiences of stigma, they still position

bodies as non-normative, problematic, or undesirable. Furthermore, the linking of fatness to

disease and disability may result in individuals who do not experience their fatness as socially

disabling, physically impairing, or diseased, as being categorized in such ways and perhaps

leading to greater recommendations for medical treatment or individuals seeking out medical

treatment for their weights. Ultimately, and regardless of disagreement over fatness in relation to

disability, tensions between neoliberal discourses of individualism, capitalist impulses to profit

from bodies that are medically deemed diseased, and well-intentioned social welfare-inspired

interventions or treatments are especially evident in this debate. The labeling of fatness as a

disease may be profitable for medical practitioners, especially bariatric surgeons, and

pharmaceutical companies as treatments may become more common, but it also obliges the

government and private employers to cover those costs if individuals are also considered

disabled. And nowhere acts as more of public forum for debating these issues of medicalized

fatness in relation to disease and disability than television.

Medicalized Television

The broad medicalization of society likely contributes to and is exacerbated by

medicalized television. During the 1970s there was also a rise in what Julie Elman refers to as

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“medicalized edutainment.” Elman argues that during that time there was an increase of

television content intending to “digest, transmit, and construct images of medical knowledge and

often disability for public consumption, entertainment, and education” (2010, 216). In fact,

medical storylines across soap operas were once so common that George Gerbner (1981, 903)

speculated, “it may well be that daytime serials are the largest source of medical advice in the

United States.” Prime-time television also consistently featured and continues to feature medical

doctors and medical storylines, including shows such as City Hospital (1951-1953), Medic

(1954-1956), Dr. Kildare (1961-1966), Ben Casey (1961-1966), Medical Center (1969-1976),

Emergency! (1972-1979), Marcus Welby M.D. (1969-1976), St. Elsewhere (1982-1988), Doogie

Howser, M.D. (1989-1993), Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman (1993-1998), ER (1994-2009),

Chicago Hope (1994-2000), Gideon’s Crossing (2000-2001), Scrubs (2001-2010), Presidio Med

(2002-2003), Grey’s Anatomy (2005- ), Private Practice (2007-2013), House (2004-2012), Royal

Pains (2009- ), Nurse Jackie (2009- ), Emily Owens, M.D (2012-2013), and many others.

Past medicalized television programs tended to represent the field and medical

professionals positively. These positive portrayals likely reflect already existent respect for

medicine and its authority over the body, and undoubtedly contribute to the continuation of these

sentiments among viewers. According to Joseph Turow (1989, 106):

Television’s producers had no intention of creating programs that attack the legitimacy of the nation’s health care professions. Doctors, especially, were the central heroes of TV medicine’s struggle against death and it would be dramatically self-defeating to make them fundamentally unsympathetic.

Similarly, Gregory Makoul and Limor Peer (2004, 244) contend that many medical television

programs glamorize doctors and the health care system more generally. These typical

representations of the medical field reflect long-standing discourses of doctors as being not only

“experts” of the body (Rose 1998, 56), but also on the “art of living” more generally (Rose 1998,

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69). Even potentially unsympathetic doctors, like the strange and painkiller-addicted Gregory

House on House or the strange and pain-killer addicted Jackie Peyton on Nurse Jackie, are still

shown to be great healers and smart medical practitioners. Furthermore, representations of

doctors and the field of medicine are at least partially influenced by the Physician Advisory

Committee for Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures, which was developed by the American

Medical Association in 1955. This committee consults on medical programs to safeguard the

credibility of physician portrayals and medical knowledge circulated (“TV Doctors” 2012).

Ultimately, Marc R. Cohen and Audrey Shafer argue that there is a cyclical relationship between

how fictional doctors are represented on television, and how we view and interpret actual doctors

off-screen. They maintain that medical doctors on television embody the same characteristics

that viewers expect all heroic protagonists to embody, which makes doctors more likely to be

represented as brilliant diagnosticians, as all-knowing across every medical subspecialty, and as

always being able to cure patients (2004, 211). As a result, at least according to Cohen and

Shafer, we tend to frame non-TV doctors through the same heroic, talented, and knowledgeable

lenses. And more importantly, perhaps, for this chapter, is the fact that the actual doctors,

physicians, nurses, and medical aids are also potentially seen through the same lens, contributing

to their medical authority over the fat body.

In addition to these representational trends across fictional programs throughout

television’s history, news reports, talk shows, TV-documentaries, and reality programs all

circulate medicalized understandings of the body. There was actually an entire cable channel

devoted to such information in the mid-90s, the American Medical Network (now part of FitTV),

which had an agreement with the famous Mayo Clinic to draw on hospital resources for

television content. The American Medical Network’s president, Joe Maddox, stated during the

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network’s development that in addition to the Mayo agreement, the network would feature live

“Ask a Doctor” programs each day, featuring around twenty “telegenic physicians” as hosts

(Dempsey 1995). These kinds of networks and other television programs, according to Lester D.

Friedman (2004, 2), become a major source of healthcare and medical information for the public.

Likewise and more specifically, Dorothy Nelkin (1987) argues that most people (including

physicians!) get information about the potential medical risks of fatness from news media as

opposed to reading scientific or medical publications. Just as talk shows, news media, and

medicalized television programs use medical stories for headlines and plots, the field of medicine

relies on mediated texts to publicize research results, legitimize medical knowledge, and

reinforce medical authority (Conrad 2005). Furthermore, television aids in the medicalization of

bodies by “helping” viewers consider themselves ill or at risk for illness and then offering them

solutions that combine “commercial interests with medical authority” (Conrad 2005).

Shows like The Doctors and Doctor Oz, as well as segments across news broadcasts and

day-time programs, such as The Chew, The Today Show, and The View, regularly discuss fatness

as a medical disease as well as related options for medical treatment. For example, one episode

of The Doctors discusses abdominal fat, referred to by one scrub-wearing host as “toxic goop

that increases inflammation… basically an alien invasion.” Another host rhetorically asks, “What

happens when you get rid of belly fat? Studies show you’ll actually be smarter, you’ll sleep

better, and you’ll have a healthier heart, better sex, and even more money.” The segment then

transitions into a discussion and demonstration of liposuction for abdominal fat removal.

Similarly, during the 2013 season of Dr. Phil, Dr. Phil paid an eight hundred pound man, Robert

Gibbs, to undergo bariatric surgery and be admitted to Wellspring Weight-Loss Academy. Dr.

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Phil cameras then follow Gibbs’ “success” over multiple episodes as the twenty-three-year-old

man sheds some of his eight hundred pounds under both medical and televisual supervision.

When the AMA classified obesity as a disease, numerous television programs, from

nightly news reports to talk show segments, discussed the implications of the label. For example,

hosts of The View expressed concern as to whether this will shift the focus away from personal

responsibility over one’s diet and exercise practices and towards reliance on surgery and weight-

loss drugs. Correspondingly, a CBS New York Nightly News segment on the AMA classifying

obesity as a disease features Dr. Shawn Garber, Director of the New York Bariatric Group,

discussing weight-loss surgery as a good option for struggling individuals, an option now also

more likely to be covered by insurance providers. A few years earlier, Dr. Garber also made

television appearances to discuss the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to lower the

weight threshold for Lap-Band surgery qualification, requiring that individuals can be just thirty

pounds overweight to qualify as long as they have an obesity-related disease. Introducing the

topic on Dr. Oz, Dr. Oz explains, “This could help twenty-five million more Americans lose the

pounds and keep them off.” Dr. Garber elaborates further: “Now more than ever Lap-Band is a

great option for patients. FDA data shows that eighty-five percent of patients were successful

with the Lap-Band whereas regular diets show an over eighty-five percent failure rate” (April 4,

2013). The discussion then expands to two women in the audience who would qualify for Lap-

Band given the lowered threshold. Both of them believe it would be a good option not only in

terms of achieving weight-loss, but also for preventing the development of future obesity-related

diseases, as one audience member explains to Dr. Oz, “The surgery for me is a good option to do

something about it before I become morbidly obese.” This particular segment on Dr. Oz is

important because it “sells” weight-loss surgery to a larger group of individuals, which happens

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to be the same group of individuals now also classified as being diseased due to their weights.

Furthermore, this TV segment reinforces the medicalized notion that bodies just presumed to be

at risk for future illness are already considered ill or diseased and requiring of medical treatment.

However, the same medicalized media that reinforces medical authority also challenges

medical authority. For instance, analyses of the medical knowledge circulated by Dr. Mehmet

Oz, sometimes called “America’s Doctor,” on Dr. Oz indicate that less than a third can be

supported by even “modest medical evidence,” and four out of every ten medical claims have no

basis in medical evidence (Korowynk et al. 2014). Eventually, Dr. Oz was actually called before

the U.S. Senate’s consumer protection panel to defend his “miraculous” weight-loss supplement

claims and recommendations of “revolutionary” treatments to viewers (Christensen and Wilson

2014). Shortly afterward, a nutrition expert featured on Dr. Oz reached a nine million dollar

settlement with the Federal Trade Commission for falsely promoting the weight-loss power of a

coffee supplement on television (“Marketer Who Promoted” 2015). Similar skepticism over the

validity of medical information on television circulated during the height of Dr. Phil McGraw’s

program, Dr. Phil (2002- ), particularly as to whether he is actually a doctor (he does have a

Ph.D.), and whether his television program constitutes practicing psychology without a license

(technically, it does not)

As is evident, the medicalization of bodies and the medicalization of television are

mutually reinforcing tends. Television and other commercial entities are important vehicles for

broad social medicalization (Conrad 2005), and medicalized television gains storylines,

headlines, relevance, and significance from broad social concern and interest in medicine and

health. This mutually reinforcing relationship is likely exacerbated by the “information overload”

(Andrejevic 2013) we experience as part of the media convergence era. In addition to a 24-hour

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news cycle and the proliferation of cable channels in need of inexpensive and interesting content

to fill their schedules, viewers are increasingly encouraged to migrate between multiple screens

or media platforms. While watching Dr. Oz, viewers are encouraged to go to the show’s website

for more information about the fitness plans or “cancer fighting” recipes featured during TV

segments. Numerous websites, mobile medical apps, and health tracking devices also exist to

compliment medicalized television programs or directly connect to them. Health-conscious TV

viewers can track their calories or fitness levels on My Fitness Pal, check their symptoms on

WebMD or AskMD, get reports of their heart rates and calories burned from FitBit, and seek

medical advice by calling Doctor On Demand, which is a service endorsed by The Doctors, all

while being medically informed and hailed as potential patient-customers by the TV screen.

There are about one hundred thousand mobile medical apps on the market that can also screen

for skin cancer, report on lung functioning, measure blood pressure and joint inflammation, and

track menstrual cycles. But while all of these applications give users more bodily feedback or

information about their bodies than ever before, the reliability of such information is being

questioned in a manner similar to the debatable medical information disseminated by

medicalized TV. Just as Dr. Oz is frequently referred to as a “Snake Oil Salesman” (Houghton

2014), mobile medical apps are receiving criticism for their inaccuracy (Pfizer recalled its

rheumatology calculator app after it was found to be inexact), their lack of FDA regulation

because they are categorized as “entertainment” or “informational” as opposed to medically

diagnostic, and for potentially putting individuals in medical danger if they rely on these apps as

opposed to medical authority (Butler 2015). Yet these apps, online forums, and medical

information sites can also be used to spread awareness, challenge medical authority, and allow

people to find support and share medical information and experiences.

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Televising Fatness as a Disabling and Impairing Disease

Current medicalized fat television shows, in the context of the obesity epidemic,

explicitly explore the socially disabling, physically impairing, and disease-related aspects of

fatness. Program examples include I Eat 33,000 Calories a Day (2007), Big Medicine (2007- ),

Inside Brookhaven Obesity Clinic (2007- ), One Big Happy Family (2009-2010), Half-Ton Teen

(2009), Embarrassing Bodies (2010- ), My Deadly Appetite (2010), World’s Fattest Man (2010),

Britain’s Fattest Man (2010), I’m Eating Myself to Death (2010), Fat Doctors (2011), My 600

Pound Life (2012- ), 650 Pound Virgin (2012), Obese & Expecting (2012- ), The Real Skinny

(2012-2013), and dozens of others that primarily circulate in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and

Australia. Instead of encouraging self-discipline and self-control, medicalized fat television texts

encourage visual diagnosis and differently represent fat bodies to the point where the normative

prescriptions, or rather cliché advice, of weight-loss through self-disciplined exercise and

calorie-counting are no longer thought to be possible. These programs also demonstrate that

some body sizes for some people can and do result in physical impairment or experiences of ill

health. Despite the fact that these are “extreme” instances of fatness, these bodies are often the

bodies used to visually “warn” viewers of the diseased, physically impairing, and socially

disabling impact of fatness.

Fat bodies are commonly framed as unhealthy within the context of the obesity epidemic,

and a growing number of bodies are now framed as dangerously unhealthy, making them

dangerously fat. For those categorized as dangerously fat, medical treatment becomes the “only”

way for people to “overcome” their diseased, physically impaired, or socially disabled bodies.

For example, the narrator for one medicalized show, Inside Brookhaven Obesity Clinic, describes

the featured weight-loss clinic by saying, “Brookhaven treats dangerously obese patients from all

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over America that are eating themselves to death.” Some of the patients featured on Brookhaven

are actually transferred from other hospitals, hospitals where patients continued to gain weight or

maintained their “dangerous weights” despite receiving treatment and be under hospital

surveillance. One participant, Bill, is seven hundred pounds and cannot physically leave his

hospital bed. After doctors at Brookhaven decide to admit him, the TV series documents his

difficult facility transfer, as show’s narrator emphasizes, “Transporting a seven hundred pound

man across one thousand miles is a high risk operation. To lift him they need a crane and several

nurses.” Like the public health frame discussed in the third chapter, and patients on Extreme

Weight Loss being weighed-in on a freight scale, the way fat individuals are described on

medicalized fat television programs dehumanizes and objectifies them. Since they may not be

able to move, they need to be transported, much in the same way we transport freight, but as

individuals lose weight their humanity slowly returns. For instance, after some time at

Brookhaven, the narrator again document’s Bill’s progress by saying, “He can now get out of

bed without the help of a crane, but it’s a struggle.”

The fat body as diseased or as a risk for disease is continually reinforced across numerous

medicalized TV programs. Bill, the patient at Brookhaven, has congestive heart failure, diabetes,

and osteoporosis, which are illnesses linked directly to his weight by doctors in the series.

Similarly, on Cherry Healy: Old Before My Time (2013), Claire takes thirty pills a day to

manage her “obesity related illnesses,” which include depression, acid reflux, and gout. Old

Before My Time’s narrator adds that Claire could also suffer from arthritis, intestinal problems,

cancer, diabetes, liver disease, high blood pressure, blocked arteries, stroke, and low self-esteem

if she does not lose weight. The doctor treating her in the episode further explains that Claire’s

lifespan would decrease by fifteen years if any of these weight-related complications do develop.

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Likewise, on Fat Doctors, Dr. Slater says of Jean that her weight puts her at risk of diabetes,

high blood pressure, and heart disease, adding that she “will inevitably die young.” The show’s

narrator then dramatically reinforces the message: “Unless she loses weight soon, she will be

dead in the next five years.” Both of these statements are interesting as Jean does not yet have

any of these problems as a super morbidly obese person, but what seems to matter most to the

TV narrative and her bodily status in consideration of medicalization is not that she could, but

rather that her risk means that she already does.

Of course physical impairment is not the only aspect of fatness explored; obesity-related

diseases and disorders are a major theme throughout each program, and in many ways are the

focus of the obesity epidemic itself. Conventional wisdom dictates that even though fat is the

enemy, fat itself is not the cause of death, but instead the cause of a host of other problems that

are correlated to carrying large amounts of body fat. Popular press articles reporting on medical

studies, medical studies themselves, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (their

involvement already equals the positioning of fatness or obesity as a disease) all equate fat

bodies with having higher risk of developing heart disease, stroke, type-2 diabetes, cancer,

gallbladder disease, sleep apnea, respiratory problems, and bone and joint degeneration. As a

result, it’s not surprising that virtually all of the people featured on medicalized programs share

with viewers at home, through both stories and visual displays amendable to at-home diagnosis,

the ways in which their bodies are diseased because of fatness. For instance, Henry from My 600

Pound Life suffers from high blood pressure, sleep apnea, and the inability to walk, all physical

impairments or disorders commonly related to fatness in the medical field. In the same series,

Donald has severe cellulitis (a painful and persistent bacterial infection of the skin), which he

attributes both to his skin being stretched because of his weight and his physical immobility

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causing water retention, and Melissa deals with joint pain and infertility, which doctors attribute

to her fatness as well. While of course not all fat people experience obesity-related diseases or

disorders, the fact that most of these examples discontinue or diminish following weight-loss is a

problematic challenge to some fat acceptance advocates who argue against causal links

medically assumed between fat and health as a way to delink fat and health more generally.

The physical impairment experienced by those who are fat consistently leads to the

“treating” of fat on one’s body through surgery. On Body Shock, Billy’s doctor’s medical

assessment is that he is overdriving his heart and lungs, reducing his life expectancy to no more

than a couple of years. The only solution, according to doctors on the series, is to reduce the

amount of fat on his body through gastric bypass surgery, but gastric bypass surgery cannot be

performed because Billy’s fat layer prevents doctors from reaching his stomach laparoscopically.

Therefore, the doctor opts to perform a “tummy tuck” and remove sixty-nine pounds of healthy

tissue in the form of abdominal fat in order to eventually complete the gastric bypass surgery and

several additional skin removal surgeries. Likewise, Melissa on My 600 Pound Life views gastric

bypass surgery as the only barrier standing between her and death: “I can either die on the

operating table because I’m trying to get healthy, or I can die because I’m six hundred pounds.

At least I tried.” Not only is this surgery positioned as the only option for reducing the amount of

fat on “super morbidly obese bodies,” but also the simple act of fat removal is equated with

getting healthier even if nothing else about the patient’s health status changes. Just before Henry

on My 600 Pound Life undergoes his surgery, his doctor asks him, “Are you ready to get

healthier?” Again, this implies that the removal of skin and fatty tissue is the route to health, and

that it is “correcting” physical impairment or social disability, as opposed to dealing with

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emotional and psychological issues that may lead to overeating or mitigating his problematic

home context, which the show describes as full of “food-enablers.”

Weight-loss surgeries are consistently framed as the only option for super morbidly obese

individuals because previous attempts at dieting or exercising are shown to be unsuccessful. The

narrator of Fat Doctors describing Sasha evidences this, “Diets have failed and weight-loss

surgery was the only option left.” Sasha then echoes a similar sentiment herself, saying, “I don’t

have a choice. If I don’t have it I’m going to die.” Similarly, the narrator for Body Shock: Half-

Ton Man, says of its participant, Patrick, “There is now only one way to stop him from eating:

Gastric bypass surgery.” On The Man Who Ate Himself to Death, Ricky, who has not been able

to leave his house for seven years, dies before he is able to undergo weight-loss surgery,

supporting a bariatric surgeon on the show’s claim: “If he doesn’t get help he will die. For

patients that are super obese the best option for weight-loss is surgery.” Anticipating criticism

over the reliance on surgery and the notion that bariatric surgery is a form of cheating in order to

achieve an idealized body (Lupton 2013, 72-73), which demonstrate the dominance of the

obesity epidemic discourse connecting fatness with a lack of self-control or self-discipline, Dr.

Shaw of Fat Doctors explains, “People say ‘obesity is self-created and that people should lose

weight by themselves,’ but this indicates a complete failure of understanding the prejudice that

these people feel. They have tried everything else and if you call their chance at life ’cheating,’

then you are missing the point.” One individual on Australia’s Big: Extreme Makeover is worried

about her upcoming surgery, but decides it’s worth it, saying, “For me it’s a win-win. If I come

out of the surgery, my children are free. If I die in the surgery, my children are free.” Like the

weight-loss programs discussed in chapter three, these medical programs frequently discuss

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death as a potential result of fatness; individuals may die because of their surgeries, but they will

die (according to the television doctors) if they do not have them.

However, despite gastric bypass surgery being framed as the only solution to treat fatness

and its causing of physical impairment and disability across most medicalized TV series, the

narratives often reveal that solution to be as problematic and flawed as any other weight-loss

treatment or intervention. Even if reducing the size of the stomach diminishes physical hunger

pangs, many of the individuals featured on these shows regain the weight they lost and,

medically, gastric bypass surgery comes with serious side effects including decreased metabolic

syndrome, weakness, acid reflux, and even fatal malnutrition (Wade 2010, 993). Therefore, the

solution to making potentially unhealthy fat bodies “healthy” is actually quite risky and

potentially unhealthy in itself, and could contribute to other kinds of physical impairments or

experiences of social disability.

Furthermore, weight-loss surgery does not address the underlying motivation to overeat.

For example, Tara on My 600 Pound Life finds her behavior post-surgery to be similar to her

behavior pre-surgery. Even though Dr. Nowzaradan says prior to her surgery that it is the only

option, he explains to the camera, “Tara is overeating and not being truthful about it… If the

patient doesn’t want to change they will convince themselves they are not eating very much”

When Tara tells her side of the story after meeting with Dr. Nowzaradan, she says, “I can’t

change overnight. Changing something like my eating habits is not easy because I’m doing what

I know. I may cheat here or there, but I am trying.” The continued impulse to eat presents a

serious challenge to the efficacy of weight-loss surgery alone, or weight-loss surgery as an

“only” option considering the fact that its success depends on multiple treatments from the

physical to the emotional. Reflecting these issue, the reunion episode for My 600 Pound Life

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portrays a majority of the individuals featured on the show either regaining weight back or their

weight-loss plateaus and they are still deemed to be dangerously fat. Yet individuals are still

encouraged to risk their lives to undergo weight-loss surgery despite these limited television

results, which align with the limited bariatric surgery results more generally.

Also like the weight-loss TV programs discussed in chapter three, medicalized fat

television texts that position extended hospitalization as the only option also result in limited

success. For example, upon George’s release from the Brookhaven Obesity Clinic, he

immediately starts to binge eat again, consuming almost fifteen thousand calories per day.

Likewise, Vince, who returns to Brookhaven after gaining weight post-release, resists many of

the clinic’s rules and orders fast food to be delivered to his hospital room. Commenting on the

situation, one of the clinic’s doctors tells the camera crew, “We can’t just say ‘no food in the

building.’ To treat an addiction we have to modify their behavior and change their lifestyles to

see results. We can’t lock everybody up.” Yet their attempts to change Vince’s behavior,

evidenced by him being admitted twice to Brookhaven, do not seem to be working either.

Food addiction as necessitating weight-loss surgery is common across medicalized reality

shows about fatness. Happily Ever After (2013), which features a man receiving surgery at one

thousand pounds, Big Medicine, and The Real Skinny, all talk about weight-loss surgery (and

later skin removal surgery) in relation to food addiction. In general, addiction is medically

considered to be a chronic disease, and food addiction is increasingly accepted and viewed like

any other addiction, including addiction to watching television (Kubey 1995; McIlwraith 1998;

Sussman and Moran 2013; Winn 1977), which helps explain why following a regulated diet is

difficult for many individuals. One study exploring the addictive potential of food finds that

overeating alters and rewards the brain in ways comparable to the repeated use of illicit drugs

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like cocaine (DiLeone, Taylor, and Picciotto 2010). Numerous television programs reflect and

reinforce this notion, evidenced both by the narrator of Addicted to Food (2011- ) describing the

“patients” in the first episode as needing to detox from food and “patients” themselves

explaining that they compulsively eat and rely on food for comfort and satisfaction. On a season

three episode of Fat Doctors, the narrator says to viewers, “A quarter of British adults are

dangerously overweight. For many, however hard they try, they simply cannot control their

addiction to food.” On Body Shock, one doctor even references a common alcohol addiction

idiom when discussing his patient, Rosalie: “I guarantee before she dies she will fall off the

wagon.” He then goes on to discuss brain similarities between obese individuals and individuals

with drug addictions, explaining that overeating may produce similar responses in the brain in

comparison to taking illicit drugs. “Overeating becomes addictive. It decreases their dopamine

receptors requiring them to eat larger amounts of food to find pleasure.” Similarly, on The Man

Who Ate Himself to Death, one bariatric surgeon compares obesity to alcoholism in the sense that

“you’re never cured.” Individuals across medicalized reality shows about fatness also discuss

food in terms of addiction and illicit drug use. Examples include Jean saying on Fat Doctors,

“Food is like crack-cocaine for me,” and Sasha saying, “I can’t say no. I have no willpower. It’s

my fault. It’s me that eats. No one forces me to eat… food to me now is pleasure.” The

connections between fatness and food addiction also resist fat embodiment as being easily

reduced to issues of personal responsibility and willpower. While fatness as the result of a food

addiction clearly complicates frames of self-discipline and self-control, addiction also reinforces

the necessity of medical treatment in helping individuals gain control over the foods they eat. In

other words, just like public health discourses that regularly work to remove barriers in order to

make it easier for individuals to lose weight, medicalized discourses connecting fatness and food

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addiction also work to mitigate the psychological, emotional, and physiological processes that

characterize addiction in order to remove them as barriers for individuals to lose weight. But as

Lauren Berlant (2009, 28) rightly points out, Sudafed does not cure a cold, it just manages the

symptoms in the same way that gastric bypass surgery does not cure an addiction, it just (poorly)

manages the “symptoms” of that addiction.

In addition to framing the body as diseased or at risk for developing diseases, most

medicalized fat television programs also emphasize the socially disabling aspects of fatness,

specifically the ways in which pervasive negative attitudes toward fat individuals and fat

stigmatization lead to experiences of social exclusion or disability. For example, the TLC

program I Eat 33,000 Calories a Day details the lives of three individuals medically categorized

as super-morbidly obese and often self-categorized as addicted to food. Lisa Sellers, one of the

women featured on the show, is described through narration as “drawing rapidly closer to a

disabling existence.” Sellers no longer leaves her home and is almost entirely dependent on her

son to complete basic household chores and other tasks like grocery shopping. She expresses to

the camera that she feels both like a prisoner to her compulsion to eat food and a prisoner within

her own home. The anxiety caused by these feelings of imprisonment, and thus social disability,

manifest in Sellers making repeated trips to the refrigerator to eat more food. Before falling

asleep at night, she quells her anxieties and compulsive thoughts by eating candy and drinking

soda, which she says relax her. These examples demonstrate the socially disabling experience of

fatness for Sellers, and how anxiety over that social disability works to exacerbate the underlying

cause of the disability in the first place.

The “Half-Ton Son” episode of Body Shock, which is a Channel 4 production that

features Texas resident Billy Robbins, also emphasizes the socially disabling experiences that

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can result from being fat. Viewers are introduced to Billy by him describing his body as like

“living in a prison.” Visuals depict Billy’s mother buying bags of chips and cans of cheese at the

grocery store to bring home to her son; Billy states, “My Mom is my best friend, she pretty much

takes care of me.” As the details of Billy’s life emerge, we learn that beyond not having any

friends outside of his mother, he rarely leaves his bedroom and his life primarily consists of

going back and forth between his bed and his chair. Of course Billy has concerns about the

medical aspects of his fatness, but he seems much more concerned with the social aspects,

saying:

My weight has caused me to have a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of fears and worries about my future... There’s a lot I’ve missed out on because of my weight. Hanging out with friends, going out to movies, going out to eat... going out on dates. I just missed out on. It takes your life away. It takes away the things we’re supposed to do.

This example of dialogue emphases the way fat can be socially disabling, not necessarily

because of the fat itself, but because of the social and cultural experiences-- or in this case

specific social and cultural experiences-- that mark being fat as potentially life disabling.

Multiple instances of this can be found on TLC’s My 600 Pound Life. The show follows

four individuals on their weight-loss journeys over the course of seven years. Even though this

program frequently focuses on physical impairments and fat-related diseases, narratives also

exemplify the socially disabling aspects of fat. None of the individuals being documented are

employed, none of them are in romantic relationships, few of them have friends, and all of them

live with their parents through adulthood. In fact, each episode’s narrative structure begins by

describing what each individual feels like they’ve lost because of their fatness, and what they

hope to gain socially as they lose physically. One woman, Ashley, who is twenty-four-years-old

and weighs over six hundred pounds, was fired from her job at a childcare worker because she

became too large to take care of children and believes that once she loses weight she will be able

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to open her own daycare. This notion is reiterated by Ashley’s own father, who encourages her,

“Get the weight off so you can start your life.” The theme of “starting one’s life” after losing

weight is common throughout all of these programs, and may even speak to the experience of fat

not only as socially disabling, but as socially ending. These textual examples illustrate how

particular kinds of physical embodiment can be disabling because social and cultural

environments, attitudes, and expectations of performance make them so (Wendell 1996, 37).

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson echoes a similar sentiment, saying, “disability... is the attribution

of corporeal deviance- not so much a property of bodies as a product of cultural rules about what

bodies should be or do” (1997, 6). Disability, then, is not necessarily recognition of fat as a

physical impairment, although it still can be, but recognition of fat as being socially disabling.

Further exemplifying this, many participants across medicalized fat television shows are

housebound, some of them for years, but not necessarily because they cannot physically leave

their homes. George on Inside Brookhaven Obesity Clinic sits in his car at a church outing

because he does not like people staring at him. Jean on Fat Doctors shares similar concern over

individuals in public place staring at her, adding, “People come up to me and say the most

hurtful comments, like I don’t deserve a place in society… I hate being a freak. I would love to

go unnoticed.” Sasha, also on Fat Doctors, says that people look at her with “disgust,” and she

narrates what she thinks they are thinking: “How did you let yourself get like that? You’re a

freak.” On a National Geographic episode of Taboo discussing fatness, one participant, Allen, is

introduced in the following way: “This is Allen’s body at six hundred and fifty pounds. It would

horrify most people.” These kinds of experiences are why many, including Dr. Shaw on Fat

Doctors, believe obesity to be the “last remaining acceptable prejudice.’

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Like Ashley on My 600 Pound Life, Donald, who is in his early thirties and almost seven

hundred pounds, experiences fatness as a disability. After losing his first hundred pounds, the

camera captures him triumphantly tying his own shoes, rejecting the help of his mother for the

first time in years. After losing two hundred and forty pounds, Donald happily says into the

camera, “It shocks you, you can start living your life. Doing what you want to do.” Additionally,

Henry, who is forty-seven years old and weighs seven hundred and fifteen pounds, repeatedly

proclaims, “My life has been on pause for so long.” By the end of his episode, and after a four-

hundred-pound weight-loss, Henry is shown getting married and says he believes that his weight-

loss signifies a return to his true self: “You are seeing the real Henry. This is life! This is joy! A

life gave back to me.” These examples all illustrate that experiencing fatness as a disability is not

just about the material properties of the body itself, but the cultural and social understandings,

relationships, and barriers that impact the experience of having particular kinds of bodies that do

not comport to the norms and rules of particular kinds of medical knowledge. Additionally, these

testimonials of gaining life after losing pounds are not ideas reserved for the super morbidly

obese; they are common through the dieting industry (once you drop those last five pounds,

you’ll finally have a bikini body and be able to live!) and across weight-loss television, including

The Biggest Loser.

As these previous examples demonstrate, thinking about fatness in terms of disease

emphasizes the body or functions of the body, but if we think about fatness in terms of disability,

it shifts the focus away from the body and to the relationships between people. Disability is then

a relational as opposed to an individual problem. However, in tandem with these stories of

disability that engage with social experiences of fatness, emerge themes of physical impairment

and disease that focus on the material aspects of fatness as related to health. The examples do not

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always result in multiple weight-loss surgeries or close-ups of cracked skin, but are instead

visual reminders of the amount of energy it takes to move five hundred pounds of weight. Lisa

Sellers on I Eat 33,000 Calories a Day can barely make it the twenty-five steps between her

recliner and the refrigerator in her kitchen, and every time she completes the distance she

experiences shortness of breath and exhaustion, requiring her to stay in her chair for extended

periods of time. Also as a result of his large size, Donald on My 600 Pound Life relies on a

motorized scooter for mobility and on his family to bring him food as well as dress and bathe

him. Jean on Fat Doctors relies on her husband to get dressed and take baths (but she says they

still have a great sex life, adding, “Fat people enjoy sex, too!”). On Body Shock, Billy’s physical

impairment makes it difficult for him to use the bathroom, frequently resulting in accidents and

necessitating assistance in cleaning himself after defecating. When Billy does go to the hospital

for a pre-surgery appointment, a special large ambulance, a fire truck, and at least a dozen EMT

personnel are required to get him from his home to the hospital for a medical examination. The

difficulty in completing these banal acts, and the sensational TV depictions of patients being

transported by cranes and teams of firefighters, visually support medicalized warnings about the

“future threats” that viewers may face and reinforce medicalized understandings of fatness as a

disease. Yet none one of these programs end in the same kind of dramatic transformation to thin

reveal that weight-loss programs do. In fact, success, in terms of reducing the amount of adipose

tissue to be within the “healthy” BMI weight-range, is never fully achieved by any medicalized

fat TV participants, with one show, I’m Eating Myself to Death, even ending with the featured

individual dying from a combination of heart issues and non-prescription drug use.

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Conclusion

The medicalized television programs focusing on fatness reinforce the notion that fatness

is a disease that can be both socially disabling and physically impairing. However, those same

programs are not nearly as persuasive in terms of offering support for current obesity treatments

like bariatric surgery and hospitalization. Just like the weight-loss television discussed in chapter

three, dominant discourses of the medicalized body, namely that it is diseased and in need of

medical treatment, are inadvertently debated more than they are straightforwardly reinforced

across numerous television programs. Yet while clear “solutions” to fatness may not be present

across medicalized texts, the notion that each individual has a responsibility, or even moral

imperative, to be medically healthy and follow the directives of those with medical authority is

supported.

By focusing entirely on super and morbid obesity as a disabling disease, these programs

further bolster automatically assumed links between fatness and ill health. No matter how much

fat activists, feminists, and Health at Every Size proponents work to challenge these automatic

links, which will be discussed further in chapter five, medicalized TV gives credence to the

disease/fat coupling as being true. In some ways, by working to reject the idea that fat isn’t

automatically unhealthy, impairing, or disabling, we are inadvertently accepting the premise that

being unhealthy, impaired, or disabled is an acceptable basis to judge, monitor, or medically

intervene with the lives of fat individuals. We need to reject the idea that it’s tolerable to

discriminate against any fat person, regardless of medical status, impairment, or disability, and

also acknowledge that the materiality of fat, and experience of being fat, can be a “problem” for

some people that does not need to be accepted.

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Furthermore, reservations over considering fatness a disability also unintentionally serve

to support the premise that disability itself is something unwanted, stigmatized, or an individual

as opposed to relational issue. If we adopt a more complex view of disability, one that focuses on

social constructions and relationships between people and environments, as well as separate

from, yet connected to physical impairment, then we not only open up more possibilities for

fighting fat discrimination, but also become more inclusive of a variety of fat experiences. If fat

is already medicalized and framed as both impairing and disabling throughout so much of our

televisual and social landscape within the obesity epidemic, perhaps just arguing against the fact

that all people’s health statuses are not accurately represented or understood is akin to fighting

the wrong battle.

Representations across medicalized fat television texts act as important sites for exploring

negotiations between medical authority and individual agency over the body happening

throughout society at large. Much like the public health discourses discussed in relation to

weight-loss television throughout chapter three, medicalized media are contradictory; they

strengthen medical authority and legitimize the necessity of medical treatment for fatness, but

also concurrently challenge hierarchical power over the body and the efficacy of surgery,

hospitalization, and pharmaceutical drugs. That being said, the reliance on these types of

treatments for the super morbidly obese, and the positioning of public health practices, like diet

and exercise, as being necessary, but insufficient for weight-loss, pokes holes the dominant

logics of the obesity epidemic in relation to neoliberalism and notions of individualism.

Moreover, the failures and inconsistencies present across all these fat medicalized texts

also undermine television’s ability to govern at a distance. While inadvertently showing that

medical authority over the body and medical treatments like surgery, hospitalization, and

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pharmaceutical therapy are ineffective, inconsistently effective, or problematic for other reasons;

these shows also demonstrate that being under constant surveillance of the television camera

does not help in achieving weight-loss or transformation. Thus, TV these programs extend the

reach of medical authority and traditional sites for disciplining the body throughout our society

control, yet at the same time, both medical authority over the body and television’s ability to

govern our bodies at a distance is negotiated.

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Chapter 5. Celebrating Large Bodies on the Small Screen

Claude Casey: “Do you think that will make me thinner? You know I’ll try anything, but diet and exercise.”

Ramona Platt: “You know I’ll eat to that, girl.”

Less Than Perfect (2002)

After two date requests and the gifting of expensive hockey tickets, Vanessa, a new

waitress at the Comedy Cellar, finally gets Louie to agree to an afternoon coffee date on FX’s

Louie (2010- ). Their clearly great first date includes a stroll through the city while sharing

stories and telling jokes, that is until Louie absent-mindedly quips about the difficulty of dating

in New York City. Sensitive herself to the issue of dating in the city, Vanessa retorts, “Try dating

in your late thirties as a fat girl!” Through a lengthy monologue Vanessa explains how much it

“sucks” to be a fat woman because of the gendered expectations for beauty and desirability that

construct a double standard unfair to women. Vanessa goes on to explain that making the matter

“suck” even more is the fact that fat women are not supposed to talk about how much it “sucks”

to be a fat woman as it’s “too much for people to handle.”

Critical reception of this scene varied between praise and apprehension of all the critical

praise. The scene is applauded for discussing fat womanhood (Dark 2014), which is a topic

discussed only intermittently throughout television’s history (although, really, it is one scene of

one episode written by a man about being a fat woman). One critic points out that Vanessa’s

monologue neither positions fat itself as a problem nor Vanessa as disliking her fat body, instead

identifying the problem as societal; fat individuals and those who associate with them are

stigmatized, and fat women are viewed as less than or not good enough, especially by men

whose fragile egos rely on having a normatively attractive partner (Davies 2014). However,

another cultural critic pushed back against all the praise bestowed upon Louis CK, instead

finding the monologue to be condescending to Vanessa in the sense that fat women, especially

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ones as outgoing, smart, and self-assured as Vanessa, should expect and demand more than just

wanting to hold hands with a “nice guy” (Paskin 2014).

Louie is not the only TV show, or even close to the first, to explore what it is like to be a

fat woman in a society that not only privileges, but also demands, thinness. Although Louie does

explores fatness with less physical violence and paternalistically protective impulses than other

recent television examples. A 2014 episode of Homeland (2011- ) depicts Quinn drunkenly

sleeping with a fat woman while grieving over the loss a colleague. When Quinn and his

overnight companion go out for breakfast the following morning, a group of men a few tables

over tell fat jokes and laugh at the size of the woman’s body (she does not have a name in the

episode). Angered by their behavior (and channeling a significant amount of aggression) Quinn

confronts the men, breaking the hand of one and bloodying the face of the other. Likewise,

although airing several years earlier than Homeland and Louie, John Sacramoni of The Sopranos

(1999- 2007) defends his wife, Ginnie, after members of Tony Soprano's mafia family joke about

Ginnie being so large that she could have a ninety-pound mole removed from her butt. John

assaults and urinates on one of the offenders, justifying his actions as being in defense of his

wife’s honor, further explaining to Tony that fatness is experienced differently and more

difficultly by women although he considers Ginnie to be beautiful and “Rubenesque.”

These television examples explore a kind of duality of fatness, reinforcing the notion that

fat is undesirable, or perceived as undesirable by many, yet nevertheless a type of body that

should be understood with compassion and kindness. After all, the individuals harassing, joking

about, or devaluing fat women are positioned as far more of a problem than fat embodiment

itself. While none of these series can be wholly categorized as body positive or fat accepting, nor

do any of them necessarily strive to be, these particular episodes do give visibility to fat women,

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albeit briefly, and bear witness to the often insensitive and unkind interpersonal interactions fat

individuals experience on a daily basis.

Chapter Overview and Argument

These particular scenes and episodes exploring fatness, among other examples

throughout television’s history, are part of a growing number of programs that are explicitly

more body size diverse, body positive, and/or fat positive, including Drop Dead Diva (2009-

2014), Huge (2010), Super Fun Night (2013-2014), Mike and Molly (2010- ), Big Sexy (2011- ),

Curvy Girls (2011- ), Fat Friends (2000-2005), My Mad Fat Diary (2013- ), Ruby (2008-2011),

More to Love (2009), My Fat Fabulous Life (2015- ), and Big Women, Big Love (2015- ). These

programs depict not only a diversity of body types across the small screen, but they also

generally promote body positivity and the acceptance—and even celebration—of the many

shapes and sizes that bodies can be as opposed to framing fat bodies as objects for intervention

and treatment or as the abject encasement of a human.

These television programs also counter fat stereotypes and public health and medical

discourses of fatness that position fat individuals as unhappy, unhealthy, or unable to actually

live their lives until they lose weight. Moreover, these shows embrace a sensitivity to fatness not

found on public health influenced weight-loss programs or medicalized texts that frame fat

bodies as unhealthy, diseased, and in need of work. Discussing the positive impact on body

image in relation to fatness on Mike and Molly, Melissa McCarthy says:

Any time you see a broad spectrum of people on TV, it’s good. It’s good to have something a little more realistic, so people aren’t always striving to be these unrealistic role models and then giving up. ‘Oh, I could never be that perfect.’ Well, guess what? No one is, except on this tiny little studio set somewhere in Hollywood. I think a show like Mike and Molly takes the pressure off of some people. Subconsciously, it may make people take it a little easier on themselves (Strachan 2011).

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However, fat TV programs that embrace body size diversity through fat visibility, body

positivity, or fat positivity are not always well received due to the dominance of public health

and medicalized discourses of fatness in the context of the obesity epidemic. So even though an

individual developing a positive body image is widely accepted as important for emotional and

physical well being, the same logics are not consistently extended to fat women. For example, a

recent op-ed for The Boston Globe exemplifies the tension between the necessity of body

positivity, generally, and the perceived necessity of excluding those whose body positivity

includes fat acceptance as it is viewed by some as promoting obesity:

Unrealistic ideals of bodily perfection certainly exist, and cause many, especially women and girls, to harm themselves through fad diets or obsessive exercise. The message that beauty and health come in different shapes and sizes is a positive one in moderation. But fat acceptance is no improvement on the thinness cult (Young 2013).

This less than inclusive notion of body positivity actually helps explain the emergence and

growing influence of fat acceptance discourses, which reject constructions of the obesity

epidemic, automatic assumptions positioning fat as inherently unhealthy, and the ways in which

fat bodies are medicalized in relation to disease and disability. Yet fatness remains articulated to

these ideas and if not understood in relation to them, then often in defense of them.

Fat positive TV, which reflects discourses of fat acceptance, as well as television shows

depicting body size diversity and foregrounding messages of body positivity, bridge the gap

between the idealized, unrealistically thin bodies most often found throughout television’s

history and the super morbidly obese bodies found in the medicalized fat television programs

discussed in chapter four. The fat bodies and fat TV discussed in this chapter are not positioned

as funny like Jackie Gleason’s character was on The Honeymooners (1955-1956) or scary like

Alfred Hitchcock’s robust and eerie silhouette on Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1962)

(Stanley 2008), but rather as human, as like bodies that we ourselves have or see everyday. This

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chapter, then, explores representations of fatness or non-normatively idealized bodies across

multiple television series reflecting discourses oppositional to or co-present with those found in

chapters three and four. In other words, these fat representations range from exiting alongside to

directly challenging discourses of public health in connection to the obesity epidemic and the

medicalization of fat bodies. Instead these shows reflect body positive and fat acceptance

discourses that focus less on the body of the character or participant and more on the whole

person who just happens to be fat. Camryn Manheim’s character Ellenor Frutt on The Practice

(1997-2004) is an example of this kind of body size diversity. While fatness was never discussed

on the show, Mannheim gleefully shouted in her Emmy acceptance speech for her role, “I gladly

carry the torch for big women. This is for all the fat girls!” (Vigoda 1999).

In addition to the sporadic body size diversity found on shows like The Practice, some

programs intermittently address fatness across different scenes or episodes, such as Drop Dead

Diva and Mike and Molly, while others commit to consistently reinforcing particular kinds of

body positivity and fat positivity, like Big Sexy, Curvy Girls, and Huge. While TV shows

articulated to discourses of body positivity, fat positivity, and fat acceptance discourses are

increasingly present, they more often demonstrate the social politics and attitudes of individual

actors, creators, producers, and network executive within the television industry rather than

already established industry common sense. But as many of these shows prove relatable to large

audiences and are successful across broadcast networks and cable channels, demonstrating their

potential for profitability. For instance, eight million people consistently watch CBS’s Mike and

Molly, a large enough viewership in the post-network era to make it the number one show in its

night and time-slot. Similarly, TLC’s My Big Fat Fabulous Life ranks number one in its

Tuesday night time-slot, lifting TLC up to number two in overall viewers for the night. As the

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success of these programs is noted within the television industry, emergent industry lore begins

to form and circulate throughout niche media outlets and in advertising campaigns, eventually

becoming more prominent on cable and network television.

According to Timothy Havens (2014a, 39), industry lore, or the organizational common

sense of media industries, “marks the boundaries of how industry insiders imagine television

programming, its audiences, and the kinds of textual practices that can and cannot be profitable.”

But industry lore is not necessarily homogenous or static, instead, Havens continues that

technological as well as economic and global market changes, as well as social and cultural

changes, prompt new forms of industry lore to develop, or emerging industry lore, and thus,

particular kinds of representations (2014a, 51; 2014b). This chapter, then, details one example of

the way forms of industry lore emerge, or to use Havens’ phrase, the way lore “bubbles up from

below” (2014a, 60), as alternative ways of thinking and resistant social politics held by

individual actors, creators, producers, and network executives within the television industry

make their way to the screen. Of course, television has a long history of this, of balancing the

social politics of individual actors with established, yet changing, structures influenced by lore

within the industry, including support for feminism on Cagney and Lacy (D’Acci 1994) and civil

rights on Soul Train (Acham 2005).

After first detailing the history and context of body positivity and fat acceptance

discourses, this chapter will examine the emerging relationship between body acceptance and

media industries, and discuss trends across fat TV programs, including programs representing

body diversity and/or circulating messages of body positivity and fat positivity. While body

positive programs are increasingly common, contributing to emerging industry lore, fat positive

programs remain rare as they directly counter dominant discourses of the obesity epidemic,

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making them somewhat controversial, and perhaps more financially precarious. Moreover, this is

the first chapter that includes scripted programming in its analysis, although the lines between

scripted and reality programs, which are also generally scripted, continues to blur. For the

purposes of this chapter, I treat scripted and “non-scripted” television programs in the same

manner, as I am most interested in the similarities found across narratives and representations

rather than teasing out how the marker of “reality” may influence the way the text is read by

viewers. Finally, it should be noted that this chapter is the most focused on representations

within the U.S. and the U.K. as well as on representations specifically of women. Fat men are

more commonly depicted on television, and have been throughout television’s history, but fat

male bodies are almost never represented in relation to body positivity or fat acceptance, except

when they are interested in body positive and fat accepting women. This trend is likely the result

of the fat acceptance and body positivity movements primarily being comprised of women and

deeply connected to feminism in their resistance to the body-aesthetic demands perpetuated by

patriarchal society. And, of course, these movements and instances of resistance are the result of

fat prejudice and fat stigmatization disproportionately and detrimentally affecting women in

numerous ways (Kwan and Graves 2013, 39).

Histories of Fat Resistance and the Fight for Fat Rights

While more mainstream news and cultural outlets, including television programs, are

now circulating discourses of size and fat acceptance they have roots in the 1960s alongside the

civil rights and feminist movements. Like other social and political protests for justice and equal

rights during that era, fat acceptance activists worked toward ending fat oppression by holding

“fat-ins” where they ate ice cream and burned diet books. A group calling themselves The Fat

Underground criticized both the medical field and society at large for perpetuating a “genocide”

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against fat people (Fletcher 2009), and demanded that fat individuals be treated with respect in

their publication, “The Fat Liberation Manifesto” (Solovay and Rothblum 2009). Other groups

formed or expanded their activism to include fatness as a political and social issue, including

Girth and Mirth in San Francisco (1967) and the Iowa City Dykes (1972). In order to build

coalitions with the feminist movement, a Midwest contingent of fat activists from Iowa,

Minnesota, and Wisconsin attended the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival to engage in fat

outreach and fat awareness (1977). During the same time period, the first books about fat pride

and fat oppression were published, specifically Marvin Grosswirth’s Fat Pride: A Survival

Handbook (1971) and Susie Orbach’s Fat is a Feminist Issue (1978). These actions, groups, and

publications demonstrate that fat stigmatization and discrimination, defined by Deborah Lupton

(2013, 67) as encompassing fat loathing, fat hatred, fat oppression, thin supremacies, fat phobia,

and weight prejudice, existed prior to the obesity epidemic and medicalization of the body, but

are simultaneously intensifying in presence and scope while being mroe commonly and overtly

challenged within the contemporary context.

The most well known group of fat activists is NAAFA, or the National Association for

the Advancement of Fat Acceptance. NAAFA formed in the 1960s to both improve the quality of

life for fat individuals and safeguard their rights. NAAFA gained enough attention to be featured

on a 1978 episode of 60 Minutes exploring the impetus behind the fat acceptance movement and

detailing individual stories of fat discrimination and fat pride. Several attendees of one of

NAAFA’s conferences (then referred to as the National Association to Aid Fat Americans) spoke

about feeling hated by society because of their large bodies, and others detailed experiences of

being verbally attacked in public spaces. All of the conference attendees told 60 Minutes that fat

pride and fat activism are necessary because it they challenge fat myths and stereotypes,

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specifically that fat individuals are dumb, lazy, or dirty, and the conference opens dialogue about

experiences of discrimination on the job market, being targeted by a predatory diet industry,

feeling judged and treated insensitively by those in the medical field, and the difficulty of finding

clothing.

Over the years NAAFA members and other fat activists have raised concern over various

issues, from airlines discriminating against fat passengers (Huff 2009) to how the size and

structure of desks in classrooms and lecture halls cause both physical and psychological pain as

well as social shame for fat students (Hetrick and Attig 2009). Other serious issues addressed by

fat activists include the ways in which anti-fat bias fosters violence against women, or

correlations between sizeism, sexism, and violence (Royce 2009, 151), reports of fat women

being ridiculed by police officers when reporting instances of rape or sexual assault because fat

women are perceived as unlikely victims due to their size (Goodman 1995), and the practice of

“hogging,” or men predatorily targeting fat women for sex based on the assumption that they are

“easy” and “desperate” or as part of social group initiations and challenges (Dowd 2005). And

there are dozens of other ways fat individuals experience prejudice and discrimination both in the

U.S. and around the globe. Marilyn Wann (2009, xix-xxi), a well-known fat activist and author

of Fat?So! (1998), cites numerous reasons for fat revolution: fat individuals are barred from

adopting children in China, fat children are more likely to be bullied and teased, fat children

tend to be sadder and lonelier than thin children, fat teens are more likely to experience shaming

instances that lead to depression, high school counselors are less likely to encourage fat students

to go to college, fat workers are generally paid less, fat employees are more often denied health

insurance benefits, both fat men and women are less likely to marry, mental health professionals

are more likely to evaluate fat people negatively, fat individuals receive less preventive medical

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care, and on top of all these experiences and issues as well as dozens of others, there is minimal

stigma attached to discriminating against fat people. Other examples of fat-shame or fat-

prejudice include a Harvard doctor arguing that the U.S. government should legally require

people to exercise (Rakowsky 2012) or another medical doctor refusing to see patients over two

hundred pounds (“Doctor Refuses” 2012). Plus, just as fatness itself is not only present in the

U.S., fat discrimination and fat stigmatization are present throughout the world. For example, an

article in The Calgary Herald reports, “Many countries that once associated curvy bodies with

youth, fertility, wealth, and beauty have gobbled up North American’s anti-fat prejudices and

now associate obesity with laziness, lack of self-control, and moral failure” (Ryan 2011).

Today, NAAFA has over eleven thousand members, seventy percent of whom are self-

identified as female, and although the organization does not keep records on more specific

demographic categories, the organization is mostly white and middle class (Kwan and Graves

2013). In addition to fighting against fat discrimination, the group also embraces expressions of

fat sexuality, including BBW culture (or big beautiful women) and fat admirer communities, and

they believe in celebrating the fat body through fat fashion shows, dances, and pool parties. But

while NAAFA is the largest fat activist group, it is not the only fat activist or fat positive

organization. England is home to The London Fat Women Group and The Chubsters, both of

which work against fat discrimination and engage in demonstrations and performances to reject

the common assumption that fat is inherently unhealthy (Lupton 2013, 81). There is also the

International Size Acceptance Association, the Association for Size Diversity, the Canadian

group “Pretty, Porky, and Pissed Off,” France’s Allegro Fortissimo, as well as various groups in

Germany, Spain, and Argentina. While still small in numbers, the existence of fat acceptance

groups around the world demonstrate both pushback against discourses of the obesity epidemic

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as well as the necessity of groups standing up for fat rights and celebrating fat bodies as those

discourses sediment into a kind of global common sense.

Because the fat acceptance movement directly counters discourses of the obesity

epidemic and medicalization of the fat body, fat acceptance itself, perhaps unsurprisingly, is met

with resistance and accusations of “promoting obesity” (Orr 2013), glorifying a dangerous

medical condition (Jones 2013), or just making excuses for being fat (Stewart 2014). Once critic

of fat acceptance argues that shame is the best way to get people to lose weight, lamenting, “the

stigma once rightly associated with obesity is disappearing as quickly as fat is accumulating”

(Freind 2012). Fat acceptance detractors also label fat acceptance a “threat to public health in a

similar fashion to the anti-vaccination movement” (Munoz 2014), as damaging to society

because it encourages individuals to be unhealthy or as undermining our society’s progress

toward health (“Editorial” 2014; Worth 2010), and as being just as bad as the “cult of thinness,”

which Sharlene Hesse-Biber (2007) defines both as our collective obsession with our bodies as

well as the widespread pressures we feel to conform to a thin ideal, as opposed to accepting of all

different shapes and sizes in moderation (Young 2013). One op-ed in the National Post even

goes as far as comparing fat-acceptance to tobacco-acceptance (Kay 2013)! Due to these kinds

of claims and accusations, fat acceptance advocates do not entirely reject correlations between

weight and health, but instead critique those correlations when they are “exaggerated at the

expense of shaming people, neglecting other aspects of health such as stress, sleep, mental

health, and balanced eating…” (Lee 2012). Peggy Howell, the public relations director for

NAAFA says that they neither endorse unhealthy lifestyles nor encourage people to get fat, but

are instead concerned with fighting fat discrimination, and as Howell says, “As a citizen of the

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U.S., just because I carry more weight on my back doesn’t mean I should have any fewer rights

than anyone else” (Stewart 2009).

The Health at Every Size movement, or HAES, which traces back to the 1970s, also

started to directly counter fat stigma and fat oppression, although HAES focuses more on

dismantling the public health and medical discourses of fatness as obesity within the obesity

epidemic. The HAES movement attempts to shift the focus away from weight loss and to overall

health regardless of one’s body size. Instead of recommending food restriction and calorie

deficits in line with medical and public health advice, or encouraging people to put in long,

monotonous hours of running on a treadmill to sweat off the pounds, HAES celebrates the

“pleasures” of eating and the “joys” of moving one’s body as important for overall health and

wellness (Lupton 2013). By valuing body size diversity and resisting binaries equating fat with

being unhealthy and thin with being healthy, HAES advocates encourage individuals to nurture

instead of punish their bodies, and to listen to their bodies for cues of hunger and satiety instead

of eating or non-eating according to specific diet plans.

HAES also pushes back against the individualizing and massifying aspects of the obesity

epidemic, specifically in the sense that fat and size acceptance proponents argue that being fat is

not just or inherently the fault of the individual, and that fatness as it relates to health cannot be

generalized to large populations. According to HAES, not everyone who is fat can be

automatically considered unhealthy just as not everyone who is thin can be automatically

considered healthy. Further, HAES advocates are also critical of medical doctors and public

health experts for their reliance on the Body Mass Index as a determinant of health, and instead

embrace the idea that different types of bodies may have different, natural weight ranges that can

be healthy. HAES also rejects dieting for weight-loss when studies show that a majority of

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dieters not only regain any lost weight, but also typically gain more weight, which is not only

counterproductive to health, but can also be harmful to one’s metabolic and cardiovascular health

(Oliver 2006; Campos 2004; Gaesser 2002). In fact, Glenn Gaesser argues that the idea of

“permanent weight-loss” is an oxymoron given National Institutes of Health and the National

Weight Control Registry data that shows a majority of people returning to their baseline weights

within a few years after losing weight (Gaesser 2009). Furthermore, HAES advocates also

highlight medical studies finding that mortality only increases on both extremes of the Body

Mass Index, either underweight or super obese (Bacon 2009), and that those considered

“overweight” or “moderately obese” do not actually have heightened health risks or greater

mortality despite popularly circulated “common sense” (Flegal et al. 2005). Similar findings,

which are often referred to as the “obesity paradox,” show that fat individuals with chronic

conditions actually live longer and have better qualifies of life if they are “overweight” or

“moderately obese” (Lavie 2014). However, by working to sever the automatic links assumed

between health and weight, HAES advocates inadvertently position being healthy or striving

toward “good health” as an imperative or obligation in accordance with discourses of the obesity

epidemic and medicalization of fatness. Appeals to health also allow moral assumptions

connecting particular behaviors and bodies to “fly stealthily under the radar,” as the concept of

health is “replete with value judgments, hierarchies, and blind assumptions that speak as much

about power and privilege as they do about well-being” (Metzl 2010, 1-2).

In addition to NAAFA and HAES, other fat, feminist, and body positive activists and

scholars are taking a stand against fat stigma by circulating messages contrary to thin

idealizations and celebratory of body size diversity. Fat activists praise fat female leads in

theatrical productions like Hairspray and The Most Massive Woman Wins (Jester 2009), publish

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zines to discuss fat and queer pride, such as FaT GiRL: A Zine for Fat dykes and the Women

Who Want Them and Size Queen: For Queen Size Queers and Our Loyal Subjects (Snider 2009),

join fat burlesque performance troupes like The Chainsaw Chubbettes and Corpulent Cuties

(Asbill 2009), and develop exercise programs in order for fat women to “explore their

physicality” within a world that assumes fat women do not belong (Ellison 2009). Other

instances of contemporary at activism include Kelsey Miller, a writer at Refinery29, started the

Anti-Diet project, which adopts the HAES model. In her bi-monthly columns about the project

she discusses breaking her yo-yo dieting cycle, opting instead to focus on intuitive eating, and

exercising to be healthier as opposed to smaller. Miller does admit she wants to lose weight, but

is coming to terms with the fact that if weight loss is her primary goal it often leads to destructive

behaviors and ways of thinking about her body. To rely less on the numbers on a scale for her

self-worth, Miller stops weighing herself and encourages her readers to stop weighing

themselves, too (Miller 2014). Another body positivity activist is Whitney Way, who started the

No Body Shame Campaign after years of struggling with eating disorders, depression, and low-

self esteem. Through her viral “A Fat Girl Dancing” videos and media appearances, Way

demonstrates that fat women can be and are, in fact, physically active, and that no one should be

limited by feeling like their body is “too fat,” too skinny,” or “too broken.” Her videos and

subsequent reality show for TLC, My Fat Fabulous Life, which aired its first episode in January

of 2015, circulates messages of self-love while navigating her attempts to lose weight through

dance (so that her body size does not become physically impairing), moving back home with her

parents, and finding love.

In addition to the Anti-Diet project, No Body Shame Campaign, and other fat activist and

body positive projects, Jes B., who blogs at The Militant Baker, started both the Attractive and

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Fat campaign, which spoofs Abercrombie and Fitch advertisements with fat individuals, as well

as The Body Love Conference. Other fat acceptance campaigns include The Adipositivity

Project, which features nude photographs of fat men and women as well as the Be Beautiful

project, which is a series of photographs of fat women in public places like parks and subways

wearing only a bra and underwear with the words “Be Beautiful” written on their arms, legs, and

stomachs. Likewise, the Full Beauty features fat women in the nude in order to “challenge our

accepted notions of beauty, sex, size, and the female body” (Jones 2013). All of these examples,

and the others that pop up on a daily basis, directly counter the idea that fat individuals should

feel ashamed of their bodies or hide their bodies from view, and put forth alternative notions of

beauty that are not reliant on a thin physique.

Spreading Body Positivity and Emerging Industry Lore

All of these campaigns and projects are now documented and celebrated on niche

feminist news and entertainment sites, such as Jezebel, XOJane, HelloGiggles, Bitch,

Autostraddle, Everyday Feminism, Bustle, Mic, and many more, under headlines like “9

Stunning Photos That Shatter Society’s Stereotypes About the Perfect Body” (Bianco 2015).

Articles about body positivity and fat positivity are also increasingly found across more

mainstream news and culture sites, such as Salon and Slate, although usually targeting fairly

niche audiences under content categorizations like Style, Feminism, Women, or XX. For

example, The Huffington Post has a series of articles about body positivity, and at times, fat

acceptance. Some 2014 headlines include “I Love My Body: How to Stop Listening to the

Haters,” “Fourteen Painful Examples of Everyday Fat Shaming,” “Why Thin Women Should

Care About Fat Activism,” “Looking at These Things Will Help You Love Your Body More,”

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“The Bold Way One Woman is Proving Beauty Comes in All Sizes,” “Standards of Beauty

Sound Even More Ridiculous When Said Aloud,” and “Body Positivity Has No Size Limit.”

Numerous actors and creators within the industry are also now reported to be embracing

these messages of body size diversity and body positivity in rejection of the thin Hollywood

ideal. Mindy of The Mindy Project, Hannah of Girls, Donna of Parks and Rec, Joan of Mad

Men, Kat of 2 Broke Girls, and Sadie of Awkward are all characters who embrace the various

shapes and sizes of their non-size-two bodies. A New York Times trend piece entitled “Women

on TV Step Off the Scale” explores this very notion by arguing that the current generation of

young women are more body positive after growing up with after-school specials about anorexia

and Tyra Banks saying “So What?” as a retort to her weight-gain critics (Stanley 2012). In fact,

numerous stars are not only considering themselves “unapologetically not-thin,” including

singers Kelly Clarkson and Adele, but also, as with Lady Gaga, part of a body revolution. Gaga

even wrote on her own website after gaining twenty-five pounds: “Today I join the BODY

REVOLUTION. To Inspire Bravery. And BREED some m$therf**king COMPASSION.”

These individual actors within the industry, in addition to the body and fat positivity

proliferating niche media sites and emanating from activists groups, contribute to emerging

industry lore. This emergent lore is particularly important because it negotiates perceptions of

potential profitability, as body positivity and fat positivity defy aesthetic ideals perpetuated by

the fashion-beauty complex (Bartky 1990), which promotes a fifty-billion-dollar a year beauty

industry in the U.S., as well as medical and public health norms that are co-opted and circulated

by the diet-industrial complex, which is also a sixty-billion-dollar a year industry, including diet

product manufacturers, pharmaceutical corporations, the advertising industry, and medical

practitioners, which fosters fat stigma and prescribes weight-loss in order to “keep people

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dieting” as opposed to helping people seek health (Farrell 2011). Body and fat positivity, then,

are counter dominant industrial logics because they challenge beauty and “health” standards,

standards that successfully sell products to individuals, and also show how those standards are

mutually and erroneously reinforcing. More specifically, thin is considered to be healthy and

beautiful whereas fat is typically thought to be on the opposite end of both the beauty (Bordo

2003) and health continuums (Kwan and Graves 2013). Dieting basically exists to keep people

dieting, or to convince them to choose surgery, take diet pills, join gyms under the guise of

health and the promise of beauty (Farrell 2011, 14). Contributing to this, of course, is a media

and advertising context that promotes a “culture of lack” (Dworkin and Wachs 2009, 10). A

“culture of lack” perpetually positions individuals as needing to change themselves and their

body sizes through self-discipline, willpower, and most importantly, the purchase of certain

products (Kwan and Graves 2013, 37).

Therefore, women who are already accepting of their bodies, who already feel beautiful

in their skin, or who focus on wellness and health as opposed to weight, is not, at least

superficially, financially lucrative for businesses that rely on the “culture of lack” in the sense

that people adopting these ways of thinking may be less likely to buy products to lose weight or

conform to certain aesthetic ideals. However, emergent social discourses of body and fat

positivity correlate to emerging industry lore, leading some businesses and brands to co-opt

messages of empowerment and body positivity to sell products as well as the creation of

television programs relatable to ever-growing audiences in-tune with body size diversity. For

example, in 2005, Dove launched its “Real Beauty” campaign featuring “real” women as

opposed to professional models who wear clothing sizes ranging between a four and twelve. The

success of the Dove campaign spawned analogous campaigns by Nike, Special K, H&M, and

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designer Jean-Paul Gaultier. Even Vogue embraced body positivity in a photo spread featuring

women of varying sizes, entitled “The Best Lingerie Comes in All Sizes.” Nike’s campaign

depicts a “real” athletic and muscular women with copy that reads “My butt is big,” “I have

thunder thighs,” and “My shoulders aren’t dainty or proportional to my hips,” but while the ad

was praised for turning the taunts of high school boys into sources of pride (Brennan 2005), it

still received criticism not actually showing ordinary, everyday women and for reinforcing just a

different ideal (Traister 2005). Special K’s jump on the body-positive bandwagon is ironic

considering it markets its cereals and breakfast bars as being useful for weight-loss. Like Dove

and Nike, Special K began featuring “real” women it some of its advertisements and released

videos of women talking about being “More Than a Number” (referencing both pants size and

weight) and encouraging women to “Shut Down Fat Talk.” The latter video specifically tells

women to stop being so hard themselves, to stop bullying themselves, because... it’s a barrier to

weight-loss! Of course none these advertising campaigns are perfect in their politics, and all of

them commodify empowerment and sell size liberation like numerous other advertising

campaigns characterized by post-feminist discourses positioning women primarily as consumers

(Tasker and Negra 2007). Nevertheless, they all contribute to emergent industry lore, specifically

the profitability of body size diversity, body positivity, and likely eventually, fat positivity,22

22 The most common criticism concerning the selling of body positivity (especially among Twitter and Tumblr users) is its exclusion of fat positivity. Commodified body positivity still constructs hierarchies between bodies of various sizes and shapes, and tends to exclude and marginalize fat women, especially the largest fat women. In other words, many marketing campaigns and popular cultural texts are accepting of larger bodies, but only as long as those bodies are proportioned in particular ways and are not “too-large.” For example, Calvin Klein’s fall 2014 “Perfect Fit” underwear campaign features the company’s first “plus-size” model. On the surface this seems like a huge gain for body positivity, but body activists called out the campaign because their model, Myla Dalbesio, is “only” a clothing size ten, which is neither considered plus-size by fashion industry standards nor as fat by social, public health, or medical standards (Friedman 2014). Conversely, body positive qualifiers like “real” women or phrases

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which ultimately counter pervasive messages reinforcing the “cult of thinness” through products

that are “light,” “low,” or “free” of ingredients to support weight-loss.

Apart yet connected to the selling of particular products is the selling of particular body

positive and fat television programs, and there is growing discussion about the need for, impetus

behind, and relatability of body diversity on television, which deviates from the typical industry

lore in regard to depicting fat individuals. David Ehlers, who is the director of ZenithOptimedia,

argues that even shows about weight-loss, such as The Biggest Loser, were counter industry

logics in the beginning, saying:

I had people say that fat people weren’t attractive and that nobody wants to see fat people on television. I said, ‘Well, do you know anyone who is fat’ ‘Oh yea,’ they said, ‘my mother is, my sister and brother is.’ So, I told them that if everyone in this room knows someone who’s in that situation, isn’t that your audience? (Weiner 2010). The success and high ratings of something like The Biggest Loser, then, according to its own

production president, Chad Bennett, helped tear down walls to fat representation (Weiner 2010).

Rita Mullin, the program development vice president of TLC, which airs a large number of fat

television programs, speaks about this change in logic and the way it has evolved since the early

2000s:

You can’t ignore how successful ‘The Biggest Loser’ has been, but more than that, society is looking at the issue in a different way now. The kind of programming we’re doing on cable reflects that. We’re putting a human face to what had been, before, a punchline. When you watch a show like 650-Pound Virgin or Ruby suddenly you realize, ‘I can identify with this person’ (Schneider 2009).

Further, FOX executive, Mike Darnell, argues that there no longer needs to be the “axiom that

people need to be ultra thin or ultra good-looking on TV,” and that network executives and

producers are working to create shows that are “inspirational in nature” instead of exploitative of

like “real women have curves” can be “thin-shaming” or “skinny-shaming” as opposed to celebratory of all body types.

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fat individuals. Similarly, Sally Ann Salsano, who produced by Dance You’re Ass Off and More

to Love, talks about her own identification with the people featured on her programs, “I’m

overweight, and I’m not going to do a show that makes fun of fat people, because I know what

that feels like. I have a connection with my cast on these shows.” These shows are also seen as

friendly to a number of advertisers, including by Lane Bryant, a plus-size retail store for women,

helps produce FOX’s More to Love (Schneider 2009).

There is a growing sense from television critics and those in the industry that fat visibility

could reduce social biases against fat individuals (Owens 2009) or that representations sensitive

to fat stigma could correct “reflexive cultural judgments levied against the overweight at a time

when obesity has been cast s one of the greatest blights of our age” (Bellafante 2010). And as

Michael Schneider (2009), who is a writer for Variety, says, “With so many TV viewers

struggling with their weight, showcasing more realistically-sized people on reality TV would

seem to be a no-brainer.” Which is even more true, given the large number of viewers who are

categorized as fat, or who self-identify as fat, and the notion that “if there is one thing that fat

people hate seeing on television, it’s shows where large people get screamed at to lose weight”

(“Huge” 2010).

Body Size Diversity on Television

From Ralph on The Honeymooners (1955-1956, Frank on Cannon (1971-1976), Archie

on All In The Family (1971-1979) and Cliff on Cheers (1982-1993), to numerous TV programs

throughout the 90s and 2000s, including Jim on According to Jim (2001-2009), Drew on The

Drew Carey Show (1995-2004), Bill on Still Standing (2002-2006), Doug on King of Queens

(1998-2007), Carl on Family Matters (1989-1998), Randy on My Name is Earl (2005-2009),

Sean on Grounded for Life (2001-2005), Philip on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990-1996),

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Tony Soprano on The Sopranos, Jeff on Curb Your Enthusiasm (1999- ), Turtle on Entourage

(2004-2011), and Cameron on Modern Family (2009- ), fat men are more frequently represented

on the small screen than fat women. Fat men are even common across animated series, including

Fred of The Flintstones (1960-1966), Fat Albert of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (1972-1985),

Homer, Chief Wiggum, and Barney of The Simpsons (1989- ), and Peter of Family Guy (1999- ).

While some fat male characters throughout TV’s past are depicted as novelties, grotesqueries, or

as deviants, according to Jerry Mosher (2001), fatness is more often used to signify ordinariness

or the relatable everyman. Through the display of “soft bodies” and use of the “bumbling oaf”

stereotype, fat men on sitcoms over the last twenty years also potentially represent a “crisis in

masculinity” and weakening of patriarchy (Mosher 2011), although numerous representations of

non-fat masculinity are interpreted the same way (Hanke 1990; Projansky 2001; Greenberg et al.

2003; Gill 2007; Hilmes and Thompson 2007). Fat sitcom husbands also put forth a form of

masculinity that is juvenile (Havens 2007) and immature (Feeney 2005), yet ultimately appears

to be a successful and enviable way to live considering most of these men are married to

conventionally attractive and thin women. The fact that fat women are rarely married to

conventionally attractive and thin men, or to be less heteronormative, thin women, demonstrates

that fat women must still live up to hegemonic ideals of beauty both on television and in society

at large. Furthermore, Sender and Sullivan (2008) suggest that fat women are typically depicted

as “bad examples” of self-control and are either shown to have low self-esteem or have their fat

bodies used for comedic purporses, such as Mimi on The Drew Carey Show or Queenie on

American Horror Story: Coven (2013). These double standards in regard to fatness on TV

directly reflect the gendered ways fatness is experienced and the differing thresholds by which

men and women are even considered to be fat, with men perceived as fat when they are seventy

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pounds “overweight” while women are perceived as fat when they are only ten pounds

“overweight” (Oliver 2005).

Despite the fat-male-majority, there are a handful of episodes from television’s past that

focus on fat womanhood. Like the scenes described earlier from Homeland, The Sopranos, and

Louie, several series throughout television’s history have one-episode narratives addressing fat

embodiment. For example, an episode of Taxi (1978-1983), “Blind Date,” explores similar

themes to Louie, albeit forty years before Louie. In the episode, Alex, played by Judd Hirsch,

goes on a blind date with a woman, Angela, he talks to from an answering service. All of the

characters in the taxi garage find her to be charming and funny on the phone and encourage Alex

to ask her out on a date. When Alex finally meets Angela for the first time, she is not only a fat

woman, but also preemptively defensive about her body type. Immediately after opening the

door she says to Alex, “I hate to disappoint you, but I’m Angela,” and further suggests, “We can

stay here so no one can see us.” The bad date is exacerbated both because Angela cannot let her

guard down and Alex’s friends show up and laugh after learning that Angela is a fat woman.

Alex later tries to apologize to Angela, saying that he wants to get to know her better, and after

some resistance she relents and opens up to him like she did during their phone conversations

when she had the security of non-visibility protecting her from the judgment of others.

This episode is tricky because it engages with the difficulty of being a fat woman dating

in New York City, just like Louie, but it also suggests that part of that difficulty is the fault of the

fat woman for not believing that individuals may, in fact, be romantically interested despite or

because of her weight. “Blind Date” acknowledges that she behaves so defensively and self-

protectant because of being treated poorly and judged because of her size. Clearly, this feeds a

cycle where she learns to defend herself against future hurt and rejection, but that very

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defensiveness may prevent her from accepting any real romantic interest from those she meets.

However, preventing the episode from actually being empathetic or body positive is Alex saying

upon the episode’s conclusion that if he looked like Angela he “would not give up on love” and

would instead “do stuff with my hair, wear makeup, go to the gym” to become more attractive.

Thus, in this episode of Taxi, fatness itself is not positioned as necessarily being a problem, but

rather interpersonal interactions that are overshadowed by the social prevalence of fat

stigmatization. However, fat individuals are not “off the hook,” so to speak, as they “choose”

how to respond to fat stigmatization, either defensively like Angela or motivated to lose weight

like Alex’s hypothetical self-makeover.

Designing Women (1986-1993) also has an episode dealing specifically with fatness,

“They Shoot Fat Women, Don’t They?,” although this one is more body positivity as a result of

the show’s feminist influences and overall tone. Suzanne, played by Delta Burke, is nervous

about going to a class reunion due to gaining weight post-graduation. The episode discusses the

difficulty of finding clothes as fat women (at one point Suzanne quips, “You all act like I should

order fabric from Georgia Tent and Awning!”) and the classed dimensions of fatness (wealthy fat

women shop at stores like “New Dimensions,” while poor fat women shop at stores like “Fat

Girls”). When Susanne wins the “Most Changed” award at her reunion due to her weight gain, it

prompts her to give a speech about no longer caring what her classmates think about her body,

and further rejecting the idea that “When you’re fat, then you’re supposed to be ashamed.

Magazine covers, clothes… if you’re not thin you’re not neat and that’s it.” Like Taxi, this

episode of Designing Women discourages fat shame and fosters empathy for the experiences of

fat individuals in a society idealizing thinness, but it simultaneously reinforces the idea that fat

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individuals should both lose weight and that gaining weight in the first place is an undesirable

experience that leads to a generally undesirable body.

Through the years, other programs not specifically about fatness also reference fatness

through the common television trope: the fat to thin transformation. This transformation is

exemplified by Monica on Friends (1994-2004), Annie on Community (2009- ), and Schmidt on

New Girl (2011- ). Across each of these programs former fatness becomes a character

development tool used to give context and history to the neuroses, obsessions, and over-achiever

tendencies of specific characters. Amy Gullage (2014, 181) argues that Fat Monica on Friends is

positioned as outside the norm and represented as sloppy, loud, obnoxious, pathetic, and

gluttonous. Gullage further contends that Monica’s fat/thin body represents “contemporary fears

of fatness as always lurking in the shadows and eager to consume the healthy, good (both

physically and mentally, and controlled body” (2014, 185). Furthermore, characters with past

experiences of being bullied or in some way scarred by their fatness, as well as current shame

over once being fat, makes each character more sympathetic to audiences and also reinforces the

idea that there is a thin person trapped inside each fat person just waiting to get out (Kalin 2014;

Mendoza 2009).

Fat embodiment as the impetus for excessively strict diet adoption is another common

television trope, although this one is generally more body positive than the fat to thin

transformation. For instance, Roseanne and Dan commit to dieting together on Roseanne in the

second season episode “I’m Hungry.” Roseanne’s inspiration to lose weight stems not from her

own desire, but from a beauty shop patron saying to her (while she is handing out donuts), “You

have such a pretty face, it’s a shame you keep it hidden under all that weight.” Rosanne then

swears off junk food, but finds herself repeatedly triggered by food advertisements on television

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and the stash of cookies hidden in her family’s kitchen cupboard. While restricting her caloric

intake Roseanne’s whole world seems to revolve around the food she will not allow herself to

eat, even “sneaking” food in the bathroom. Discussions throughout the episode bring up the

double standards experienced by fat men and fat women (that it is expected for men to get fat as

they age, but per Darlene, “It doesn't look good on women.”). Eventually, Roseanne realizes the

problem isn’t with her body; it’s with the people who shame her body and with unnecessary and

strict diets. Although Roseanne features two fat individuals, the show rarely discusses fatness,

and never points to the fat body itself as a source of comedy. This is likely the result of the fact

that the creator and star of Roseanne, Roseanne Barr, is well known for speaking out about fat

rights as well as fatness in relation to feminism and self-acceptance, even writing a fat-positive

autobiography in 1994 (Bernstein and St. John 2009, 267).

Twenty years after Roseanne, Glee (2009-2015) aired a similar episode, “Home,” about

Mercedes beginning an extremely low calorie diet after Coach Sue instructs her to lose ten

pounds in order to fit into a more “gender appropriate” cheerleading uniform. Mercedes’

attempts to eat a healthy lunch of chicken breasts with salad on the side prove to still be

indulgent in comparison to fellow cheerleader, Kurt’s, lunch of celery and Splenda. The episode

is sprinkled with body positive lines that contrast the excessive dieting, like Arnie saying, “You

look beautiful no matter what. Diets don’t work. As soon as you go off them you gain back the

weight you lose.” Eventually the starvation causes Mercedes to hallucinate that people are food

and she passes out from hunger. By episode’s end, Mercedes’s body positivity is reinstated and

former cheerleader, Quinn, advises: “You’ve always been at home in your body, don’t let Sue

Sylvester take that away from you.”

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Both Roseanne and Glee demonstrate in both exaggerated and, strangely, not-very-

exaggerated ways the complications, emotional affects, and even dangers, of dieting through

extreme caloric deficits. By the end of each episode both Mercedes and Rosanne accept their

body types and reject the idea that they are somehow less than as fat women. Similar confident

fat characters who are rarely or never exhibited in relation to fatness or dieting, but visually

contribute to body size diversity on the small screen, can be found across numerous television

texts, including Donna on Parks and Recreation (2009-2015), Shirley on Community (2009- )

Harriet on Harry’s Law (2011-2012), Sookie on Gilmore Girls (2000-2007), Sadie on Awkward

(2011- ), Claudia on Less Than Perfect (2002-2006), Miranda on BBC One in the U.K.’s

Miranda (2009-2015).

Televising Body Positivity

As the relatability of body size diversity and body positivity translates into television

programs with critical acclaim and/or high ratings, emergent industry lore adds to and amends

the dominant ideas circulated within media industries. So, in addition to body size diversity

through fat visibility, there are also television programs that are more explicitly, albeit still

intermittently, engaging in body positive storylines. For instance, FOX’s The Mindy Project

(2012- ) receives a significant amount of critical praise, and even though its ratings are now

faltering, three to four million viewers watched per episode its first two seasons and it ranks in

the top ten among women in the “eighteen to thirty-four-year-old women” demographic. In early

episodes of The Mindy Project, Mindy explains, “Do you know how hard it is for a chubby

thirty-one-year-old woman to go on a legit date with a guy who majored in economics at Duke?”

Mindy Kaling, the main character, writer, and creative force behind The Mindy Project later

explains in an interview why she incorporates discussions of weight on the show, “I wanted to

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write a female character who’s strong enough that a man’s criticizing her weight or looks can

sting but not devastate her. Too many women give others too much power over their self-worth”

(Angelo 2014). Sheila Moeschen for The Huffington Post praises Kaling’s body positivity,

arguing:

By refusing to make body criticism a focal point of the show (in terms of plot and character development), Kaling embraces the notion that more women could benefit from spending less time preoccupied with body transformation and more time enjoying and accepting themselves (Moeschen 2013).

Yet some episodes of The Mindy Project demonstrate Mindy’s preoccupation with the

appearance and size of her body. In a second season episode, “Danny C is My Personal Trainer,”

Mindy panics when her boyfriend wants take her on a romantic vacation because it necessitate

her wearing bikini in front of him and he has yet to see her naked (she admits to hiding her body

from all of her sexual partners). To get her body “bikini ready,” Mindy spends a majority of the

episode working out in her office and at a gym. But soon Mindy becomes frustrated with the

personal training style of her co-worker, Danny Castellano, saying to him, “Just because you

have like zero percent body fat and eat only three meals a day and never snack doesn’t mean you

can tell me what’s wrong with my body.” However, after rejecting the body criticism of others,

Mindy herself goes on to list all of her perceived faults, including her “fat knees” and cellulite,

but Danny disagrees, “I know you are self-conscious but you don’t need to be...You are a woman

and that’s good. Look like a woman.” The takeaway message from this episode is clearly one of

body positivity, albeit through external validation rather than international validation. Mindy

struggles with her body image and size acceptance, as many women do, vacillating between

insecurity and confidence.

The television series Girls (2012- ) functions similarly to The Mindy Project. Although

Girls is lucky when it reaches one million viewers per episode, its presence on HBO

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automatically provides it with cultural cache and buzz in the popular press, and as a result, it’s

received numerous industry awards, including an Emmy, Golden Globe, and Writer’s Guild

Award. Hannah, the main character played by Lena Dunham, doesn’t regularly talk about her

body beyond saying in the final episode of season one, “I am thirteen pounds overweight and it

has been awful for me my whole life,” but she frequently puts her non-aesthetically idealized

body on display. Numerous scenes depict Hannah in the nude, including her eating a cupcake in

a bathtub, disrobing before having sex, wearing a see-through mesh tank top during a coke-

fueled night of partying, wearing a green bikini for the duration of an entire episode, and playing

a naked game of ping pong. Hannah fearlessly and nonchalantly exhibits her naked body, and by

doing so she rejects the “rules” of “acceptable” behavior by someone who believes they are

carrying more weight than they should.

Reviews of both The Mindy Project and Girls generally praise Kailing and Dunham for

their body positivity and what they “get right” about body image (Gilbert 2014; Rosen 2013;

Moeschen 2013; “It’s Different for ‘Girls’” 2012), although Girls also receives a significant

amount of criticism. For instance, Joan Rivers criticizes Dunham for her frequent nudity on

Girls, saying, “You are sending a message out to people saying, ‘It’s okay! Stay fat! Get

diabetes. Everybody die! Lose your fingers” (Weber 2014). This kind of reaction is regularly

levied against those who advocate fat acceptance, but it’s less frequently applied to those who

are, according to Dunham’s character Hannah, “thirteen pounds overweight.” Another reviewer

of Girls argues that instead of promoting body positivity, Hannah reinforces stereotypes of

fatness as she eats a lot, specifically referencing her eating a cupcake while soaking in the

bathtub, and “does not seem to care about her appearance.” The reviewer further suggests that

Dunham both uses her body for laughs and as an “extension of all the things wrong with her… as

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a measure of personal failing” (Sonenshein 2014). I disagree that she uses her body for laughs,

not that such a thing would be inherently problematic, and instead interpret Hannah as resisting

and playing with norms of beauty and style rather than being oblivious to them. In fact, the

reviewer’s assumption that Hannah does not care about her appearance or body size relies on

accepting aesthetic idealizations and health norms as the standard from which Hannah deviates,

whether purposefully or obliviously.

Similarly, and predictably, Dunham’s character, Hannah, frequently garners comparison

to Kaling's character, Mindy. For example, another reviewer critiques Hannah for “not giving a

hoot about what others think of her looks,” which she considers to be unrealistic, whereas Mindy

“totally cares how she looks,” which instead offers viewers “a model of a woman who likes to

look good, and wouldn’t mind losing a little weight, but doesn’t base her self-worth on it”

(Strauss 2014). Ultimately, in place of claiming one representation is “better” than the other, we

should be celebrating both kinds of body size diversity. Instead of a “right” way or a “wrong”

way to be body positive, these two series in conjunction with other fat and body positive

programs, depict various fat experiences as well as intrapersonal relationships with the body.

While Hannah is perhaps more radical in her body positivity, particularly in terms of embracing

the size and shape of her body through frequent nudity, Mindy is possibly more relatable to a

wider range of viewers, viewers that are more likely to also idealize thinness, but be against body

shaming. More important, maybe, than which show is more body positive is whether each

show’s messages of body positivity extend to those beyond a women’s clothing size ten. It

remains to be seen how viewers might respond to a three or four hundred pound woman

embracing her nudity on the small screen because it has yet to actually happen.

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Televising Fat Positivity

While Mindy Kaling and Lena Dunham actively contribute to television’s body size

diversity through body positivity, both actresses and their characters are fairly normative in size

considering the fact that neither would be categorized as plus-size per fashion industry standards

and both are unlikely to experience the same kinds or same levels of stigmatization,

discrimination, and social judgment that many fat individuals report experiencing. However,

there are a small number of shows that represent fat, non-idealized bodies without focusing on

weight-loss. Although weight or goals of weight-loss may provide a foundational premise for

some television series, it is rarely a sustained narrative focus of programs, including Super Fun

Night, Huge, Drop Dead Diva, and Mike and Molly. To varying degrees across these programs

weight is non-issue, a “small” issue, or an issue that is discussed in more complex ways beyond

weight-loss. In an interview with Ad Age, a spokesperson for Lifetime refers to Drop Dead Diva

as a “mainstream show that happens to have a plus-size character in the lead role.” Peggy

Howell, the Public Relations Director for NAAFA offers a statement of support for the lead

character, Jane, “Her weight is not an issue. She is not obsessed with dieting. She is living life to

its fullest, as are many fat women and men in this country today.” ABC Family expresses similar

goals in the creation of Huge. The network’s executive vice-president of advertising sales, Laura

Nathanson, describes the show, “Huge... deals with issues that speak to our millennial audience.

Like all of our shows, it deals with topics that are important to young adults, including

friendships, parents, rivalries, as well as issues of body image and self-esteem” (Hampp 2010).

Even Chuck Lorre, the executive producer of CBS’s Mike and Molly, offers a similar description

of the sitcom:

This isn’t a show about weight. It’s a show about people trying to make their lives better and find someone that they can have a committed relationship with. If we’re still talking

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about [weight] come episode six, we’ve got a serious problem, because it would get tired really quickly (Hinckley 2010). Super Fun Night, which features Australian comedian Rebel Wilson, details the lives of

three socially awkward and shy roommates who vow to start leaving their apartment to meet new

people and have more active social lives. Despite considerable buzz due to Wilson’s growing

fame in the U.S. from her roles in Bridesmaids (2011) and Pitch Perfect (2012), as well as Conan

O’Brien being the executive producer of the show, the show’s critical response to the pilot

episode was less than enthusiastic. And the reason for the unenthusiastic response? Too many fat

jokes. Kevin Fallon describes Super Fun Night in a review for The Daily Beast, “... the frequency

of the weight-related punch lines, not to mention the droll way in which Wilson delivers them,

ends up being depressing.” Similarly, Lily Rothman notes in her Super Fun Night review for

Entertainment Weekly, “Wilson has burdened [her character] Kimmie Boubier with constant

tiresome references to her less-than-perfect physique.” The lackluster response to these jokes

also resulted in a lackluster response in terms of audiences numbers, with Super Fun Night

dropping from eight million viewers during its debut to just over two and a half million viewers

during its last episode.

One critically controversial joke depicts Wilson running down the hallway of her office,

warranting a colleague to call out, “Boubier, what’s the rush?” She responds, “Gary just tweeted

that there are jelly donuts in the break room.” This exchange clearly taps into stereotypes

concerning the amount and types of foods that fat individuals eat. However, when the thin

colleague expresses an equal amount of excitement over the donut rumor and rushes out of the

office with her, this scene not only shows that the love for donuts transcends all body types, it

also refuses to shy away from embracing the idea that, regardless of body size or gender, people

can and should be able to enjoy eating whatever they want. Depictions of women eating rich and

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“exciting” foods, such as donuts, have been taboo since the Victorian era (Bordo 1993, 110), and

gendered expectations positioning women as primarily preparers of food and men as consumers

of food continues today. While food marketers target men with Hungry Man Dinners, Powerful

Yogurt, and Snickers Bars (like Mr. T says, “Be a man… get some nuts!”), while women are

encouraged to eat FLING, an eighty-five calorie chocolate bar that lets women “indulge without

feeling guilty,” as well as smile and laugh as they eat low-calorie salad after low-calorie salad

(Zimmerman 2011). A fat woman openly liking donuts or eating food should not be

transgressive or radical, but the female appetite for food is often considered threatening because

it is a cultural metaphor for hunger in regard to sex, desire, and power (Bordo 2003). Decades of

food marketing and dieting industry strategies reinforce this as women are judged for enjoying

anything other than Sugar Free Jell-O, Slim Fast Shakes, or frozen Weight-Watchers meals, or

that enjoyment itself is categorized as “a dirty, shameful secret, to be indulged in only when no

one is looking” (Bordo 1993, 129). Fortunately, Kimmie Boubier isn’t the only woman to love

food on television these days, other women are breaking the food taboo, too, including Sookie,

Rory, and Lorelai on Gilmore Girls, Liz on 30 Rock, Leslie on Parks and Rec, Queenie on

American Horror Story: Coven, Will on Huge, and Hannah on Girls.

Still, there are some off-hand remarks by other characters on Super Fun Night that can be

offensive and may encourage viewers to laugh at Kimmie because of her size instead of the

typical sitcom situations in which she finds herself. For instance, a fellow lawyer tries to explain

how Kimmie may be involved in a secret romance by saying, “You get a big one on the leash,

you wanna keep it on the DL,” implying that anyone dating Kimmie would or should be

embarrassed because of her size. Later, Kendall, Kimmie's nemesis and the show's mean girl

says, “You have the heart of a lion, and the body of a much much larger lion.” However, the

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characters delivering these one-liners are Super Fun Night’s antagonists, characters constructed

specifically as cold-hearted, cruel, and jealous of Kimmie who is smart, funny, caring, and a

good colleague and friend. So, are the “fat jokes” supposed to make us think less of Kimmie’s

body or less of the characters telling the jokes in the first place?

Repeated jokes about Spanx, a brand of body shape wear for women, is another a source

of concern for TV reviewers (Morrissey 2013). An opening scene involves a sight gag in which

an elevator door closes, tearing off Kimmie's dress to reveal her beige Spanx. When Kimmie's

love interest returns to find her in a state of partial undress, she takes a sip of her smoothie and

grins with an expression that simultaneously conveys embarrassment and a kind of endearing,

clumsy coolness. The indecent Spanx exposure and her reaction to the situation seem much more

like the source of humor than the seeing Rebel Wilson’s body, although, presumably, her large

body makes the situation more humorous for some viewers. Another Spanx joke marks Kimmie's

exit from a piano bar later in the night, she says “Well, I’m gonna go now before my boob sweat

seeps into my Spanx.” And finally, a montage at the end of the episode depicts Kimmie dancing

around her apartment, straining to get her Spanx on (a dance I’ve personally witnessed many of

my girlfriends do). Again, this could be read less as pointing out the incompatibility of her fat

body and Spanx, and more as exposing the futility and silliness of anyone wearing Spanx in the

first place. Aren't all our bodies sweaty, less-than-perfect and often sources of both

embarrassment and humor? Ultimately, there are elements of the show where it is clear that

Rebel Wilson is making light of her size and showing that fatness itself isn't always as serious as

discourses of public health or medicalization frame fatness to be. Kimmie generally seems to

accept her body and embrace fat positivity, and like Drop Dead Diva, Mike and Molly, Huge,

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and other series featuring fat lead characters; bodies themselves become less of a comedic focal

point, topic of concern for characters, or sources of narrative advancement.

While it’s refreshing to see critics being sensitive to whether fat jokes reinforce

stereotypes or perpetuate fat stigma, especially considering the long tradition of the female fat

body as a site of comedy (Hole 2003) or as “America’s favorite celluloid punchline” (Meltzer

2002), does this sensitivity neglect the ways in which Rebel Wilson may be undermining the

alleged essential funniness of fat bodies? Furthermore, why is this sensitivity to the physical

humor of Wilson on Super Fun Night not also expressed toward fat men using their bodies for

humor like Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Chris Farley, John Candy, John Belushi, Cedric the

Entertainer, Gabriel Iglesias, and Kenan Thompson are all famous for doing? Anne Hole (2003,

321) argues that comedy as a cultural form long silenced fat female comics, but now they are

becoming more prominent and playing with bodily disruption and unruliness. Angela Stukator

similarly claims that the positioning of fat women as comic spectacles by others ridicules their

“aberrant bodies” and reinforces their marginalized statuses in society (2001, 199), but also

believes there is radical social and political potential in unruly fat women positioning themselves

as spectacles (2001, 204). Because the fat female body is an excessive sign in the sense that it

signifies a surplus of contradictory meanings that cannot be easily restricted to the category of

“woman,” fat women are freer to “play” with gender and identity, “and nowhere is this ‘play’

more at home, and more powerful, than in a comedy of politically aware fat female performers

(Hole 2003, 318 and 327). And this is why Lesley Kinzel (2013), an editor for XOJane, actually

encourages Wilson, and others, to tell more fat jokes instead of less fat jokes:

Wilson’s self-directed fat jokes are brutally self-conscious, but not strictly in the sense of betraying the expected insecurity -- they are self-conscious of the fact that it is virtually impossible for Wilson to exist in Hollywood without her weight being a constant focus. This is a reality for a lot of women, and making fat jokes verboten is hardly a solution --

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Wilson’s jokes can, in their own way, confront the often contradictory pressures she faces to not make her body such an overwhelming focus, while seeing her body made into the overwhelming focus by everyone else… So rather than demand Wilson quit it with the fat jokes, I want to see her take them further, to stretch the stereotypes she’s reproducing and mocking to their very limit, to see if they will break. Of course, as Kathleen LeBesco argues, there is always the possibility that “critical

consciousness… finds itself sacrificed for cheap laughs at the expense of fat people” (2005, 237).

And it’s also possible that Wilson’s physical humor fosters such receptive sensitivity due to body

and fat positivity becoming more mainstream, and thus generating greater awareness of the ways

in which we talk and think about fat bodies. Conversely, it’s also been argued that Wilson’s fat

jokes are “necessary” to ward of critics who would otherwise say that she is “glorifying” an

“unhealthy” body in the middle of an obesity epidemic where public health and medical

discourses of the body remain dominant (Yah 2009). Super Fun Night and Rebel Wilson’s

comedic style reveal the double-bind inherent in fat representation. If characters like Kimmie

talk about fatness or joke about fatness, they are critiqued for focusing too much on the size of

their bodies and for not being fat characters instead of characters who are fat. But if they are read

as fat and do not at least initially acknowledge their fatness, particularly in terms of weight-loss,

then they may be accused of “glorifying” obesity. Therefore, Wilson can neither talk about

fatness nor fail to talk about fatness. Regardless, Wilson defends her style of comedy, saying,

“As long as I look like this I’m going to make fat jokes. All comedians have to use their

physicality, so I use my size” (Lewis 2013).

Like Super Fun Night, Drop Dead Diva features a fat woman as a successful lawyer. The

show debuted in 2009 to almost three million viewers, one of the channel’s largest audiences for

an original scripted series in several years (Yah 2009), and continued as one of Lifetime’s most

successful shows for six seasons. Weight is discussed across a greater number of each series’

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episodes, but typically in terms of self-acceptance and fat positivity as opposed to weight-loss. In

fact, Lifetime’s Drop Dead Diva features a fat main character, Jane, who is professionally and

romantically successful, incredibly smart, kind, and uninterested in dieting. Jane is represented as

enjoying her life in contrast to narratives found on other fat television texts that position fat

embodiment as an obstacle to be overcome in order to be happy. For example, on other

programs, losing weight is connected to promises of self-betterment, whether it’s becoming a

better father (The Biggest Loser), finding a girlfriend (I Used to Be Fat), overcoming addiction

(Heavy), becoming pregnant (The Biggest Loser), having sex for the first time (Heavy), winning

a romantic partner back (Ruby), or living “happily ever after” (Shedding for the Wedding).

Instead, Drop Dead Diva is an example of a fat female character that is “comfortable in her own

skin” and “unimpeded by not embodying the physically ideal” (Hampp 2010). A TV critic at The

Washington Post refers to the show as “a refreshing antidote to TV’s recent obsession with

overweight-themed shows… instead of pandering to stereotypes, thereby humiliating real people

on national television, ‘Diva’ promotes poignant lessons about body image and society’s

definition of acceptable beauty” (Yah 2009).

While the show has many fat positive moments throughout numerous episodes, the

premise of the show is perhaps a bit more problematic. The premise: a heavenly mix-up results

in Deb, who is a thin, twenty-something, and blonde model returning to earth as Jane, a fat,

thirty-something lawyer with an affinity for cats and needlepoint. While Jane was always a

confident person, she becomes even more so when Deb begins inhabiting her body. Deb updates

Jane’s wardrobe, starts wearing makeup, and does a conditioning treatment on her hair. While

this series as a whole relays body and fat positive messages about beauty coming in many shapes

and sizes, and it encourages us all to be less judgmental of body size, it nevertheless reinforces,

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at least inadvertently, the idea that there is a thin person trapper inside each fat body. In the case

of Drop Dead Diva, thin Deb is literally trapped inside fat Jane. But the difference between Deb

being trapped in Drop Dead Diva and those individuals who feel trapped inside their own fat

bodies on The Biggest Loser is that Deb as Jane is ultimately accepts instead of rejects her body,

and does not work toward her past thin ideal. Brooke Elliott, who plays Deb/Jane explains:

We’re conditioned to believe that beauty comes in one specific package, but this project is dispelling that myth, saying that beauty is everywhere, in every body type, in every type of person. I was really drawn to this project because of that message and the way it’s dealt with in such a fun, but also emotional, way. The most important thing is that we get across to people that you don’t have to be a size zero to have worth, to like yourself, or to love your body. As Deb tries to find that, as she tries to accept this new body she’s in, that’s what keeps me going (Kinon 2009).

While some of Deb’s appearance-focused attitude carries over to her as Jane in regard to

the way she presents her body, Deb does not continue her strict dieting or follow her “no eating

after seven p.m.” rule as Jane, instead eating enjoyable foods without guilt. In this way, Drop

Dead Diva actively counters the messages circulated by The Biggest Loser and other weight-loss

programs, which reinforce the idea that weight-loss is about willpower, diet, and exercise. When

Deb/Jane’s friend Stacy asks Jane why she is not losing weight, considering Deb’s previous

ability to maintain a low weight, Deb/Jane explains to Stacy that while Deb craved grapefruit and

celery, Jane’s body craves chocolate donuts and sandwiches. Likewise, to maintain her model

physique, Deb worked out multiple hours a day, obsessing over every detail of her body, but Deb

as Jane discovers that she doesn’t have the energy or inclination to exercise after pulling all-

nighters to prepare pro-bono cases at her law firm. According to Josh Berman, the creator of

Drop Dead Diva, these character and narrative decisions explicitly comment on weight in

relation to diet and beauty, explaining, “I don’t believe it’s about willpower. If it were, then the

assumption would be that if we all wanted to be a size zero, we could be a size zero. Everyone

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has different needs and desires. If someone finds a doughnut to be comforting, who are we to

judge them” (Parker-Pope 2009).

Drop Dead Diva even engages directly with many issues taken up by body positive and

fat acceptance activists; and when doing so, the series focuses less on Jane’s body and more on

the way thin idealizations and fat stigma affect people more broadly. For instance, one of Jane’s

clients, Lucy, sues for wrongful termination as she believes she was fired for gaining weight. As

the legal narrative unfolds, the series references different sides of the debate over whether fatness

should be considered a disability. A few episodes later, Jane takes on the dieting industry for

selling “speed disguised as nutritional supplements” to young girls. In another episode, Jane sues

a clothing retailer after being poorly treated by a sales associate in a store that does not carry

women’s plus-size clothing. The associate tells Jane that the dress she is admires is intended for

a “different silhouette,” encouraging her to instead find something “flowy” at another store for

“people like her.” By episode’s end, Jane settles the lawsuit by convincing the store’s majority

shareholder that it would be financially advantageous to carry plus-size clothes considering the

large market of women underserved by the fashion industry and in need of clothing options.

Like Drop Dead Diva, ABC Family’s Huge focuses on body image in relation to self-

esteem by promoting body and fat positivity. Although the show only lasted one season,

averaging one and half million viewers per episode, the importance of its body politics

outweighs its limited viewer reach. Huge stars Nikki Blonsky as Will, a teenager who is happy

with her fat body, but is forced to attend a weight-loss camp, Camp Victory, by her parents.

When Will is first weighed-in she tells the camp’s director, “I know I’m supposed to hate myself,

but I don’t. I’m okay with the size I am.” She echoes a similar sentiment later in the first episode,

“Sorry, I’m down with my fat. Me and my fat are like bff. Everyone wants us to hate our bodies

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and I refuse to.” The camp counselor responds by saying, “No one here wants you to hate

yourself. We are here for your health.” To which Will replies, “Why should I change? Just

because my parents are ashamed of how I look?... I just think everything you stand for is crap, no

offense.” Will’s resistance to weight-loss continues throughout the series. For example, when

other campers post magazine photos for “thinspiration,” Will posts photos of fat women from the

sixteenth century for “fatspiration” and tells everyone that her goal is to gain weight at a camp

designed for weight-loss. To that end, Will even starts an underground “junk” food trade in

protest of being forced to attend Camp Victory.

Of course other campers do desire to lose weight, and others still are coded to have

disordered eating patterns, but this diversity of fat experiences is precisely what makes Huge and

its reflections of fat acceptance discourses so different from television texts articulated to public

health and medicalized discourses. Not all of the campers feel the same way about being fat and

not all of them experience their fatness identically. And like Super Fun Night, Drop Dead Diva,

and Mike and Molly, the focus on the fat body diminishes as Huge progresses, shifting the

narrative focus to typical teenage experiences and concerns like sexuality, body odor, cross-

dressing, difficult parents, friendships, lost journals, and missing home. Even though shows like

The Biggest Loser and My 600 Pound Life do not solely focus on the body either, as

interpersonal drama is just as important as intrapersonal drama for creating narrative interest and

tension, Huge allows for fat individuals to be well-rounded human subjects who are fat, but who

are not entirely defined by or motivated by being fat.

TV critics also discuss Huge and The Biggest Loser dichotomously in terms of body

messages. Gina Belafonte writes in her 2010 review, “Can Girls Be Overweight and Not

Overwrought?” for The New York Times:

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In this [Huge] view fat is a form of social protest, an outcry against the manipulations of a diet-industrial complex. Fringe movements don’t often find an arm in the form of hour long dramatic television, but Huge… stand sin some sympathy with a rebellion mounted against so many hours of The Biggest Loser.”

Another review in Newsweek describes the show as a “heaping helping of ‘love your body’

instead of fatsploitation,” adding, “In an era of Hollywood plastic, Heidi Montag, and The

Biggest Loser, Huge and its curvy stars are immediately refreshing…” (Bennett 2010). In fact,

according to Savannah Dooley, one of the creators of Huge, while writing the show she was

reading fat acceptance blogs, which inspired her to have Will embrace the word fat instead over

overweight in order to signify her resistance to normative body discourses that reinforce that

there is one standardized, medically prescribed, and aesthetically ideal weight to be (Keveney

2010).

Although Huge generally embraces discourses of fat positivity, as well as aspects of

health at every size, weight-loss is still positioned as important for good health. To that end,

ABC Family simultaneously launched a campaign “Live Huge,” which features recipes created

by Jamie Oliver (of ABC’s Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution) and offers teens advice on how to

live healthy lifestyles and improve their self-esteems. Discussing the show and “Live Huge”

campaign, ABC Family executive vice president, Kate Juergens, explains that while the show is

ultimately about self-acceptance, it’s also about “coming to terms with taking care of yourself.

You want to be the healthiest version of yourself possible, mentally, emotionally, and

physically” (Keveney 2010). Implicit is this statement, and the weight-loss camp backdrop of

Huge, is that weight-loss is still tied to being the “healthiest version of yourself,” but within the

diegetic world of Huge, weight-loss and loving yourself are not mutually exclusive like they are

across reality weight-loss programs and medicalized texts. These conflicting sentiments,

encouraging fat positivity and weight-loss, are not uncommon across body and fat positive texts

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because of the salience of obesity epidemic rhetoric. Thus, instead of overtly rejecting popularly

articulated discourses of public health weight-loss and medical treatment, which would likely be

met with accusations of irresponsibility considering high rates of childhood obesity, in particular,

Huge frames fat positivity and weight-loss as co-present and compatible goals instead of

oppositional, balancing both the physical health of children in accordance with dominant

discourses of the obesity epidemic with the mental and emotional health of body positivity in

accordance with fat acceptance discourses.

Even though many of the texts discussed so far are short-lived, reach a small audience, or

both, another fat television text, Mike and Molly, is proving to have both a broad appeal and

longevity. Mike and Molly features two fat characters that meet at an overeaters anonymous

meeting and begin dating. Mike, played by Billy Gardell, is a police officer that lives by himself

in a small apartment and Molly, played by Melissa McCarthy, is a teacher who lives with her

mother, Joyce, and sister, Victoria. After the pilot episode debuted critics gave the show

mediocre reviews because of its reliance on fat jokes, much like the response to Super Fun Night.

For instance, at the diner frequented by Mike and his police partner, Carl, the waiter refers to

Mike as a “large man” and “big and bountiful.” Carl also quips that he would shoot Mike if it

weren’t for not having enough chalk to outline Mike’s large corpse. Later Carl hugs Mike while

commenting, “It’s like hugging a futon.” Similarly, the pilot depicts Molly exercising on an

elliptical machine while her mother eats a giant piece of chocolate cake and relaxes on the couch.

After discussing Molly’s lack of love life, her mother implores Molly’s sister, “Why don’t you

take her to one of those lesbo clubs? They seem to like the beefy gals!” These types jokes of fill

the first few episodes, with both Mike and Molly making jokes at their own expense as well as

their family members and friends commenting about their body sizes.

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A critic for ABC News worried about the fat jokes being offensive (Carr 2010), as did

reviewers from The Atlantic (Fallon 2010) and The Huffington Post (Keller 2010). The

predominance of fat jokes throughout the first few episodes of Mike and Molly even inspired

Movieline to start a “Fat Joke Tracker” for the series, noting that in a single episode both Mike

and Molly’s bodies are compared to a UPS truck, the cartoon character Shrek, an elephant, and

an IMAX screen (Miller 2010). Across each review of Mike and Molly there is almost a

surprising amount of sensitivity concerning stereotypes of fat embodiment, not unlike Super Fun

Night, and the potential harm of humor derived primarily from fatness given the prevalence of

fat stigmatization and discrimination throughout society at large.

However, as Mike and Molly progresses, fat jokes are less frequent and both Mike and

Molly develop as characters who happen to be fat as opposed to fat-focused characters, or in

other words, fatness is less important to their overall identities, character developments, and

interpersonal relationships. In fact, Mike and Molly actually goes a long way toward resisting and

challenging fat stereotypes, namely that fat individuals are lazy, stupid, or ugly (Giovanelli and

Ostertag 2009), and its body politics exist in clear contrast to the depictions of fat self-loathing

common across The Biggest Loser and other weight-loss programs. Furthermore, and contrary to

public health and medicalized discourses, neither Mike nor Molly are waiting to “start” their

lives, fall in love, or achieve their goals until after they lose weight. As Mike, Molly, and all of

the secondary characters develop throughout the series, Mike and Molly are portrayed as the

most identifiable, “normal,” successful, and rational, while Mike and Molly’s families and

friends are one-dimensional caricatures rather than relatable, well-rounded characters. Molly is

sweet, caring, intelligent, and funny and Mike is kind, hardworking, and humorous. On the other

hand, Molly’s thin and conventionally beautiful sister, Victoria, is unintelligent, unlucky in love

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with the married men she sees, a frequent drug user, and a beautician at a funeral home. Molly’s

mother, Joyce, is obsessed with staying youthful, has a quick temper, and drinks alcohol to

excess. Mike’s mother, Margaret or “Peggy,” is cruel, demanding, and her only companion

appears to be her dog.

Even though most episodes beyond the first few deal minimally with weight or fatness,

the few that do are less stereotypical and more thoughtful explorations into the experiences of

being fat. At one Overeaters Anonymous meeting during an episode in the second season, “Mike

Cheats,” Mike is worried because he has been “cheating” on his diet and is not losing

weight. There are, of course, a few fat jokes, including Carl telling Mike to jump in the clothes

dryer with his shirt so he shrinks, and Mike saying to Carl about Molly, “she lost three pounds

last week and all I lost is a Nutter Butter in the shower.” Yet the narrative arc of the episode is

one that is familiar to many who do attempt to lose weight. Mike eventually opens up to Molly

about his food difficulties, explaining to her that their relationship made him so happy that he let

his guard down around food, which lead to Mike eating more, feeling guilty about eating more,

and then eating out of guilt causing him to gain weight instead of lose weight. Molly shows

compassion and understanding as Mike shares this all-too-common experience, and they decide

to go to an Overeaters Anonymous meeting, leaving Molly’s home together, hand-in-hand. The

episodes concludes with a more serious tone than the show often does; Mike stands in front of

the support group and says, “My name is Mike and I’m an overeater…” as the scene fades to

black. While this episode may reinforce the idea that fat individuals are fat because they overeat

or that all fat individuals have difficulty restraining themselves around food, the experience

likely rings true for some individuals who do believe they overeat or have addictive relationships

with food. In this sense, the show cannot be faulted for not being representative of the “fat

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experience” as there is no singular “fat experience,” but instead various experiences and

individualized feelings and relationships with one’s own fat body.

Another episode in the second season, “The Dress,” tells the story of Molly trying to lose

six pounds in order to fit into her wedding dress just before her wedding to Mike. To shed some

weight, Molly shifts her diet into “overdrive” and basically begins starving herself (despite her

sister recommending the “weight-loss miracle known as horse laxatives”). Like the episodes of

Roseanne and Glee that depict both Roseanne and Mercedes being driven insane by their

restrictive diets, Molly also goes a little crazy and becomes short-tempered with everyone around

her. At a spin class she runs into an old friend previously who advises: “if you starve yourself

you just gain more weight.” Upset by the advice, Molly heads to her car while maniacally and

angrily mumbling to herself “Smug. Tiny Ass. One Chin.” She begins frantically searching for

candy in Mike’s car and upon finding some hidden in the glove compartment she immediately

puts it in her mouth only to spit it out a moment later, saying out loud to herself, “Thought you

had me this time, you fun size son of a bitch.” Mike then joins Molly in the parking lot and they

discuss Molly’s erratic behavior and mood swings while dieting, or rather, not eating. Mike

reassures Molly that she already looks beautiful, saying, “You don’t have to squeeze into some

wedding dress to look perfect to me.” In this episode, then, Molly’s fat body is not the

“problem,” the problem is the pressure that Molly feels to look beautiful, and thus small, on her

wedding day, and the pressure to make her body fit into a garment rather than make a garment

that fits her body.

The critical response to Mike and Molly is now more positive, likely a result in the

reduction of fat jokes. For example, one critic says, “Mike and Molly is a mushy and human

exploration of the struggle to find pleasure away from the bakery aisle, and the fight fat people

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wage against objectification” (Bellafante 2010). Similarly, David Hickley, a critic for New York

Daily News, praised the show in his 2010 article, “Lots to gain in ‘Mike and Molly,’” writing:

The most promising thing about “Mike and Molly,” in the bigger picture, is that they both like themselves. They’d prefer to be thinner, but their size isn’t making them sit out of the dance. They’re funny and engaging, and in the end, the size of their waists matters far les than the size of their hearts.

Melissa McCarthy echoes a similar sentiment in regard to the show not focusing on weight,

further explaining why she loved the concept after reading the script:

I thought it had such lovely relationships, not just Billy at the beginning, but also my character’s family, as crazy as it is. I love that this show doesn’t have any snarky quality to it, but is still funny and lovely. If we lose weight, if we gain weight- that’s just not the axis the show revolves around (Strachan 2011).

In regard to any lingering fat jokes on the show, Chuck Lorre offers his usual defense

against potentially offensive comedy, which is basically one of comedic pluralism that does not

take into account differences in power or status, saying, “There are fat jokes, but there are also

booze jokes and tramp jokes. It’s a show that spoofs all sorts of stereotypes. Nobody’s sacred.”

Although Lorre emphasizes that the tone Mike and Molly uses in regard to all of its jokes, but

particularly fat jokes, is important, adding, “The truth without love is abuse,” and that Mike and

Molly “is coming from a caring place, not a hurtful place” (Oldenburg 2011).

While a majority of body positive and fat positive programs are scripted, there are several

reality programs that engage with fat positivity and fat acceptance. For instance, FOX’s short-

lived More to Love is a dating show featuring fat women that marketed itself as a “progressive

portrayal of real women,” but yet it still reifies fatness as a problem or source of anguish for

most of the show’s participants (Graves and Kwan 2012, 50-53) Two other examples include

Ruby on the Style Network and Chelsea Settles (2011- ) on MTV. Both programs represent fat

women who desire and actively work toward losing weight, but like Super Fun Night, Drop

Dead Diva, Huge, and Mike and Molly, each show ultimately focuses more on the other aspects

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of these women’s lives, including their romantic relationships, friendships, and careers. While

these two programs do reinforce weight-loss as necessary and desirable, they simultaneously

counter fat stereotypes in the sense that both of these women are physically active, generally

happy and confident, and working toward achieving a variety of goals as opposed to putting life

“on hold” until after they lose weight like participants do on programs circulating public health

discourses, such as The Biggest Loser, Heavy, and I Used to Be Fat, or medicalized discourses,

such as My 600 Pound Life and Brookhaven Obesity Clinic.

Moreover, Big Sexy (2011- ) and Curvy Girls (2011- ) are perhaps the most fat positive

reality television programs. Both TV series feature “plus-size” women working in the fashion

industry as models, designers, or makeup artists. Both Big Sexy and Curvy Girls also resist many

fat stereotypes and binary assumptions about thin women versus fat women, portraying a wide

array of fat body shapes and sizes. All of the women on both series are beautifully and

fashionably styled, professionally successful, lead active social lives, and exude confidence not

just despite the fact that they are fat, but also because they profess to love their fat bodies. The

women of Big Sexy, in particular, engage in several activities that defy the idea that life begins

post-weight-loss, including hosting a plus-size bikini fashion show, pole dancing for aerobic

exercise and vajazzling. In fact, one Big Sexy character, Leslie Medlik, a fashion stylist, even

addresses this during the show’s introduction, saying, “If you think I’m going to sit in my room

and hide cause I’m not a size 2, you’re crazy!”

Both series mostly avoid discussing fatness in relation to health, and rarely do any of the

characters talk about weight-loss (except for Rosie in the second season of Curvy Girls), instead

they work out and eat in order to maintain their current weights, weights which would classify

them as obese according to the Body Mass Index. Executive producers of both Curvy Girls and

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Big Sexy say they actively avoid conversations about health and weight-loss in order to explicitly

offer alternative television. Bruce David Klein, the executive producer of Big Sexy, explains:

It was very purposeful. This was always about women who were comfortable with their size. Of course we explored the consequences of their size in a range of scenes-- but weight loss was never part of the conversation-- too many other shows deal in that space and we wanted to show another side (Interview 2013).

The consequences Klein is referring to include not getting modeling jobs as an “in-betweener” or

scenes where the women are in public and strangers are hostile, gawk at them, or comment on

their bodies. In this sense, Big Sexy and Curvy Girls embrace fat acceptance and explore various

fat experiences, showing that many of the difficulties of being fat are not from the fat itself, but

rather from the interpersonal relationships and interactions that are influenced by particular

cultural and social contexts as well as public health and medical discourses.

Tiffany Banks, who is one of the models featured on Big Sexy, speaks openly about the

body positive and fat positive goals of the program within the context of the obesity epidemic:

We were trying to make plus-size women visible in a positive light, which I think we accomplished. We made sure we showed that we all have active lifestyles and that we are focused on being healthy, both physically and mentally. We worked out, did fun physical activities like pole dancing class and boxing, and were active. Had we had more time on air we would have gotten more in depth but I made sure when signing on that we emphasized that being plus size doesn't necessarily mean that you are unhealthy (Interview 2013).

Both Big Sexy and Curvy Girls can perhaps be considered the antithesis of The Biggest Loser or

My 600 Pound Life in terms of both the way fatness itself is framed (something to celebrate

versus something to abhor) and the way fat individuals are generally represented (happy in the

skin they’re in versus a thin person trapped in a fat body). These overt differences in the way

television represents fatness and fat experiences, namely that Big Sexy and Curvy Girls portray

an alternative to fat hate and fat stigmatization still rare on television and other mainstream

information and entertainment outlets, likely explaining the short-lived nature of both programs.

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Big Sexy only lasted three episodes despite creating tremendous buzz for TLC on fat acceptance

forums. Curvy Girls lasted a bit longer, making it two short seasons, but on NuvoTV, which is a

small cable channel marketed toward bicultural Latinos living in the United States. But less

important than audience scope or program longevity is the fact that shows with overt body

positive and fat positive messages created for television demonstrates the increasing social

acceptability of different fat narratives, not unlike the body positive marketing campaigns of

Dove and Nike, which consequently contribute to emerging industry lore.

What About Policy?

Currently, discussions of body and fat positivity reflecting discourses of fat acceptance

and health at every size are not present in regulatory debates about communication or health.

These ideas may yet be too outside of mainstream health and medical thought to fit within the

current discursive rules and frameworks used by regulatory bodies. Thomas Streeter (1996, 115-

117) argues that discursive rules within regulatory interpretative communities determines what

sense is made of particular ideas or whether particular ideas are brought up at all. Streeter

contends that regulatory bodies, like all interpretive communities, develop their own shared

understandings and assumptions, which can limit the scope of policy debates while still allowing

for slow change (or for shifting “insider knowledge,” per Streeter) over time in response to

particular technological, industrial, and social contexts. So, whereas chapters two and three

demonstrate the impact of communication policies on industry practices and representations, and

chapter four looks at health policies and organizations in relation to medicalized bodies, the fat

acceptance discourses and emerging industry lore discussed in this chapter are, perhaps, only

beginning to open a discursive space for health regulators, specifically, to consider Health at

Every Size or notions of fat acceptance in obesity epidemic debates. But as body and fat

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positivity become more prevalent and public health interventions and medical treatments

continue failing to actually reduce rates of fatness, while simultaneously promoting fat

stigmatization, it’s likely that HAES and aspects of fat acceptance will be welcomed in policy

spheres in the future. For instance, the National Institutes of Health held a panel on obesity in

1992, and while Health at Every Size was not specifically mentioned (as it was not yet

developed), the panel’s recommendation aligns with its approach, advising: “A focus on

approaches that produce health benefits independently of weight loss may be the best way to

improve the physical and psychological health of Americans seeking to lose weight.”

Conclusion

None of the texts discussed in this chapter are politically or socially perfect, and what that

even means is both questionable, and ultimately, impossible. I am less interested in what each of

these texts do that are “good” or “bad,” opting instead for a reparative reading of superficially

problematic texts. Instead of random sitcom episodes about characters dieting or flashbacks to

when a character used to be fat, there are now sustained representations and discussions of a

wider variety of bodies across television. Critiques over the yet limited range of fat bodies is

perhaps fair, but as more fat bodies are featured on the small screen the representative burden

that each reality TV participant or sitcom character carries will undoubtedly lessen.

The fat acceptance discourses taken up in these television texts play with and resist how

fat people are both individualized and massified according to public health and medical

institutions and experts. A primary aspect of both fat acceptance and body size diversity is to

resist the ways in which fatness is used to categorize people into populations in need of

monitoring and intervention or treatment. By focusing less on the medical and health aspects of

the body, body and fat positive TV programs assert fat individuals as actual people. The reality

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participants and characters across theses series may or may not be considered healthy, but they

are considered people who have partners, jobs, families, and issues of concern outside the size of

their bodies. These representations and narratives, then, challenge fat stereotypes and fat phobia

throughout the U.S by contributing to the visual diversity of bodies and multiplicity of fat

experiences on the small screen. Additionally, these programs also resist the individualizing

aspects of public health and medical discourses of fatness. Instead of reinforcing the notions that

fat individuals lack self-discipline or self-control to lose weight, or that fat individuals are lazy

and unhappy with their bodies, these TV programs represent different kinds of fat attitudes, ones

more likely to encourage of positivity, acceptance, and self-love.

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Final Thoughts

As this project hopefully demonstrates, fat television exists in multiple forms and offers

multiple messages about the body, both within the series themselves and across them. Some

series focus on weight-loss, others on the medicalization of fat bodies in relation to disease,

social disability, and physical impairment, and others still on encouraging body and fat positivity

in reflection of fat acceptance discourses. Each set of texts is articulated to particular discourses

of the body, and those discourses of the body are circulated, legitimized, and negotiated by

various regulatory bodies and organizations, from the FCC to the AMA and WHO. These

discourses of the body, which are always already terrains of struggle, are taken up by and further

destabilized and debated across television texts. Thus, while television reinforces dominant

discourses serving dominant social and political interest in the context of neoliberalism and the

obesity epidemic, it still negotiates and sometimes undermines those very discourses and

operates as a site of multidiscursivity.

Furthermore, television as a medium can be thought of in a variety of ways, all of which

are important to this project, including as a surveillance appendage that governs, disciplines, and

controls at a distance, as way to generate capital for corporations, as working in service of the

public interest, as a vehicle for medicalization, as a hegemonic process with instances of

resistance, and as an asynchronous cultural forum that weaves together various ways of thinking

about fatness, health, and the body. All of these competing and co-present understandings of

television must be taken into consideration as we theorize power, discipline, and control, yet

reality television scholarship, specifically, fails to account for many of these important aspects of

the medium. Yes, television may work to govern at a distance and discipline those on screen as

well as those at home, but it also exposes its own inability to effectively govern, discipline, and

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transform citizens at a distance because it is, fundamentally, a polysemic and multidiscursive

medium that is influenced by the various politics and interests of program creators, by both

dominant and emerging industry lore, by medical, public health, and body activist

understandings of the fat body, and by regulators as well as governmental and non-governmental

organizations. Even as television changes through channel proliferation, content migration, and

distribution flexibility, or as society itself shifts, splinters or unites, the texts we encounter are

still complex, contingent, and articulated to various terrains of struggle and competing interests.

For example, discourses across these different fat television texts are also now colliding

and interacting in interesting ways. Jillian Michaels, who is best known as a weight-loss trainer

on The Biggest Loser, recently defended Mike and Molly’s Melissa McCarthy on an episode of

Entertainment Tonight after a film critic, Rex Reed, called her “tractor-sized” and a “female

hippo.” Michaels labeled Reed’s comments “cruel” and “evil,” saying that they are not only

hurtful to “plus-size” women, but they also lead to discrimination against large people. It’s

somewhat ironic for Michaels to talk about cruelty as she is known for constantly berating

participants on The Biggest Loser and supporting a commercial entity that arguably accomplishes

little more than reinforcing fat stigmatization. But Michaels’ final words on the ET segment,

specifically that she is more concerned about health than weight, are reminiscent of fat

acceptance discourses more so than current public health and medical discourses within the

obesity epidemic. Thus, one of the U.S.’s biggest, most well-known advocates for weight-loss is

now deemphasizing the numbers on a scale, which will arguably mitigate her notoriety for

saying similarly hurtful comments to dozens of contestants over the years on The Biggest Loser.

This overlap is also present across each of these chapters despite their discursive

categorizations. Although narratives and representations on Mike and Molly reinforce the

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desirability of weight-loss in accordance with public health discourses, both characters refuse to

let their fatness prevent them from living, which is far more body and fat positive that reality

weight-loss shows. Mike and Molly both have good careers, loving relationships, and set out to

achieve their goals, evidenced by Molly deciding to apply to the prestigious Iowa Writer’s

Workshop in the show’s fourth season. The television series Ruby (2008-2012), which aired for

multiple seasons on the Style network, also represents this discursive convergence as well. After

experiencing physical impairment and social disability at her highest weight of seven hundred

and fifteen pounds, Ruby seeks medical treatment, specifically psychiatry, and loses about four

hundred pounds through controlled eating via a surveilling nursing staff. Following the weight

loss, Ruby then diets and increases her physical activity under the supervision of nutritionists and

trainers. These common practices recommended by medical and public health experts, practices

that reinforce notions of self-discipline or self-control as well as medical treatment, balance

individualism and social welfare interventions in a similar manner to the television series

discussed in chapter three. But through her public health-inspired and medicalized weight-loss

journey, Ruby travels, has romantic partners, bonds with her friends and family, and generally

has a positive outlook on life and a self-accepting attitude about her body. Ruby thus weaves

public health, medicalized, and fat acceptance discourses of the body, demonstrating them all to

be relevant and important to her lived experience as a fat woman. I bring up theses examples to

emphasize the fact that none of these TV series exist in isolation from each other, and while

particular discourses more strongly influence particular sets of texts, creating an asynchronous

cultural forum rather than just a surveillance appendage that disciplines and controls, they are

also articulated to each other through their fat visibilities. These texts, then, are always

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understood in relation to both other TV texts and the social, industrial, regulatory, and medical

contexts from which they both emerge from and influence

In consideration of these overlaps and articulations, one important direction for future

research is to examine whether those who watch The Biggest Loser also watch Curvy Girls. Are

viewers of these programs fat TV omnivores, like myself, or do they primarily watch one type of

fat television or certain channels that exhibit a particular kind of fat programming? In other

words, are viewers being exposed to all of these discourses of the fat body, beyond their inherent

overlaps, or are they choosing the programs that most closely align with their own body politics?

Another direction for future research is to more fully explore the production context through

interviews. What are the goals or motivations behind particular narrative and representational

choices? Did producers of Curvy Girls, Big Sexy, or Huge receive pushback from their channel

or network executives? What types of representational compromises were made, if any?

Interviews of program creators, as well as regulators and advertisers, could more fully elucidate

how various fat discourses traverse, clash, and co-exist throughout the circuit of culture.

Secondly, theories of intersectionality need to be considered more thoroughly in order to

understand how fatness is both experienced by different people in different locations, and how it

is socially read on different bodies. Elizabeth Spelman (1988, 114) argues that feminist research

that focuses on gender in isolation obfuscates the ways race, class, gender, and in this case

fatness and even age, all affect one another and are understood and experienced in connection.

For example, fat Black bodies are often socially positioned and read in different ways than fat

white bodies. Fat children and fat bodies in different cultural and national contexts may be

positioned and read quite differently as well. For example, Arabs in the Azawagh region of Niger

view extreme, often physically impairing fatness as the epitome of beauty (Popenoe 2004).

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Additionally, gay men arguably experience fatness differently than straight men, considering

reports of intensified pressures to achieve the idealized, buff physicality among gay men. This

bodily pressure then makes Cam and Mitchell’s bodily diverse relationship on Modern Family a

potential site to explore the intersectionality of fatness, sexuality, and the “tyranny of buffness”

(Ambrosino 2013) within gay communities on television.

We may also inscribe different attributes and characteristics to fat middle or upper class

bodies in comparison to lower class bodies. Governor Chris Christie, Oprah, and other political

leaders, celebrities, and members of the wealthy elite who publically struggle with fatness, both

experience fatness differently and have their fatness interpreted differently due to their economic

and social statuses. Do wealthy fat individuals complicate common assumptions connecting

fatness and class to the eating of processed, low quality foods or the watching of television as a

cause of the obesity epidemic? Do wealthy fat individuals complicate the “common sense”

solutions of diet, exercise, and surgical interventions being successful for weight-loss

considering the fact that these individuals can pay for high quality food, physical trainers, and

surgery, yet they continue to embody fatness? Is it possible that fat individuals who are wealthy

somehow simultaneously receive more and less judgment because of their class status? In other

words, despite limitless resources, they may be especially viewed as, allegedly, lacking the self-

discipline or self-control “necessary” to lose weight, yet their fatness may be blamed less on

typical fat stereotypes like laziness or stupidity given their other financial and social “success,”

or status as otherwise good neoliberal subjects. Just for these reasons alone, we need to consider

the way multiple identity categories and contexts work together to constitute understandings and

experiences, including oppressions and celebrations, of fat bodies.

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In the future, I also want to more closely examine the way constructions of health in

relation to fatness employ, according to Jonathan Metzl (2010, 3-4), a “language of betterment,

skillfully glossing over issues of moralism, sexism, classism, racism and other ‘isims’ that may

be present in news reporting, public health campaigns…” television programs, regulatory

debates, and medical knowledge. This project only begins to scratch the surface of the

relationship between television and fatness, or between policy, industry, and representation, but

hopefully it illustrates both the complex and important nature of those relationships in how we

understand television itself and fatness within the context of the obesity epidemic.

Ultimately, each of these areas of fat television will undoubtedly continue to develop in

tandem with the allegedly expanding waistlines of citizens around the world. Since the epicenter

of the obesity epidemic is generally considered to be the U.S., it’s not surprising that a majority

of fat television is produced here. Yet a growing number of fat television programs are also

being produced and circulated across numerous international markets. Increasingly, only a

handful of countries can claim “immunity” from the alleged spread of fatness, which is one of a

number of reasons why television texts focusing on the fat body and increasingly standardized,

yet contested, discourses framing the fat body, can easily be circulated with only minimal

localized translation. Even though TV programs currently reinforcing weight-loss and

medicalization outnumber body positivity and fat acceptance programs, the number of shows

engaging with alternative and resistant representations and narratives, embracing body size

diversity through fat visibility, or addressing the various ways fatness is experienced, are now

wider in reach than when I started this project a couple years ago and will undoubtedly be wider

in reach years down the road.

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